Geoportals in Selected European States : a Non-technical Comparative Analysis

Geo-Information (GI) professionals, researchers and users have constantly proclaimed the potential of GI in facilitating more adroit and effective solutions to a wide variety of problems across today’s modern society. However, the successful application of Geo-Information (GI) to a wider cross-section of today’s society requires that GI is made available for sharing and reusing. For GI to be shared and reused on a large scale it must be easily accessible and assessable in an efficient and user-friendly format. To facilitate the sharing and reusing of GI many countries are implementing Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs). A key component of an SDI that facilitates accessibility and access to GI datasets is a Geoportal. In general, a Geoportal acts as a gateway to digital GI content and services made available within the concept of an SDI. The Geoportal achieves this goal through the linking of GI oriented websites and databases. These websites may be local, regional, national, for niche markets, public or privately owned. Within the context of an SDI it is propagated that there should be a single entry point (a National Geoportal) to GI content and services for a nation. Although the technology and standards are generally in place for the creation of national Geoportals to support sharing and reuse of GI, we are yet to see large scale implementation of effective National Geoportals across Europe as proposed by the INSPIRE Directive (Guimet, 2005). In addressing this issue the authors investigated Geoportals and the policies governing their implementation and maintenance in five European countries [France, Germany, Spain, United Kingdom and Norway] (van Loenen et al., 2007). In this paper, we will review different levels of Geoportals—local, regional, and national—across these five European States to determine their functionality, capabilities and the extent to which they support the sharing and reuse of GI. The paper closes with an overview of whether the Geoportals studied are contributing to the development of an European Spatial Data Infrastructure as proposed by the INSPIRE-initiative.