Robert Tomas
INSPIRE Team Member
Joint Research Centre
Italy

Biography
Robert Tomas, holds an MSc. in Geology-Geochemistry and his Ph.D. in Geoinformatics. Prior joining the EC-JRC (5/2009), he worked for 10 in the Czech Geological Survey as a Deputy Director for Informatics responsible e.g. for development and implementation of the national geoscintific SDI. Robert has been also active internationally being involved in several global geological data interoperability/managment activities, EU projects e.g. Geoscience Information Consortium, EuroGeoSurveys, IUGS-CGI, OneGeology, eWater, GEOMIND.. At JRC he has been involved in the development of the INSPIRE legal and technical framework being responsible for earth science related themes (e.g. geology & mineral resources, soil and natural risk zones data themes. He was also involved (as co-author) in the JRC Technical report on the data quality in SDI and in raising awareness of building the European SDI (INSPIRE) outside of the geospatial community. Recently, as a member of the EC&EEA INSPIRE Coordinating team, he leads the thematic clusters activities as well as he is involved in the evolution/use of INSPIRE for environmental as well as non- environmental (EU Minerals, Geothermal, Disasters..) domains.

Abstract
Building a community to support INSPIRE implementation

The INSPIRE Thematic Clusters Platform, launched on 11.12. 2014 is a European Commission initiative, linked to the INSPIRE Maintenance and Implementation Framework, with the objective of supporting INSPIRE implementation in the Member States. The experience gained during the development of the Technical Guidelines as well as lessons learned by implementing the infrastructure, especially in thematic domains, need to be shared to optimise performance of the infrastructure to meet policy objectives and to increase its usability within thematic domains. To aid this further evolution of INSPIRE and to help embed it in technical practices within a range of communities, on-line collaboration thematic platforms have be set up for sharing theme-specific experiences. The presentation will give a sort overview of the INSPIRE Thematic clusters platform activity (https://themes.jrc.ec.europa.eu/) including discussion highlights from each of the 9 major clusters (groups of INSPIRE themes) based on the 6 month operation of the platform. The presentation will also explain the process for discussing domain-specific implementation issues that might lead to proposals for change/addition requests to the INSPIRE technical framework (e.g. data specifications).