Implikacje dyrektywy INSPIRE

Taking into consideration present development trends the European Commission has taken actions during the last few years aimed at creating Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE). The legislative process concerning the directive on establishing INSPIRE has already been well advanced (Linsenbarth, 2005). In this paper, implications of this directive are presented from the point of view of Poland as one of the Member States. The principal objective of INSPIRE is to ensure general access to spatial data and spatial data services to the extent necessary for broadly understood environment protection and other actions directly or indirectly related to the environment. Therefore, INSPIRE may and should be considered in the context of sustainable development, knowledge-based economy, information society and security of the state and its citizens. The INSPIRE Directive will have positive impact in Poland on development of spatial information systems and infrastructures, and in particular it will: m stimulate and support implementation of infrastructures for spatial information at national, regional and local level, m ensure accessibility to necessary implementation guidelines and standards, m promote technical, semantic and organisational interoperability, m expand the market for geoinformation data, products and services. The essence of the INSPIRE Directive is an obligation of each of the Member States to timely build national infrastructure for spatial information corresponding to the Community guidelines, but to create it in a given state in such a way that it is adapted to resources available and conditions existing. INSPIRE will be a European infrastructure composed of cooperating national infrastructures. The need for cooperation, or interoperability, is obviously of utmost importance and it finds its expression in the content of the Directive. The INSPIRE work programmes discussed in this paper, show an urgent need for establishing a corresponding Polish work programme. A positive basis for such a program may provide feasibility study of the project Basis of Polish Infrastructure for Spatial Information (Ga.dzicki, Baranowski, 2004) executed for the Head Office of Geodesy and Cartography. It is important to take into consideration the fact that the INSPIRE Directive is focused on relations between the authorities of the European Union and Member States and it does not deal in detail with organizational and technological solutions for infrastructures in these countries. It is in the interest of Poland, therefore, to design and implement the Spatial Information Infrastructure in Poland in such a way that, while being a component of INSPIRE, it would satisfy the needs of Polish users of all kind.