08-25, 09:30–10:00 (Europe/Rome), Auditorium
GISCO, the ‘Geographical Information System of the COmmission’, is a permanent service of Eurostat that fulfils the requirements of both Eurostat and the European Commission for geographic information and related services at European Union (EU), Member State and regional levels. These services are also provided to European citizens at large. GISCO’s goal is to promote and stimulate the use of geographic information within the European Statistical System and the European Commission.
One of the main lessons learned over the last years is not only to provide ‘conventional’ GIS datasets, but add a variety of distribution channels like Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Linked Open Data (LOD) plus Human Friendly Interfaces on top. API’s for example simplify software development and innovation by enabling applications to exchange data and functionality easily and securely into a digital ecosystem. Additionally, the implementation of API’s contributes to: a) an open government approach to modernise public administration b) a modernised use of the European Interoperability framework or c) the application of the Once Only Principle. The talk will describe some of GISCOs API’s supporting European Institutions in their daily work as well as the public. For that, we are using FOSS tools in production environments. Besides, GISCO team members develop or contribute to a wide variety of software tools (e.g. eurostat-map.js, gridviz, IMAGE tool, diff and generalization tool) which will be presented for further use by the FOSS4G community.
Hannes is a geoecologist with a PhD in soil science. He is specialised in spatial research projects for natural resource management from global, continental, to local scales. Before joining the European Commission Hannes has worked in national and inter-national, multi-disciplinary research institutes such as at the World Data Center for Soils at ISRIC World Soil Information (ISRIC), the European Commissions Joint Research Centre (JRC), the Leibniz Centre for Agriculture Landscape Research (ZALF) and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). One of Hannes focal points is transforming valuable tacit knowledge into statistical, uncertainty-related information, which can be used to run multi-scale decision making models for sound policy decision making. In the EC he works in the GISCO team (GIS COordination) and tries to bridge technical feasibilities and functional requirements serving a wide community of EC colleagues.