2001 National Report for Greece
STANDARDIZATION ACTIVITIES IN GREECE
National Report to ICA Standards Commission
July 2001
by
Marinos Kavouras
Associate Professor
Cartography Laboratory,
National Technical University of Athens (NTUA)
15780 Zografos Campus, Athens Greece
mkav@survey.ntua.gr
Up until 1997, standardisation activities in Greece in the field of geographic or cartographic data had been rather limited. Ever since, on the occasion of various related activities, a number of important steps have been taken towards an interoperable GI environment. These ongoing activities are:
DEFINITION OF A NATIONAL STANDARD FOR THE EXCHANGE OF GEOGRAPHIC DATA
The National Technical University of Athens contacted this project on behalf of Hellenic Mapping and Cadastral Organisation (HEMCO) and KTIMATOLOGIO S.A.. The objective of the project was to study, evaluate and propose an appropriate standard for the exchange of geographic data. The primary application interest was in the Hellenic Cadastre Project. The proposed standard however should be suitable to serve as a national standard for geographic data exchange (NSGDE). As a result of the study, three primary trends in standardisation were considered, Open GIS, ISO/TC 211, CEN/TC 287 and a generic – profile – product approach was followed. Influenced by the work of the ICA Commission on Standards for the Transfer of Spatial Data International Cartographic Association (ICA), Spatial Transfer Standards 2: Characteristics for Assessing Standards and Full Descriptions of the National and International Standards in the World, ICA Commission on Standards for the Transfer of Spatial Data, published in 1997, a number of criteria were selected to examine the suitability of existing approaches. These were: (a) Political, (b) Socio‑Economical, (c) Technical‑Scientific and (d) Practical. This analysis promoted DIGEST-C with a specialised (and not modified) implementation version of Urban Vmap product. Details on this activity can be found in: Hadzilakos T., Halaris G., Kavouras M., Kokla M., Panopoulos G., Paraschakis I., Sellis T., Tsoulos L., Zervakis M. (2000) Interoperability and definition of a national standard for geospatial data: the case of the Hellenic cadastre, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 2(2):120-128.
Recent developments in the same direction attempt first to define appropriate metadata for the Hellenic cadastre, and secondly, to implement such a product standard on GML.
DEVELOPMENT OF A NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE (NaGi2)
This activity sets out the vision for the development of a National Geographic Information Infrastructure (NaGi2) for Greece to support administrative, economic, social, environmental and planning activities. The infrastructure will contain fundamental data sets, systems, network communication, interoperability standards, institutional arrangements, access mechanisms and information policies. It is this suite of administrative and technical linkages that will make the NaGi2such a powerful tool for the nation’s economic and social development. In order to investigate and successfully deal with the various technical and non-technical issues involved, it is necessary to develop and work on a pilot system.
NaGi2 will operate as a distributed network of databases based on a set of interoperability standards. The distributed databases will be electronically connected, so that they appear to the user as a virtual database, providing information from many different sources to the widest possible group of users. The data providing agencies maintain custodianship of those data.
This development will not only confront technical problems concerning data collection and dissemination, but it will also enable integration and data analysis capabilities. Furthermore, it will reveal various data heterogeneity problems, which will eventually be reduced through standardisation validation and certification procedures.
In establishing NaGi2 (part of which might be the information from the Hellenic Cadastre) the national, strategic and co-ordinating role (and obligation) of HEMCO in shaping a geoinformation policy and co-ordinating geomatics activities in Greece is not only undeniable but also long expected. In this endeavour, HEMCO has the scientific and technical support of the National Technical University of Athens.
INTEROPERABILITY – DATA FUSION AND FISSION
The development of the Hellenic Cadastre will eventually produce a very detailed geo-database of utmost importance to society. The CORINE LC Greece database produced by HEMCO, the 1:25,000 map state coverage in the near future, and the socio-economic data produced by the National Statistical Service (NSS) from the last census, to mention a few, will feed the NaGi2 server with metadata and datasets. Especially in the last projects, NTUA and HEMCO have undertaken the task of integrating (fusing) heterogeneous data sets based on 5 different classifications: (i) used in the European CORINE LC program (ii) used in 1991 Census and (iii) used in 2001 Census, (iv) used by the National cadastre and (v) used in the European CLUSTERS nomenclature.
This ambitious but necessary objective requires a step-by-step solution of technical (standardisation and interoperability) problems. HEMCO has participated in the ABDS for the CEEC program http://abds.fomi.hu/: “Preparatory work for the implementation of an on/off- line service of administrative boundary data for the CEEC region”. Other work on metadata definition and services (since GI-META, LECLEF, etc.) are also to be taken into consideration in this particular project.
From the leading GI work today in research and development, it is evident that the number one issue in sharing GI, is interoperability and database integration. Due to this interest, HEMCO with its scientific collaborator NTUA, follow closely and participate actively in European and international forums related to standardisation, spatial data fusion/fission and interoperability:
http://www.cti.gr/RD3/pubs/confs/agile98.pdf
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/122192.html
http://www.geogr.muni.cz/lgc/abds/hemco.pdf, http://www.geoinfo.tuwien.ac.at/events/Euresco2000/gdgis.htm,
http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/~neumann/publications/semantic/IJCAI2001.pdf,
http://www.geoinfo.tuwien.ac.at/projects/revigis/
© Copyright, ICA Standards Commission, 2001