International audienceAlready before the introduction of the INSPIRE European directive in May 2007, the multisite UMR LETG research laboratory of the CNRS had experience in cataloging environmental geographic information (Faucher et al., 2008; Gourmelon et al., 2009). It is thanks to this expertise as well as an involvement in various environmental and coastal observations network (3 sciences of the universe observatories and 2 workshop areas) that the LETG led the implementation of a federative and interoperable web atlas project. Indigeo, which means “to need..” is a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) dedicated to scientific research and observation of the environment in the west of France. It consists of a catalog of metadata and a geo-r...