Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community

Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE) is a European Commission initiative to build a European spatial data infrastructure beyond national boundaries.

As a part of the INSPIRE initiative, Commission Regulation (EC) No 1205/2008 now specifies a set of standard requirements for the creation and maintenance of geographic metadata across the European Community.

The Directive was published in the Official Journal of the European Union in 2007 and covers governance of 5 key areas. These areas are;

Metadata, Transformation and Download Network Services, Monitoring and Reporting Services, Discovery and View Services, Data Specifications and Data and Service Sharing