Project overview

 

The world of geographic information (GI) is, at present, extremely heterogeneous. User and system requirements, too varied to be satisfied by a single system or technology, have led to an utter lack of agreement on interoperability standards, creating a barrier to realizing the full exploitation potential of GI.

 

ENERGIC OD will address these problems by adopting a broker architectural approach, designed and developed in recent research activities and implemented in. In this approach, specific components (the brokers) perform all interoperability actions required to interconnect heterogeneous systems.

 

ENERGIC OD will deploy a set of Virtual Hubs (VH) by integrating an existing broker framework with other selected technologies to provide users with a single point of access to geospatial datasets provided by new or existing platforms and infrastructures, including INSPIRE-compliant systems and GMES/Copernicus services.

 

This innovative approach will greatly facilitate the development of new and multidisciplinary applications based on the full exploitation of (open) GI, hence stimulating innovation and business activities.

 

The new applications, together with the newly developed VHs, will optimize the exploitation of (open) GI and the development of new marketable services. To build INSPIRE compliant VHs, several software technologies will be used and integrated: The Brokering Framework (implementing the discovery and access of heterogeneous data sources) based on the GI suite, the FUSION Data Service (to perform geospatial data transformation), the GIS-Portal (for human access to the VHs), the GIS-Broker Framework, the Stack of Open Source software for geomatics, the Atl@nte Platform, SpatiumCube, CatMDEdit, GeoServer, Deegree, PostgreSQL, EasySDI, Sync'Serv, and GeoExt.

 

The project objectives are to:

1. Develop VHs at different territorial scales (regions, member states, Europe), providing unique and mutually consistent points of access to heterogeneous data sources for both end-users (via geoportals) and machines (service interfaces, APIs).

2. Demonstrate the validity of the concept, design, implementation and deployment of VHs through the development of a set of ten innovative applications in different domains. The proposed applications will address the needs of businesses, citizens and public institutions, making use of both public and private (open) geospatial data.

 

 

Project reference: 620400

Funded under: CIP

Duration: 36 months (01/10/2014 -  30/09/2017)