The INSPIRE 2020 Conference will take place virtually

The INSPIRE 2020 conference was to have been held between 11-14 May in Dubrovnik. However, the global pandemic in which we are immersed forced its postponement, as happened with a large number of informative, cultural or sports events.

In this situation, the organising committee has not given up, and has launched a virtual edition that will take place from June 3 to 12.

What is the event about?

The event will take place under the motto: “Bringing sustainability and digitalization together”. The idea is to debate how the transition to the digital world could help build a more sustainable Europe, but without forgetting what are the environmental, economic and social problems and risks that digitization entails.

In this process of finding a balance between sustainability and digitization, data and artificial intelligence are essential, as evidenced in the European Green Deal. More and more voices are raised in favour of the development of a specific digital ecosystem for this area, focused not only on data, infrastructure and algorithms, but also on their analysis and the implementation of ideas and applications. Specifically, the Green Deal refers to accessible and interoperable data, and its combination with digital infrastructure (supercomputers, clouds, ultrafast networks) and artificial intelligence solutions, as keys to the EU's economic strategy to emerge from the crisis linked to the Covid-19 pandemic.

During the event, innovative ways to use data and digital solutions for the implementation of policies that seek to achieve sustainable development goals will be shown, with the focus on the circular economy and the reduction of carbon levels. All this will guide future work on existing data legislation, in particular the INSPIRE Directive.

What is the INSPIRE Directive?

The INSPIRE Directive establishes a series of general rules for the creation of a Spatial Information Infrastructure in the European Union, based on the Infrastructures of the member states. Its objective is to promote the availability of quality geographic information, which serves to formulate, implement, monitor and evaluate policies in the EU. Its transposition into the Spanish legal system is developed through the so-called LISIGE law.

INSPIRE's legal roadmap is coming to an end, however the evolution of infrastructure will continue. For this process to be successful, we must ensure its sustainability in collaboration and partnership with other actors beyond the initial scope of the Directive, a process that can be driven by events such as the INSPIRE 2020 conference.

What is the Conference program?

The program scheduled for the May event had to be adapted. Organizers of special sessions and workshops have been invited to adapt their participation in the form of webinars. Although in some cases it was not possible, a large number of participants accepted the invitation. Thanks to this, an interesting program has been created, which you can see at this link. By clicking on each presentation, you can see a summary of the specific contents that will be discussed in the slot.

There will be sessions focused on statistical and geospatial data, public-private partnerships, or democratizing the use of data. The Green Deal will also be discussed, for example, the role of Smart cities in achieving sustainability objectives or the importance of building a common data space, and specific examples of work in this direction will be shown, such as the ICT4Water cluster. 

How to attend the seminars?

All seminars are free. To attend you have to register individually in each of them. It is a unique opportunity to catch up on what is happening in Europe related to the Inspire directive, and the role of open data in achieving a sustainable and digital Europe.