Peter Treffler
GIS Expert
German Federal Environment Agency (UBA)
Germany

Abstract
The Spatial Data Infrastructure at the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA) - Publication of INSPIRE Network Services

Co-Author: Thomas Wojakcek, Conterra

The German Federal Environment Agency (UBA) - located in the Federal Environment Ministry - is Germany's main environmental protection agency. Gathering data concerning the state of the environment, investigating the relevant interrelationships and making projections UBA provides the general public and the federal bodies with the results of these investigations and so protects citizens against air, water and other pollutants. In this context, the UBA has made great organizational, financial and technical efforts to implement a spatial data infrastructure (UBA.gdi) to collect, publish and share environmental spatial data as an important node inside the INSPIRE Network. The central public entry point to the environmental spatial data of the UBA.gdi is GISU - the Geographical Information System Environment. GISU provides options for searching and mapping spatial environmental data based on interoperable OGC- and INSPIRE Network Services for discovery, view and download. The existing UBA.gdi has been upgraded in a project (2014 / 2015) concerning two essential aspects: 1) support an entire workflow from data acquisition to publication on INSPIRE Network Service; 2) enhance the usability of GISU regarding searching, accessing and viewing of spatial environmental data within an innovative web mapping application. Different approaches have been examined to create harmonized INSPIRE datasets and interoperable Network Services from the source datasets: Annex topics “Hydrography", “Landcover", “Soil"‚ “Air Quality" and “Production & Industrial Facilities". The Spatial ETL Software FME was used to transform source data into the INSPIRE compliant destination model. Final step in the entire INSPIRE Workflow is the publication of harmonized datasets as INSPIRE compliant Network Services using Esri`s “ArcGIS for INSPIRE" Technology - either in GML-Format with ATOM-Feeds or Esri Geodatabase Format. GISU as a central entry point to the UBA.gdi was upgradet with new smart.finder search functionality based on con terra's map.apps OSGI framework. All UBA spatial data services can be found very fast via full-text metadata search and can easily be loaded into the GISU map.app.