EuroGeographics adds two new members

23 January 2009, 8:29pm

EuroGeographics - the association and official voice for Europe's national mapping and cadastral agencies - has welcomed two new members, Geoinformation Service of the Hungarian Defence Forces (GEOS HDF) and Registers of Scotland (RoS).

They join mapping and land registration organisations from 43 countries who share data and expertise to help inform European policy and decision-making. An important part of this is the development of the definitive pan-European location framework which will enable them to meet the requirements of the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE) Directive.

"As the sole holder of responsibility for the provision of topographic and other, internationally accepted mapping products for the entire Hungarian armed and law enforcement forces, GEOS HDF is happy to be part of a community, which is creating modern, up-to-date and accurate pan-European products that can efficiently be used by the above organisations to the benefit of all nations in Europe", said Colonel Laszlo Tóth, Head of the GEOS HDF.

James Meldrum, Keeper and Chief Executive of the RoS added: "RoS is delighted to have joined Eurogeographics and looks forward to being an active participant in the work of the organisation which we believe will help us delivery our part of the pan - European spatial data infrastructure."

"We are delighted that GEOS HDF and RoS are adding to the wealth of knowledge offered by our members," said EuroGeographics' President Magnus Gudmundsson. "They join us at a particularly exciting time as work has just begun on our e-Contentplus project, Underpinning the European Spatial Data Infrastructure (ESDIN) with a Best Practice Network. This will help member states, candidate countries and the European Free Trade Association to prepare their data for INSPIRE."

The project, co-funded by the European Union, will test INSPIRE specifications and focuses on overcoming the technical and business obstacles which currently make it difficult to find, assess and join-up data across national borders. The collaboration between mapping and cadastral agencies, academic institutions and technology providers will also investigate ways to reliably and cost-effectively download, use and re-use geographical information from the public sector.

ESDIN is being managed by Stephen Evans who is on secondment to EuroGeographics from Land and Property Services Northern Ireland.

For more information about the ESDIN project please visit the web site below.

For further information about EuroGeographics, please contact Executive Director, Dave Lovell on +33 (0)1 64 153 265
+33 676 396 241 (mobile)
e-mail dave.lovell@eurogeographics.org.

EuroGeographics

ESDIN project

Geo: International