Land Cover on the way towards INSPIRE

Christian Ansorge

Ana Sousa, Gebhard Banko, Lena Hallin-Pihlatie, Stephan Arnold

Project manager - SEIS and INSPIRE implementation, European Environment Agency (EEA)

Lisbon, 18/05/2015

Scope

EEA Landcover products

• Corine Land Cover

• Urban Atlas

Landcover towards INSPIRE

• Motivation & Expectation

• Already lessons learned?

Question and discussion regarding large data sets

• Smart packaging

• Smart data formats

EEA Landcover products

EEA Landcover products

Corine Land Cover

• http://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/corine-land-cover

Urban Atlas

• http://land.copernicus.eu/local/urban-atlas

http://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/corine-land-coverhttp://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/corine-land-coverhttp://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/corine-land-coverhttp://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/corine-land-coverhttp://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/corine-land-coverhttp://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/corine-land-coverhttp://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/corine-land-coverhttp://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/corine-land-coverhttp://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/corine-land-coverhttp://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/corine-land-coverhttp://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/corine-land-coverhttp://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/corine-land-coverhttp://land.copernicus.eu/local/urban-atlashttp://land.copernicus.eu/local/urban-atlashttp://land.copernicus.eu/local/urban-atlashttp://land.copernicus.eu/local/urban-atlas

EEA Landcover products

Corine Land Cover

• Mapping stable surface features at

scale 1:100.000 based on physical characteristics

• Minimum mapping unit (MMU): 25 ha • Minimum width of linear elements

(MMW): 100 m • Nomenclature: 5 main groups, three

levels, 44 level-3 classes in Europe • MMU, MMW and nomenclature have

not changed since the start !!! • Implemented by national teams

EEA Landcover products

Corine Land Cover 2012 status (end April 2015)

Interpretation is still going on: AL, DE, ES, GR, TR.

Deadline to deliver: end June 2015

Full European mosaic: end summer 2015

EEA Landcover products

Urban Atlas

• The Urban Atlas is providing pan-European comparable land use and land cover data

• The Urban Atlas is a joint initiative of the European Commission Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy and the Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry with the support of the European Space Agency and the European Environment Agency.

EEA Landcover products

Urban Atlas

• Urban Atlas 2006 – FUAs with more than 100.000

inhabitants as defined by the Urban Audit

• Urban Atlas 2012 – Most EU28 cities over 50,000

inhabitants

– 17 urban classes with MMU 0.25 ha; minor nomenclature changes 10 Rural Classes with MMU 1ha

Landcover towards INSPIRE

Landcover towards INSPIRE

• Motivation for INSPIRE conformity – Corine Land Cover and Urban Atlas are the most

requested data sets the EEA offers – A wide range of use cases build on these data – Part of the Copernicus portfolio – Need for best practices and references for following

INSPIRE implementers

• Goal – Provide EEA land cover products compliant with the

INSPIRE specifications

Landcover towards INSPIRE

• Challenges

– CLC and UA are pan-European data sets

– Size and performance

– Scope (Land Cover or/and Land Use)

– Inbedded in operative use cases

How to improve usability and accessability?

Landcover towards INSPIRE

• Stages (includes CLC and UA) – Development and documentation of mapping

rules from source to Land Cover DS (GML 3.2) • Work in progress by EAGLE Group (Jan. – Sep. 2015)

• Documentation, mapping tables

• Example tranformations to generate INSPIRE conformant gml files

– Service testing • Different environments and settings

– Implementation at EEA and Copernicus platform

Questions and Discussions

Questions and discussions

• How to structure or present data for download? – Pan-european data sets

– Large scale and size

– Currently provided structures to classes (CLC) or via regions/cities (UA)

– Are structures in clusters, tiles, regions useful?

Pan-European data sets

Structured via nomenclature

Traditional GIS formats

Structured via country,

region, city

GML encoding

Questions and discussions

• What data format makes sense? – Large scale and size

– INSPIRE does not necessarily requests GML 3.2 … but …

– Expected use cases for GML and for traditional GIS formats?

– Need for usable solutions

Pan-European data sets

Structured via nomenclature

Traditional GIS formats

Structured via country,

region, city

GML encoding

Thank you!

eea.europa.eu

Pan-European data sets

Structured via nomenclature

Traditional GIS formats

Structured via country,

region, city

GML encoding

http://www.eea.europa.eu/