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A N N U A L R E P O R T 2 0 0 7
HUMBOLDT Annual Report 2007
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Editor
HUMBOLDT Executive Board
Fraunhoferstrasse 5
D-64283 Darmstadt
Germany
Design, Layout and Typography
HUMBOLDT Project Office
co zeitform Internet Dienste OHG
Fraunhoferstrasse 5
D-64283 Darmstadt
Germany
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction 7
Project outline 7
Introducing Humboldt 9
2. Activities and Results Achieved 10
General Activities 10
Scientific results 11
Technical Results 14
3. How to use HUMBOLDT 19
Scenario: Urban Planning 19
Scenario: Border Security 23
4. What is HUMBOLDT 26
Presentation of consortium and „Friends“ (Users@HUMBOLD ) 26
HUMBOLDT Consortium 27
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Introduction
On the First of October 2006 the HUMBOLDT pro-
ject started. Since then the project has focussed on
the creation and testing of IT solutions to support
the harmonisation of spatial data to be used
within Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs). In HUM-
BOLDT harmonisation is understood as a process
of transforming the available data (SDIs of the
first generation) into data, which can be used in
various applications and information products
(SDIs of the upcoming second generation).
The project is funded by the GMES (Global Monitor-
ing for Environment and Security) programme and
aims at supporting the realisation of the European
Directive INSPIRE in GMES-related applications. But
HUMBOLDT is not limited to the goals of INSPIRE.
Furthermore, the project follows the goal of provid-
ing solutions that simplify the use of spatial data
almost where ver required. Following the inspiration
of Alexander von Humboldt, the project’s philoso-
phy is:
REUSE the existing, EXTEND by need, ARRIVE
at the ESDI and PROSPER by applications.
The project’s name was inspired by the work of
Alexander v. Humboldt whose primary aim was to
integrate the knowledge of his time to gain new
insights and to advance all areas of science. Follow-
ing the same path, it is the aim of the HUMBOLDT
project to build on the existing know-how within
and outside the GI community, and to manage and
advance the implementation process of a European
Spatial Data Infrastructure. This integrated network
of systems providing data and services will allow
the sustained use of existing services as well as the
development of new applications and business
models. The availability of data is – despite ongoing
efforts – still highly fragmented and heterogeneous.
Harmonisation can contribute to the creation of
new knowledge by combining data that previously
could not be integrated - or only with prohibitively
high cost. Furthermore, entirely new processes that
replace existing complicated activities and have a
higher efficiency can be developed on the basis of
the proposed system.
This document briefly summarises the main activities
carried out by HUMBOLDT during the first year of
the project and the possibilities for stakeholders
outside the project to engage with the project. Fur-
ther information can be found at the project’s web-
site http://www.esdi-humboldt.eu.
Project outline
High-quality and easily accessible geoinformation
can deliver enormous value to different fields of
application in politics, government, research and
business. Implementing Spatial Data Infrastructures
tries to open the potentials resulting from this situa-
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tion. Accordingly legal, organisational and technical
aspects have to be combined to successfully imple-
ment an SDI. HUMBOLDT, as a research project,
focuses on a well-defined subset of these require-
ments, which will be conceptualised and evaluated
during the project period. The selected subset cov-
ers the harmonisation processes necessary to inte-
grate geodata acquired for one particular use into
several fields of application.
What harmonisation stands for in HUMBOLDT
and why is it important?
In HUMBOLDT harmonisation is understood as a
process transforming existing geodata into a
dataset that can easily be included in the use proc-
esses at the data-requiring organisation. Therefore
not only the format of the exchanged dataset has
to be well-defined, but also the conceptual model
describing the real word in the computer system
has to be common, to maximise the value of the
exchanged data. This goal can of course be
reached by organisational approaches defining one
(or several) common data model(s) which cover
every imaginable situation. But this approach will
not only be hard to agree but it also reduces flexi-
bility and limits the ability to handle specific situa-
tions with a reasonable amount of effort.
Knowing this, HUMBOLDT recognises the need to
retain flexibility and existing data models (including
the tools already working with them). So the HUM-
BOLDT approach defines harmonisation as a proc-
ess that data has to undergo whenever it is in-
tended to be used in a context other than the one
for which it was acquired. Several aspects of this
harmonisation process, for example identifying se-
mantic similarities (e.g. “house” equals “building”),
can only be handled by humans. Other aspects can
be carried out automatically as soon as knowledge
about the data models (both source and target)
and the relations between them is available. HUM-
BOLDT mainly supports the elements of the har-
monisation process that can be carried out auto-
matically or semi-automatically. Therefore the
HUMBOLDT framework delivers the necessary tool
set to describe the data model(s), to specify map-
ping at the level of the data models and to transfer
the data itself. The flexibility of the HUMBOLDT
framework will allow the integration of the HUM-
BOLDT based solution into several SDI architectures,
to support, for example, both offline and online
harmonisation processes.
