South-East European Research Centre (SEERC)

The objectives of eSDI-NET+ (Grant agreement number: ECP-2006-GEO-320005) is to target users and bring together key European Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) stakeholders through a Thematic Network- a platform for communication and knowledge exchange at all levels, from local to global.

Through the promotion of high-level decisions and technical discussion, the network will help to raise awareness of the important role SDIs play in the enrichment and reuse of GI. In addition, eSDI-NET+ will tackle the multicultural and multilingual barriers to accessing, exploiting, using and reusing GI. As a result, greater steps will be made towards interoperability through the expression of common standards between national digital collections and services, especially in cross-border contexts.

By defining and identifying examples of best practice, eSDI-NET+ will integrate expert perspectives from across Europe to create synthesised SDI guidelines and standards. Through the network's membership, the gap between local and European levels will be narrowed, helping to support the better use of GI found in pan-European initiatives such as INSPIRE, GMES and GALILEO.

By mobilising such expertise, eSDI-NET+ offers the means to catalyse new initiatives, actions and services, maximising the potential of both GI and the communities it supports.

1. Bring together SDI key players and target users in the Thematic Network established as platform for communication and exchange between stakeholders involved in creation and use of SDI's
2. Promote high-level decisions and bottom-up technical discussion, as well as information exchange
3. Help GI stakeholders realise full potential of digital GI for content providers and users and increase awareness concerning importance of GI enrichment and SDI's for GI reuse
4. Allow integrated view of experts and foster creation of integrated guide lines, standards, and implementation of best practices
5. Establish communication mechanisms between European and local levels to maximize benefits INSPIRE, GMES and GALILEO and e-government programmes in order to establish more sustainable e-communities
6. Develop solutions for multicultural and multilingual access, exploitation, use, and reuse of digitalGI content in Europe
7. Stimulate aggregation of existing national data sets of core GI into cross-border data sets