Report from EuroSDR meeting 2016-02-11

Hello all,

Following the Geodata on the Web conference on February 10, which followed
our face to face meetings in Amersfoort, I attended a meeting organized by
EuroSDR <http://www.eurosdr.net/> on February 11, also about the topic of
spatial data on the web. In their own words,  *"EuroSDR is a not-for-profit
organisation linking National Mapping and Cadastral Agencies with Research
Institutes and Universities in Europe for the purpose of applied research
in spatial data provision, management and delivery.*"

National Mapping and Cadastral Agencies (NMCAs) are an important
provisioner of official spatial data in Europe. They provide core data that
are well curated and in many ways can be used or enriched by broader
communities.

Attached is a document with the notes from the meeting. A report and
possibly a EuroSDR position paper on the topic of spatial data on the web
are forthcoming.

The meeting showed that there are many different views. There is some
interest in adopting new paradigms for publishing spatial data among
National Mapping and Cadastral Agencies (NMCAs), but there is also some
hesitation. One reason for that is that NMCAs have just gone through a
rigorous change in data publication methods because of INSPIRE, which
basically says NMCA's have to use OGC-defined services like WMS, WFS and
CSW (with a INSPIRE flavour). They have invested heavily in this change and
the pay-off is not all that clear, so it imaginable that a message that
says that they should switch to HTTP URIs and use JSON instead of XML is
not automatically met with enthusiasm.

Personally I heard a confirmation of the idea that we should not get too
hung up on JSON, but rather focus on recommendations on a more fundamental
level that improve matters regardless of data format.

Some other personal notes:

   - Data publishers wonder if customers want Linked Data;
   - Existing INSPIRE services are not used intensively;
   - There is a common need for an overview of software that can be used to
   help publishing spatial data on the web. The GeoKnow market and research
   overview
   <http://svn.aksw.org/projects/GeoKnow/Public/D2.1.1_Market_and_Research_Overview.pdf>
   was helpful, but it is almost three years old now and the information is
   not updated.  (I promised this I would report this to the SDWWG as a
   requirement)
   - Similar to the previous point  people would like to see an overview of
   implementations.
   - NMCAs should be one of the audiences for our Best Practices document,
   as a particular type of data publisher and data curator.
   - I think it would be good if we can present a step-by-step approach, as
   advocated by Jeremy in his talk in Amersfoort: show that it is not required
   to immediately go all the way with installing triple stores and maintaining
   SPARQL endpoints, but that a few simple steps like trying to use persistent
   URIs for things or use web standards for metadata already can help a lot.

Regards,
Frans