By following this idea and by bringing together rele-
vant concepts and developments in an easy-to-
handle HUMBOLDT framework, the project aims at
a broader use of geodata by overcoming the hur-
dles between the different domains and supporting
the reuse of data without further processing. To
ensure this, developments are driven by several
application scenarios within HUMBOLDT. The sce-
narios have been collected to cover a broad range
of potential geodata applications in the GMES con-
text. Therefore, the scenarios cover different do-
mains and actors, different scales, different lan-
guages, different cultures, and more. Of course the
project is not limited to the current number of sce-
narios and aims to extend the scenario applications
in cooperation with other initiatives.
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Introducing Humboldt
Natural phenomena are inherently international and do not respect national borders. The necessary political
decisions and challenges resulting from natural disasters or concerning the protection of conservation areas are,
consequently, also transboundary concerns. The spatial data required for this in Europe, however, show an
extensive heterogeneity.
HUMBOLDT will provide a framework for geo data
harmonisation and service integration. Commencing
in October 2006 it aims to facilitate cross-national
harmonisation of spatial data. Under the coordina-
tion of Fraunhofer IGD 27 partners from 14 Euro-
pean countries are working on the four-year EU
project with a total value of 13.5 million EURO.
HUMBOLDT contributes to the implementation of a
European Spatial Data Infrastructure (ESDI) that
integrates the diversity of spatial data available from
the multitude of European organisations. It is the
aim of the project to manage and advance important
parts of the implementation process of this ESDI.
The main goal of HUMBOLDT is to enable organisa-
tions to document, publish and harmonise their geo-
spatial data. The software tools and processes cre-
ated in HUMBOLDT will also help to demonstrate the
feasibility and advantages of an Infrastructure for
Spatial Information in Europe as postulated by the
INSPIRE directive. The intended goal is to facilitate
geo data and metadata management to support
European and member states’ policy needs by meet-
ing the requirements of the Global Monitoring for
Environment and Security (GMES) initiative.
The HUMBOLDT project aims to facilitate the har-
monisation of spatial data and metadata by auto-
mating the necessary processes as far as possible.
The project commenced with a comprehensive state
of the art analysis on related themes. The methods
and tools for geo data and metadata management
were investigated and evaluated. Suitable software
architectures were described and basic user re-
quirements documented. On this basis HUMBOLDT
will undertake a process analysis, which will show
the steps necessary to harmonise data and meta-
data. Finally, a software framework and diverse
tools will be developed and integrated into the ESDI
to support spatial data and service providers in of-
fering standardized spatial information. An essential
element of the project is the development of scenar-
ios in which the different components are applied
and tested under realistic conditions.
HUMBOLDT results may also support applications in
disaster management: when facing natural disas-
ters, such as the Elbe floods in 2002 and 2006,
European countries typically need to exchange in-
formation on spatial data with each other. Often
several countries are affected at the same time, for
rivers and weather effects do not respect national
boundaries. However, the spatial data necessary for
the prevention and protection of natural disasters is
provided in different formats and systems in the
different countries. As a result, today cross-national
cooperation in support of more effective monitoring
and planning is at best difficult, and frequently im-
possible without the HUMBOLDT results.
Humboldt is embedded in the scope of GMES and
several other projects deal with other ESDI-relevant
aspects. Therefore, cooperation has been initiated
with other projects in order to ensure information
exchange and the re-use of expertise, of which both
sides can profit.
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Activities and Results Achieved
Main activities during the first year of the project were the implementation of an environment
necessary to successfully carry out projects of the size of HUMBOLDT. This project environment cov-
ers decision and management structures, the establishment of relationships to other projects and
initiatives relevant for HUMBOLDT, dissemination strategies and materials, and ways of communica-
tion to experts and others in related fields.
General Activities
Due to the amount and heterogeneity of the part-
ners’ contribution to the HUMBOLDT project, special
attention has been paid to lever knowledge across
the partner structures to avoid misunderstandings,
and to ensure efficient cooperation between the
partners without loss of information. Therefore train-
ing for consortium members and others external to
the project have taken place. To ensure a fruitful
interaction with other actors in the field of SDI de-
velopment, HUMBOLDT has made substiantial efforts
to ensure a broad visibility of HUMBOLDT within the
GI community. In addition to several presentations at
national and international events, publications in
scientific and non-scientific journals, press releases,
newsletters and on the website, HUMBOLDT has
established contacts and an exchange of information
with other projects such as BOSS4GMES, CASCA-
DOSS, eSDI-Net+, RISE, MOTIIVE and other projects.
Following the ideas of Alexander von Humboldt, the
initial phase of the project has been used to look
carefully into available technologies and concepts
both from within the GI environment and from other
fields. Furthermore the definition of potential HUM-
BOLDT users has been developed and the require-
ments resulting from this group have been selected.
