Section outline

  • INSPIRE stands for “Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe”. The European INSPIRE legislation requires public sector institutions in the member states to provide access to spatial data via so-called view services and download services. INSPIRE also provides technical recommendations on how these services can be implemented on the basis of international standards such as classic OGC Web Map Services (WMS) and OGC Web Feature Services (WFS) or the newer OGC API type of services.

    In this technical tutorial, we will explore how to work with INSPIRE view and download services. Learning objectives are:

    • Understanding the characteristics of INSPIRE view and download services.
    • Gaining practical experience in working with these resources

    Content Structure

    The tutorial is structured as follows:

    • Background
      • INSPIRE in a nutshell
      • INSPIRE data themes
      • INSPIRE view services
      • INSPIRE download services
    • Practical example on working with INSPIRE view and download services
      • Finding data on protected sites
      • Creating a map of protected sites using INSPIRE view services
      • Accessing data on protected sites using INSPIRE download services
    • Discussion
    • Check your knowlegde

    Target Audience and Prerequisites

    This tutorial is designed for students and professionals who want to improve their understanding of Spatial Information Infrastructures. We assume that you have some basic knowledge about spatial data, QGIS and Python. In this case you will need about 90 minutes to use this tutorial.

    How to use the OER Module

    Simply download the PDF document “OER-Inspire View and Download Services”, read the content and complete the tasks included. 

    Authors and Funding

    This Tutorial has been developed in the context of the OER4SDi project at the Institute for Geoinformatics, University of Münster. Authors are Hamidreza Behbood and Albert Remke.

    The OER4SDI project has been recommended by the Digital University NRW and is funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science NRW.

    License Statement

    You are free to use, alter and reproduce this open educational resource (OER) under the terms of the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license, unless explicitly stated otherwise for specific parts of the content.

    The tutorial can be referenced as follows: “OER-INSPIREViewAndDownloadServices”, OER4SDI project /  University Münster, CC BY-SA 4.0.

    All logos used are generally excluded.

    Any code provided with the tutorial can be used under the terms of the MIT license. Please see the full license terms.