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Has the INSPIRE directive led to compatible data?
Dalarna University, School of Information and Engineering.
Dalarna University, School of Information and Engineering.
2025 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

The INSPIRE Directive was established by the European Union to improve the sharing and interoperability of spatial data across member states, to promote consistent environmental policies and spatial data infrastructures. Despite its aims, challenges remain in harmonising and uniting data formats, metadata quality, and service availability, leading to inconsistency in data sharing practices. This thesis examines the current state of INSPIRE implementation across six EU countries: Sweden, Germany, Spain, Croatia, Romania, and Malta. A comparative analysis is conducted, focusing on metadata quality, service availability, and spatial data completeness. The methodology includes systematic assessments using the INSPIRE Reference Validator and a custom Python script to look at the countries and compare them. Key findings reveal significant differences in compatibility across the six countries. Spain scored highest overall, showing strong metadata and accessibility, while Sweden and Germany despite their policy level alignment struggled with metadata conformity and access restrictions. All countries failed in dataset completeness for certain themes, such as Hydrography and Protected Sites. These gaps show that even well aligned countries face problems in practice. The study identifies metadata quality, service accessibility, and dataset completeness as key indicators for measuring compatibility, and shows that failure in any one of them limits the overall usability of spatial data. While progress with compatibility has already been made, substantial work remains to achieve INSPIRE’s vision of seamless cross-border data interoperability. This study will identify challenges and suggest recommendations to enhance the implementation of INSPIRE guidelines. 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2025.
Keywords [en]
Spatial data, INSPIRE Directive, Interoperability, Metadata, Data compatibility
National Category
Computer and Information Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:du-50768OAI: oai:DiVA.org:du-50768DiVA, id: diva2:1975561
Subject / course
Microdata Analysis
Available from: 2025-06-24 Created: 2025-06-24 Last updated: 2025-10-09

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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • chicago-author-date
  • chicago-note-bibliography
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf