Geodata for everyone - model-driven development and an example of INSPIRE WFS service

Author: Meixia Feng

DOI: 10.1186/s40965-016-0007-y

How to cite:
Feng, M. (2016). Geodata for everyone - model-driven development and an example of INSPIRE WFS service. Open Geospatial Data, Software and Standards, 1(6).

Information:
Free and Open Geo-data is part of basic-data programme [1], which was launched in the autumn of 2012 as part of the country’s eGovernment strategy for 2011–2015. The basic-data programme defines basic data as core information about individuals, businesses, real properties, buildings, addresses, geography, etc. As illustrated in Fig. 1, the basic data should be efficiently updated at one place, distributed via a common data distributor, and used by everyone. By releasing basic data, the public sector wants to remove the barriers of using public-sector basic data, improve efficiency, and create growth of new and innovative digital services.

Fig. 1. basic data infrastructure

Making high-quality basic data open and easy-to-access involves five processes such as:

1. Make all public basic data free. Everyone can freely use public-sector basic data for commercial as well as for non-commercial purposes. 

2. Warm wash of all public data. Enhance the quality of data and improve the coherence in the basic data registers. 

3. Technical harmonization. Ensure that data conform to the same technical requirements. 

4. Common public data distributor. Establish a common single distribution system to improve the distribution of data. From the beginning of 2016 the Data Distributor will distribute geographic data such as maps, cadastral maps and other geographic data. 

5. Governance. Establish a cross-institutional national board to ensure efficient, effective and coordinated development and use of basic data. 

The basic-data programme requires that all the authoritative basic data should be defined and standardized according to the same methods. As Denmark’s central public source of geographic data, the Danish Geodata Agency has established a set of guidelines for future modeling and distribution of spatial data. Based on the guidelines, a model-driven development process has also been established to automate the process from business modeling to data distribution. This paper describes this model-driven development process and uses a practical implementation of INSPIRE Web Feature Service (WFS) as an example to show how this process improves our INSPIRE compliant, national spatial data infrastructure. Section 2 describes the architecture of our model-driven development process and the tools used of the process. Section 3 presents a WFS INSPIRE service as an example of our results and discuss the challenges. In Section 4 some conclusions, as well as future works, are presented.

This is an Open Access article. Please click here to read the full text and check the references included in the text above.