Assessing existing in-situ capacities in EU Member States: an analysis of the Copernicus regulation approach for Hydrography and Transport Network datasets

Copernicus is the European Earth Observation and monitoring Programme. It is made out of three components covering the development of services, the space infrastructure and an in-situ component. Between 2010 and 2013 the European Environment Agency coordinated the “GMES In-situ Coordination - GISC” project with the aim of creating a sustainable framework for access to in-situ observation data. The component delivered standards and requirements for the provision of in-situ data access from and for all Copernicus operational services. Focusing on the requirements of the pan-European land monitoring service, we conducted an independent assessment of in-situ (reference) data capacities in 29 European countries. We proposed a framework for consultation and harmonization of metadata sources, having in mind on the one hand INSPIRE, as conceptual reference for the delivery and the discovery of spatial data and services and on the other hand Copernicus services for the requirements on data visualization and access. The consultation of centralized and national-level spatial data infrastructures in particular led to the creation of two informal metadata catalogues, associating products with spatial services for two themes of the INSPIRE Directive (Hydrographic elements and Transport networks). These supported delivery of statistics for a number of data specifications and, in presence of a valid internet address, the testing of view and download services’ endpoints associated with spatial data. This paper describes information sources and a framework for collection of metadata sources. Results are discussed along with challenges and potentials for organizing a decentralized provision of in-situ data from EU Member States as interpretation of the Copernicus Regulation