Contract Covers Development of GIS Technical Components for a Spatial Data Infrastructure

Redlands, California—February 23, 2009—The Statistical Office of the European Communities (Eurostat) has awarded the INSPIRE@EC contract to a consortium that based its solution on ESRI technology. This contract covers the development of the technical components of a European Commission spatial data infrastructure (SDI) compliant with the provisions of the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE).

The scope of the INSPIRE@EC project is to provide a productive INSPIRE-compliant, Web-based geographic information system (GIS) application that fulfills the European Commission’s user requirements and expectations with a particular focus on fast response times. It includes the design and implementation of the INSPIRE@EC geoportal and its administrative tools as well as the creation of a registry for spatial data and services.

The lead contractor is con terra GmbH, an associate company of ESRI Geoinformatik GmbH, ESRI’s distributor for Germany. Subcontracted partners in the consortium include HNIT-BALTIC, UAB, ESRI’s distributor for Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia; ESRI’s Professional Services Division; and the Spatial Applications Division of the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.

Says Guenther Pichler, European Union business development manager for ESRI Europe, “We are excited to be part of this project consortium. Specific emphasis will be put on sustainability by providing maintainable and easy-to-administer solutions that are based on common geospatial and IT standards and compliant with the provisions of INSPIRE.”

The entire project will span 30 months including 12 months for the development of the system and 18 months of service and maintenance. A key objective is analyzing the implementation process step by step to identify any need for additional requirements or procedures and, if so, integrate them into the process.

“The INSPIRE@EC project is an important step when moving from data dissemination to data and service sharing,” says Andreas Wytzisk, project manager and senior consultant with con terra. “It is our clear objective to help Eurostat move from the current prototype environment to production, focusing on user support for the benefit of the European information community.”

About ESRI

Since 1969, ESRI has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, ESRI software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. ESRI applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world’s mapping and spatial analysis. ESRI is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at www.esri.com.


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Jim Baumann
ESRI
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