To create this overview of user needs, both the
HUMBOLDT scenarios and public consultation have
been used. Based on these overviews the important
tool sets for HUMBOLDT have been identified and
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used to develop the concept of the technical proto-
type and the first version of the HUMBOLDT frame-
work. All the outcomes have been bundled into
documents and other results. A list of the publicly
available results can be found at the HUMBOLDT
website http://www.esdi-humboldt.eu.
Scientific results
The first year of activities in HUMBOLDT concentrated mainly on the state of the art in data harmonisation and
management and related issues, such as the state of the art in harmonisations tools, software architectures, user
needs and requirements. Based on the results of the analysis, the deficiencies of existing approaches were
documented and a guideline for the scientific research to be carried out in HUMBOLDT was developed.
General remarks
The analysis of the documents collected during the
state of the art analysis showed the broad range of
the usage of geographic and spatial data, and con-
sequently, the range in types of heterogeneity that
have to be resolved in projects where information
from different data providers is shared. Based on
this still limited amount of documents a number of
observations can be made.
The Ocean and atmospheric community depend on
imagery and sensor data, and consequently here
the focus of harmonisation activities is on metadata
and metadata registries, standardised terminology,
and a standardised reference grid, so that meas-
ured and forecast data from different data provid-
ers can be compared and linked.
The National Mapping Agencies on the other hand
seem to be less involved in metadata (ISO 19115),
although this is changing. They focus currently on
the specification of common data models mainly for
cadastre and official surveying purposes.
There is a broad usage and acknowledgement of
metadata in the community providing environ-
mental-related data. Nevertheless, although several
data harmonisation activities are reported, there
are only a few general approaches and reliable
results.
Harmonisation solutions
An overview of specific harmonisation goals and
purposes was developed, the possible solutions
were presented, and specified whether they were
already an (open source) product that can be used,
or a project that can serve as an example.
Harmonising data models
This section provides a short description of the
different options for transforming data sets to the
new common target model in the case of data
model harmonisation.
It is possible to distinguish at least two phases:
creating a common model and transforming data to
that common model.
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Creating common target model
This also involves creating the transformation rules
from source data set to target data set. This is ob-
viously an 'off-line' set of steps, resulting e.g. in
one or more UML class diagrams, and in case of an
XML encoding format also one or more XML
schema files. The generation of the XML schema
(or GML) files can be handled by software: e.g. the
INTERLIS-tools and/or the UGAS/ShapeChange tool.
In addition, codelists, classifications, portrayal rules
etc. can be defined.
It is critical for HUMBOLDT that the mapping rules
can be described in a formal, machine-processable,
declarative language, so that the transformation of
the data to the common model can be automated.
A second requirement is that this mapping lan-
guage is based on a non-proprietary standard.
Apart from the mapping rule language, there is
another requirement for this phase: that the collect-
ing of expert knowledge to create (develop) the
new common target model should be supported by
software that helps extracting knowledge, and that
can produce artefacts other than UML diagrams.
Transforming data to target model
There are a number of possibilities here. They are
called: off-line migration, off-line replication, server-
side schema translation, translation by mediator
services, and client-side translation. Their specific
definition and harmonisation requirements were
documented.
Harmonisation processes: best practices
There are a number of steps, which have to be
executed while fulfilling a data harmonisation task.
They can be grouped into three major
tasks/phases:
1. Specifying the harmonisation goals and ap-
proach
2. Executing harmonisation process steps
3. Collecting feedback on the harmonisation re-
sult
All methods and approaches investigated showed
that data harmonisation involves the knowledge of
human beings. Only, after a first complete execu-
tion of a whole harmonisation process, can some
process steps or even the whole process be auto-
mated.
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Open issues
The investigation of documents for the state of the art analysis resulted in several open issues, which may lead to
interesting research topics in the scope of HUMBOLDT and which are currently the basis for the approach on data
specification in HUMBOLDT, especially for the HUMBOLDT scenarios.
The following provides a selection of the most im-
portant aspects which were identified:
• Find a formal 'mapping rule' language that is
expressive enough to define detailed 'mapping'
/ matching / transformation rules between
source and target data sets, not only of struc-
ture changes, but also of classification changes
(and other changes in attribute values).
• Find tools for testing whether a model or data
set is semantically consistent and correct.
• In the case of harmonisation of metadata a
number of examples were identified where local
metadata was transformed to the agreed com-
mon metadata profile for that information com-
munity, but which might still need cross-
metadata model harmonisation, either between
19115, ANZLIC, FGDC, Z3950 (for global coop-
eration, outside Europe), or between different
ISO 19115 profiles.
