A survey of the Geoinformatics use for census purposes and the INSPIRE maturity within Statistical Institutes of EU and EFTA countries

Abstract

In 2007, the European Parliament established the Directive 2007/2/EC for the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE). The goal of this Directive was to implement specific technical rules for the interoperability and harmonization of spatial data-sets and services based on the Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) of each Member State. This article describes the results of a survey for the use of Geoinformatics and the maturity level of the INSPIRE Directive within Member States and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries. The survey contacted between March 2017 and December 2017. An online survey was sent through mail to the Geographic Information System (GIS) technical staff of the Statistical Institutes (SI) of the EU and EFTA countries. In total, 17 EU countries and 2 EFTA countries responded to the invitation for the survey. The analysis of the responses in this questionnaire demonstrated that the state of implementation of INSPIRE still displays dissimilar levels of maturity across the SIs, while the degree of using geospatial technologies differs from service to service.