Network for promotion of cross border dialogue and exchange of best practices on Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI’s) throughout Europe

The objective of eSDI-Net+ is to bring together existing SDI key players and target users in a Thematic Network to be established as a platform for communication and exchange between different stakeholders involved in the creation and use of SDI’s. The network will promote high-level decisions, low-level technical discussion and information exchange, in order to increase awareness concerning the importance of GI enrichment and of SDI’s for GI reuse, to allow an integrated view of the experts and to permit the creation of integrated guidelines, standards, and implementation of best practices. Within the network, communication mechanisms between the European and local levels will be implemented to maximize the benefits of INSPIRE, GMES and GALILEO, regarding digital GI content.

With eSDI-Net+, multicultural and multilingual aspects in accessing, exploiting, using, and reusing digital GI content in Europe will be addressed. As a result, the proposed project will contribute to achieving interoperability between national digital collections and services (e.g. through common standards) and facilitating access and use of the material in a multilingual context.

The intelligent and effective use of GI goes through the understanding, the involvement of the user community, which often concretises in e-communities through appropriate e-government initiatives, programmes and projects. Therefore, eSDI-Net+ intends to be the catalyser of different initiatives, actions and services based on GI.