• Find an integrated solution for data and meta-
data harmonisation, involving the same tools
and methods for both. This includes providing
an integrated solution for raster and vector
data.
• How to connect conceptual data models, meta-
data, classification for portrayal, and taxono-
mies for thematic generalisation (consistent
switching between aggregation levels)?
• In relation to the previous point: the need to
pay more attention to situations where vector
and image data must be combined: here meta-
data plays an important connecting role, and
also the portrayal rules could be influenced by
the combination of e.g. satellite images with on
top topographic or vegetation vector data set.
• Investigate the existence of tools and methods
to help in the process of capturing the 'domain
knowledge' and terminology in an application
domain (Humboldt scenario).
• Model-driven Approach (MDA): from conceptual
to technical, guidelines for data modelling to be
incorporated in the HUMBOLDT framework
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Technical Results
In this section the processes, methodologies, and HUMBOLDT results from a technical point of view are briefly
summarised.
State of the Art & Development Process Specifications
A study concerning the state of the art of collabora-
tive software development has been carried out. It
provides an overview of current practice in interna-
tional projects and developers communities for col-
laborative software development, with a special
focus on the processes that aim at defining how
distributed developers work concurrently toward the
same goal.
The information is available in the deliverable A4.1-
D1 State of the art of the collaborative software
development, which provides a general view of the
domain of collaborative software development and
helps to identify new practices and new ideas to
manage, process and integrate the HUMBOLDT
developments.
Furthermore, eight general specifications on eight
important aspects of the process of collaborative
software development for the HUMBOLDT Frame-
work have been defined and can be found in A4.2-
D1 Prototypical process specification:
• Test Areas and Datasets. Specifications about
the themes which will be harmonized in the ap-
plication relating to national and international
geographic locations.
• Prioritization of Developments. To cover this
specification a Development Review team has
been set up. The Development Review is com-
posed of members representing the different
parties interested in the Humboldt Framework:
Developers – Users – Scenario providers – Ar-
chitecture Team – Executive Board – Project Of-
fice – European Community – Inspire – GMES.
The Technological Manager and the Application
Manager of the Humboldt Project are also
members.
• Recommendations to developers. Specific rec-
ommendations to developers are provided due
to the differences between them - spatially, lin-
guistically, technologically and/or culturally sepa-
rated.
• Documentation of developments. Specifications
have been created for the required metadata
and made available for consultation.
• Integration of developments. Several integration
rules have been defined.
• Backtracking mechanisms. It is necessary to
have traceability of the developments, specifica-
tions have been created in this respect.
• Evaluation and improvements.
• Experience of the first months. Specifications on
what works best, what does not work and
what needs experimenting based on the experi-
ence gained in the project.
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Guidelines for Developers
A set of documents that serve as guidelines for developers have been created:
• Programming guidelines: The Humboldt Programming Guidelines document lists some general coding recom-
mendations based on established standards collected from a number of sources, individual experience and
local requirements/needs. It includes general guides but also specific rules (especially naming rules) that
needed to be established.
• Development Rules: The Humboldt Development Rules document establishes the rules and steps to follow for
the development process of the Humboldt Prototype. It serves as a guide on how the developer teams
should work together
• Specification Methodology has been set up:
Figure 1 – An overview of the specification and implementation process used in the HUMBOLDT prototype phase.
• Building and Testing .Net and Java components: An important issue in the development of the Humboldt
Prototype lies with the build and test processes that involve both .NET components and Java components.
The document describes the recommended tools to use in the build and test processes and the general build
process description.
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Prototype Interfaces, Models and Architecture
A set of activities have been carried out in order to provide developers with the organisational tools and teams to
design and specify the interfaces, models and architecture of the prototype. One of the core components is the
creation of the Architecture Team. The called A-Team or AT is a comprehensive working group under the lead of
WP05. It consists of individuals from WP05 and also contains a representative from each of the technical Work
Packages. The AT's main responsibility is the coordination and cooperation for the framework specification and
implementation activities. It collects requirements for the software products to be created in HUMBOLDT and
creates specifications that fulfil these requirements and which are implemented later.
Regarding the main tools that are common for all
developers it is worth mentioning the use of a Po-
larion Repository which is the primary source for all
requirements, tasks and issues and the use of a
SVN Repository with a Subversion Repository in
order to manage all source code, both the specifi-
cation code and the actual implementation code.
Prototype Framework Specifications
The Prototype Framework specification has been
developed following a system architecture approach
to system design known as the Reference Model of
Open Distributed Processing [ISO/IEC 10746]. The
Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing
(RM-ODP) is an international standard for designing
open, distributed processing systems. It provides an
overall conceptual framework for building distrib-
uted systems in an incremental manner.
RM-ODP defines standard concepts and terminology
for open, distributed processing. In a generic way,
the model identifies the top priorities for architec-
tural specifications and provides a minimal set of
requirements—plus an object model—to ensure
system integrity.
