INSPIRE Geoportal

The INSPIRE Management Council of the Republic of Cyprus, decided during its meeting of 11/1/2016, to publish the geoportal that was recently developed, in order to satisfy the European Directive 2007/2/EC (INSPIRE), according to the provisions of Law 43(Ι)/2010. The geoportal includes the geospatial datasets that were identified and recorded until today by all government departments, government services, and semi-government organizations, which are included in the annexes of INSPIRE Directive. The URL of the geoportal is: www.geoportal.gov.cy.

In the initial webpage, all information related to the development of INSPIRE in Cyprus, are included. There are links to the webpages of organizations that are related to INSPIRE. Additionally, there is a link to INSPIRE platform in which all electronic geospatial services (e-services) have been stored. These eservices can be searched based on the metadata that have been prepared, they can be viewed, they can be downloaded and most importantly, they can be directly accessed by any GIS system or any other relevant application, and can be inter-related with other existing geospatial datasets of the users.

The INSPIRE Geoportal constitutes a pioneer project for Cyprus. It allows the access to a large volume of official, and updated geospatial datasets, directly from the organizations that produce and maintain these datasets.

INSPIRE is based on common standards and rules which are implemented and used in parallel by all EU member states. This program is under continuous development, is monitored continuously by the European Commission, and is expected to be completed by the end of year 2020. Therefore, the geoportal datasets will be continuously completed and updated. All relevant information and descriptions are included in the metadata of the geospatial datasets.

The geoportal constitutes a very useful tool for government departments, services, semi-government organizations, universities, schools, technical offices and citizens. It is expected that the geoportal will significantly improve the existing procedures, will reduce processing time, and will significantly assist the citizens and the improvement of the economy of our country. Andreas Hadjiraftis