Open Data Science Europe Workshop 2021

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.
Various geographical datasets fall under the INSPIRE Directive. For a number of these datasets (e.g. statistical units, administrative units, buildings, cadastral parcels, postal codes, transport networks, addresses and utility services) GISCO tackles or will tackle - limited by resources - the compilation of pan-European datasets.
The process starts with the identification of datasets, followed by data retrieval and compilation. Quality assessment/control together with clarifications provided by the data providers, maintenance and finally data dissemination are the next steps. During the process, various issues complicate the work, depending on the dataset and the country concerned. The talk will describe the status of selected datasets, outline some positive and negative experiences and will conclude with some lessons learned.