Accordingly the HUMBOLDT framework viewpoints
based on the RM-ODP model are:
• Enterprise viewpoint of the HUMBOLDT frame-
work. Information on typical business processes
to be supported by the usage of the HUM-
BOLDT framework prototype and scenarios as
well as use cases prepared for the HUMBOLDT
prototype development.
• Computational viewpoint of the HUMBOLDT
framework. This viewpoint shows the compo-
nents of the framework, their collaboration and
the interfaces used for that purpose (see Figure
2). It is described by the overall, logical architec-
ture and the descriptions of individual compo-
nents of the architecture as well as the collabo-
ration of components.
• Information viewpoint of the HUMBOLDT frame-
work. Data structures that are being used for
storage and exchange between the services
components defined in the computational view-
point.
• Engineering viewpoint of the HUMBOLDT frame-
work. It covers mainly the overall technical
architecture of HUMBOLDT, the deployment and
integration aspects of the framework including
computers, networks etc.
• Technology viewpoint of the HUMBOLDT
framework. Technology mapping for the logical
and physical architectures of HUMBOLDT. The
mapping of the logical components to physical
components. The mapping of logical and physi-
cal components to the real libraries, protocols
and other technical artefacts.
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All the details about these formal specifications can
be found in deliverable A5.1-D1 Prototype Frame-
work Specification.
Furthermore the AT has made several prototype
component evaluations to assess if each component
is ready for the prototype implementation. The most
recent agreement approves the release of the fol-
lowing components from formal specifications to
prototype development phase:
• Context Service
• Information Grounding Service
• Mediator Service Core Modules (Request Bro-
ker, Workflow service, Access Queue Manager
and transformation Queue Manager)
• Context Service Web Frontend
• Standard GIS Client
• Model Repository
• Data Access Component Manager
Figure 2 – Component diagram for the prototype framework showing its logical, static structure.
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Prototype development
Following the instructions of the AT and the technical Work Packages, the implementation of the prototype has
been carried out within WP08 during this first year of the project. The idea with the prototype has been to make
a proof of concept on some of the technologies that will be used later in the different versions of the HUMBOLDT
Framework.
The Agile Unified Process methodology by Ubisoft
has been proposed to be used in the implementa-
tion. The Agile UP is a test driven development
process. This means that for each coded unit cre-
ated a test application or process has to be devised.
This forces the development process to be more
robust. This Methodology also introduces a certain
degree of interactivity in the development process.
That ensures that the product has undergone
stakeholder or user scrutiny whilst being developed
which ensures that the final outcome is closer to the
intended functionality.
Currently the inception phase has been completed
and the only item absent from the Elaboration Phase
is the process acceptance creation of the plans and
risk assessment.
Rapid progress has been made into the construction
phase as the model of the prototype has already
been completed. The construction phase has been
initiated in sub-phases. The architecture vision has
become stable for some parts of the prototype; given
the nature of the process that has been applied.
Because this is the prototype and has been mainly
prepared by HUMBOLDT Partners in the specification
phase, it is not entirely clear which stakeholders with
which interaction is possible. Also, at the moment
due to the lack of separation from modellers and
developers there are no secondary checks on the
specification fulfilment. To solve this problem it has
been proposed that the stakeholders of each module
are the developers of the other modules that interact
with that module. So each stakeholder has had to
interact with the developers of the other group and
make sure that their interface, ontology and logical
requirements have been fulfilled.
Currently the entire software of the HUMBOLDT
prototype has been integrated into the HUMBOLDT
laboratory where it can be easily accessible to de-
velopers. The three virtual machines that correspond
to the three different elements of the prototype can
be found in the laboratory: Client, Mediator and
Grounding.
Figure 3 – Component diagram showing the mapping of service components to virtual machines
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How to use HUMBOLDT
In this section two of eight HUMBOLDT scenarios are briefly described in order to illustrate the use
of the HUMBOLDT framework in applications.
Scenario: Urban Planning
The primary objective of the Urban Planning Sce-
nario is to demonstrate the usability and the use-
fulness of HUMBOLDT research and development
activities. The scenario responds to the planning
information needs arising from the deep administra-
tive and political reforms that have taken place in
the Czech Republic in the past 15 years, as well as
the more recent impacts that followed the 1997
and 2002 flood disasters in the Czech Republic. The
re-establishment of the municipality system, forming
more than 6000 local authorities, 205 new districts
and 14 regions was supported by new legal provi-
sions for the planning process based on the 1976
law, and subsequently replaced by a new spatial
planning law from 2007.
