Reusing INSPIRE Protected Sites data for CDDA 2018 delivery to European Environment Agency

The annual ‘Nationally designated areas’ (CDDA) reporting data flow to the European Environment Agency (EEA) has changed in 2018 with the final aim of reusing the achievements of INSPIRE implementation to build a more efficient and automated reporting data flow. The complete data reporting (spatial datasets and related specific thematic data) is obtained through a “linked approach” in which the geospatial information contained in the INSPIRE Protected Sites data sets is combined with the relevant thematic information.

The linking mechanism is based on the information contained in the ‘InspireID’ element, which uniquely identifies the protected site spatial object within the INSPIRE dataset.

With main aim to make reporters’ life easier for countries not subject to INSPIRE obligations, the EEA provides transformation tools to produce both a dataset with nationally designated areas conformant to INSPIRE Protected Sites (Type1) and an XML file containing the other environmental information not included in the related INSPIRE data (Type2).

Particular attention should be paid by the INSPIRE countries which, abiding to INSPIRE requirements, already provide fully harmonized protected areas via INSPIRE Protected Sites (INSPIRE deadline 23-11-2017). In this case, in fact, dataset(s) used for CDDA delivery must be the one(s) produced in the INSPIRE context, and reporters shall take care to correctly address the ‘InspireID’ of each single protected area in the INSPIRE dataset(s) from within the thematic XML file, in order to make the linking mechanism work properly (and pass the EEA Quality Checks).

What if an INSPIRE country decides to use the EEA tool to produce the type2 XML?

The so-obtained file should be edited to replace the default InspireId values present therein (i.e. PSlocalId, PSnamespace and PSversion) using the relevant “real” values in the addressed INSPIRE PS dataset.

What if an INSPIRE country decides to use the EEA tool to create an INSPIRE PS dataset different from the official INSPIRE one (only for purpose of CDDA delivery to EEA)?

According to what explained in EEA CDDA 2018 Guidelines, this new dataset gets subject to the INSPIRE obligations. This means that relevant INSPIRE metadata and services have to be created for it. Another side effect should be taken into account: in this case, the same protected area could be identified by means of different INSPIRE identifiers (values automatically created by EEA tool are not likely to be the same used in the official INSPIRE dataset).

The overall mechanism is well explained in the CDDA reporting Guidelines and in the helpful screencasts produced for the EEA by Epsilon Italia and available in the relevant CDDA 2018 help page on the Eionet – Central data Repository platform.