The new law has created new rules for spatial
planning influencing planning data usage, whilst
the 1997 and 2002 flood disasters in the Czech
Republic, have further redefined the key tasks of
spatial planning and data needs placing greater
emphasis on the management of natural threats
and preventative measures. Increasing attention is
being paid to the Integrated Emergency System,
which integrates firemen, police, health rescue
service etc. and complements existing spatial plan-
ning documentation. In the context of hazard as-
sessment, spatial planning is now being coordi-
nated with the Ministries of Agriculture (water
management), Environment (water protection) and
of the Interior (Firemen), and new types of dissemi-
nation tools to ensure public awareness.
In the Czech Republic the some appropriate author-
ity must finished the first version of Territorially
Analytic Backgrounds (TAB, in Czech UAP) by the
year end (31.12.2008). Territorially Analytic Back-
grounds contain findings and evaluation of status
and the development of territory by reasons of pub-
lic policy, sustainable growth and change monitor-
ing (Act 183/2006). TAB must be continuously up-
dated. The complete updating must be undertaken
every two years. In the Czech Republic there are
219 responsible regions and some municipalities. In
this context activities connected with acquisition,
processing and provision of urban planning data in
the Czech Republic are formulated.
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Harmonisation Objectives
The Urban Planning scenario is focussed on the processing of geospatial data in urban planning in the Czech
Republic. But the similar situation is also in other European countries (e.g. Latvia).
Data Management
• No clear responsibility for data
• Data sets with no known origin
• No clear data properties (e.g. data models,
data formats, portrayal rules etc.)
• Most of municipalities use proprietary closed
desktop solutions
Metadata
• almost no metadata at the level of municipali-
ties
• no interoperable solutions
• does not support standards
Urban Planning Harmonisation Process:
1. Metadata harmonisation according Urban Planning metadata profile (combination of ISO standard, INSPIRE
directive and Czech legislative rules).
2. Harmonisation of different data sets properties (e.g. data models, data formats, terminology etc.) so that
the data sets could be catalogued.
3. Harmonisation of catalogued data leading to visualisation through web services.
Figure 4 – Harmonisation of data catalogues
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Urban Planning Functionality
System development - general process and baseline
for the development of the ICT system:
• Search incoming information necessary for multi-
criteria decisions; validation description, and
preparation of metadata to assist in publishing
the information (using web context files);
• Initial virtual brainstorming (multi-participant)
using analytical and decision support tools to
set up and apply the decision model;
• Modelling of alternative scenarios using a com-
bination of GIS (commercial and open source)
and CDP in a common workspace;
• Discussions to validate the different scenarios
and models and to agree on commonly accept-
able solutions;
• Finalisation and visualisation of accepted plan.
Relation to GMES and INSPIRE
Scenarios are dealing with INSPIRE and GMES har-
monization as a primary objective, and they provide
an environment for demonstrationn of new methods
and principles for harmonization. This approach
can be used for both putting relevant INSPIRE im-
plementation specifications into practice offering
“how-to” guidelines and best-practice examples on
how tools and standards can be used to create the
ESDI. The Scenarios also assist in bringing spatial
information into new fields of application, this latter
being critical to the ambition and development dy-
namic of GMES. The Urban planning scenario will
assist in developing the GMES Land Monitoring
Core Service in the provision of monitoring informa-
tion concerning Community and Member States’
policies related to the environment (cohesion, agri-
culture & forestry, water management soil protec-
tion, sustainable urban development, transport,
etc.). It will also support the development of
“downstream services” related to specific themes
and areas, including urban zones, nature sites,
areas subject to rapid changes or high environ-
mental risks such as flooding, landslides, and ero-
sion etc.
Connection to other HUMBOLDT Scenarios
Scenarios are in different stages of development,
with different objectives, and in different contexts,
representing a situation-specific collection of data,
local and regionally based knowledge, user com-
munities, and policy relations etc. Nonetheless the
Scenarios also show important similarities, and op-
portunities to share and utilize the Scenario re-
sources providing the basis for exploitation of net-
work synergies and the establishment of efficient
and effective collaboration and sharing resources
between Scenarios. The development of the Inte-
grated Emergency System, identified above, pro-
vides a very clear example of the policy related
connections that exist between Scenario applica-
tions in different thematic areas, and the need to
harmonise a great variety of thematic datasets (e.g.
HUMBOLDT Annual Report 2007
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the borders of forests /HS Forest/ are very impor-
tant for a prevention of a spread of forest fires in
urbanized areas). Exploiting these synergies means
collaboration between Scenarios in sharing meth-
odologies, tools, applications, technologies, know-
how as well as the experience of applying them
and forms the basis for close cooperation with
other HUMBOLDT scenarios that will bring major
benefits in terms of information to support policy
and other service outputs.
Current Scenario Status
Meetings in Chotebor (CR) with the mayor, and
others responsible for urban planning, environment
protection and informatics as well as planners and
IT experts from the Regional Government of Vyso-
cina, to which Chotebor belongs confirm:
• Chotebor planning documentation in digital form
already exists
• Chotebor and Vysocina basic spatial infrastruc-
ture permitting sharing of data and services in-
cluding metadata also exists
The existing data sets in Chotebor and Vysocina
have been studied and the metadata systems for
their future description have been investigated,
forming the basis for examination of existing data
models and the needs for harmonisation of this
data, as well as the analysis of the metadata model
necessary for the urban planning data description.
Cooperation with projects c@r, focused on collabo-
rative models and tools in spatial planning, and
NaturNet Redime, focused on training of local and
regional stakeholders has been developed.
In cooperation with Chotebor and Vysocina region
the aim is to develop a system which makes possi-
ble the unification and harmonization of all proc-
esses connected with urban planning background
data acceptance and publishing. At present data
providers hand in data in different data models
(e.g. GIS model, CAD model), data formats (e.g.
SHP, GML, DGN etc.), mediums (e.g. web services,
files on CD, printed map etc.), quality, metadata
records, portrayal rules and others. This implies
difficult conditions for the management of these
data sets and their publishing for other clients (e.g.
planners, public administration, general public etc.).
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Scenario: Border Security
Border Security is one of 8 scenarios developed by HUMBOLDT. The primary objective of the scenario is to
demonstrate the usability and the usefulness of HUMBOLDT research and development activities for border
security activities.
It demonstrates how border security guard decision
makers can access geographic data from different
sources. Typically these data sources are created
and maintained by third parties, but the information
is relevant for the decision-making processes of the
border security guards. However, border security
guards also create and possess a large amount of
spatial information collected by sensors, mobile
units, Command and Control offices (C&C), etc.
The scenario aims to demonstrate the benefits of
the combined use of harmonized information for the
post hoc analysis of events, including security rele-
vant incidents such as an emergency call, large
demonstrations, or any other kind of hazard, lead-
ing to the evaluation of arrangements and planned
measures along the border, with subsequent prepa-
ration of new, adjusted action plans.
The Border Security scenario focuses on the analytic aspects of border protection. It addresses the following
steps:
• access remote datasets, harmonise the data, and present in a single harmonised data model
• combination of border security data with data from external sources,
• undertake analysis of this data,
• visualisation of analysed results,
• reporting,
• data sharing with persons authorized to access these data1.
data access harmonisation combination analysis visualisation reporting sharing
Figure 5 – Seven steps of the analytical process
1 Border security data and results of data analysis are (mainly) potentially sensitve data and subject to data protection and security clearence. Therefore only authorized persons and organisations can access them.
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Border Security functionality
The scenario will involve two main groups of func-
tionality:
1. Data acquisition (HUMBOLDT deliverables)
2. Data analysis (Border Security functionality)
As mentioned above, border guards do not collect
topographic data, but topographic information is
important for their activities. For decisions, analysis
and reporting it is preferable to have fresh data
coming from relevant sources. From the Border Se-
curity point of view it is preferable to have access
to these datasets via web services.
From the HUMBOLDT Integration Framework (IF) the
following support for the Border Security demon-
strator is anticipated: identification of datasets –
evaluation of datasets – harmonisation and access.
Border Security functionality will develop the capac-
ity to conduct incident mapping and management
analysis, providing a map that provides intelligence
on increases or decreases in border incidents,
rather than simply raw data that does not support
accurate decision making. This represents a major
advance in communicating problems to all manage-
ment levels.
Relation to GMES and INSPIRE
INSPIRE
It is not the responsibility of the Border Security
guard or any other security or emergency organiza-
tion to collect data that falls within the INSPIRE
annexes, such as topographic data or specific the-
matic data. Border Security guards anticipate that a
European Spatial Data Infrastructure will enable
them to search for available data sources (topog-
raphic as well as thematic) in a standardised man-
ner, evaluate the datasets and obtain access to the
data sources. In this regard, the scenario is directly
connected to the INSPIRE initiative.
GMES
For the Border Security scenario the following GMES
activities are important:
Mapping – topography, road maps, land use, for-
estry, water resources maps and in specific cases
also natural resources represent important inputs
for border security activities. These dataset will not
be directly collected by Border Security but will
make use of this information for undertaking their
responsibilities.
Support – Border Security will provide most up to
date information from border security guards, i.e.
outputs from analysis, reports and other shareable
data.
It is anticipated that some of these Border Security
datasets will be subject to data protection as sensi-
tive information, and therefore will only be available
for authorized users.
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Connection to other HUMBOLDT scenarios
Border Security needs to access a large variety of
thematic datasets. These datasets play an impor-
tant role in other HUMBOLDT scenarios like Forest,
Water, Planning, ERiskA etc. Consequently close
cooperation with other HUMBOLDT scenarios will
bring major benefits in terms of information to sup-
port policy and other service outputs. In this way
the scenarios can deliver knowledge about data
availability as well as direct connection to functional
service and data levels. Border Security as a result
of border guard operations and needs is clearly
related to the scenarios Urban Planning, Forest,
Protected Areas, ERiskA and Water. These sce-
narios reflect knowledge about border guard needs
on thematic spatial data and services. Concrete
cooperation between scenarios is being actively
developed between scenario leaders.
Current Scenario status
Communication has been established with the Bor-
der Guard in the Slovak republic and negotiations
are in progress with FOMI. Cooperation has also
been established with FRONTEX (European Agency
for the Management of Operational Cooperation at
the External Borders of the Member States of the
European Union), which coordinates operational
cooperation between Member States in the field of
the management of external borders.
User stories and the use cases required from the
integration framework have been defined as fol-
lows:
• Human Intrusion
• Nature Impact
• High Level Management
• Strategic Analysis
• Strategic planning.
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What is HUMBOLDT
The HUMBOLDT project proposes an optimised, community-centred implementation process. Besides
a technological-focussed framework, which is being developed, the project has also set up a num-
ber of scenarios which use the developed framework components in real-world conditions, and
which are used as promoters for the target users of the project.
Presentation of consortium and „Friends“ (Users@HUMBOLD )
The core philosophy of this project is that success
comes from acceptance, use and continual improve-
ment of the results of its work. Establishing a HUM-
BOLDT User Community is thus a crucial point of our
strategy. Therefore, a User Involvement Strategy has
been elaborated and is regularly updated.
In the first year, the focus was mainly on raising
awareness about the project. Several dissemination
instruments were therefore used. The public website
of the project (www.esdi-humboldt.eu) was created
and is updated regularly. The HUMBOLDT Whitepa-
per has been created and was published in several
media in multiple languages. A project brochure was
also created and distributed at several important
SDI- and GI-related events. All the above dissemina-
tion materials are available for download via the
project website.
In the next phase, a User Community with high in-
teractivity will be established. The creation of the
User@HUMBOLDT Platform was an important step
towards this goal. Users can now enrol themselves
via the public Website, where a „Get Involved!”
section has been created. On the other hand, the
project also builds on the well-established partner
networks of the Consortium Members themselves.
Therefore, Consortium Members have contacted
their well-trusted partners and identified those in-
terested in the project and willing to join the User
Community. These users will then be contacted di-
rectly by the Project Office and involved in the Key
User Community.
No user community could be built without motivating
the users to join. Starting from the first public ver-
sion of the Framework, registered HUMBOLDT users
will be enabled to use and test the successive ver-
sions of the Framework itself for their own use
cases, and to provide feedback to the Project. This
is in itself a motivation for the users to join the
User@HUMBOLDT Platform. A HUMBOLDT training
package assisted by a training framework is being
elaborated to support the HUMBOLDT dissemination
and exploitation policy, and the effective involve-
ment of the users. The training package will be
available for download through the project website
for the registered HUMBOLDT users. Registered us-
ers will also have the right to browse all the public
deliverables created during the project. Besides this,
it is intended to provide public summaries of the
project results (non-public deliverables, etc.) created
within each WP. Until the first public version of the
Framework is available, it is still possible to motivate
users by providing some software tools created by
the Consortium in the framework of the HUMBOLDT
project, which will either be part of the Framework
or are used for other purposes within the project.
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HUMBOLDT Consortium
The HUMBOLDT project is undertaken by 28 partners supported by a Review and Advisory Board consisting of
outstanding persons from the geospatial community.
Photo: The HUMBOLDT Consortium
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HUMBOLDT Project Partners
1. Fraunhofer-Institut für Graphische Datenverarbeitung IGD, Germany
2. ETRA Investigacion y Desarrollo, Spain
3. Help Service Remote Sensing, Czech Republic
4. LogicaCMG UK, UK
5. Institut Géographique National, France
6. Intergraph CZ, Czech Republic
7. ETHZ - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Switzerland
8. Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
9. University of Rome "La SAPIENZA", Italy
10. Institute of Geodesy, Cartography and Remote Sensing (FOMI), Hungary
11. Marine Information Service 'MARIS' BV, Netherlands
12. KTU Regional Science Park, Lithuania
13. INI-GraphicsNet Stiftung, Germany
14. Technische Universität München, Germany
15. University of the West of England, UK
16. Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer, France
17. National Environment Research Council, UK
18. Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Greece
19. Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, Sweden
20. Telespazio, Italy
21. GISIG - Geographical Information Systems International Group, Italy
22. Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy
23. Forest Management Institute, Czech Republic
24. Instituto Geográfico Português, Portugal
25. Collecte Localisation Satellites, France
26. Högskolan i Gävle, Sweden
27. Promitheas Business Innovation Center Limited, Cyprus
28. Intergraph Germany, Germany