The Administrative Boundary Data Service in the CEE Countries - Initiative
In preparation of the 2nd Forum between the European Commission and the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) on the Information Society in Prague, September 1996, the Hungarian National Committee for Technological Development (OMFB) has proposed to formulate a GIS initiative for the region. To underline the importance of the Geographical Information some continental, regional, national and local GIS was shown with success during the Forum as part of the Information Technology Presentations. The Forum has adopted this initiative named EGIS with the number 19 in the action plan: see http://www.ispo.cec.be/peco/peco0002.html on the Internet.
After the Forum OMFB began to start a definition phase of this initiative: discussions with colleagues from Poland, Czech Republic, Slovenia, with representatives of the National Mapping Institutions from the EU member states, from the CERCO/MEGRIN, EUROGI, EUROSTAT and different DG's of the European Commission were initiated. The original idea was refined into the Administrative Boundary Data Services (ABDS) for the CEEC. The ABDS should be an extension of the SABE dataset of CERCO/MEGRIN to the region as a new digital on-line service. The ABD coming from large scale mapping databases - conforming to new geometric and thematic generalisation rules to be set up by the competent organisations - and provided in the frame of the Memorandum of Understanding to be elaborated will be the core of the initiative. ABDS will be un important activity embedded in the European Commission's initiative to establish the Information Society in the European Union and the CEEC. It is part of the more general European Spatial Data Infrastructure as documented in the European Commission's GI2000 initiative. This Spatial Data Infrastructure will inevitably include the CEEC, and this more general frame is prepared simoultaneously to ABDS.
Since the beginning of the Information Society initiatives, OMFB has been involved, and has received a mandate from the Europen Commission to continue the preparation and definition of activities in relation to the Spatial Data Infrastructure, based on their experience in project funding and management in digital large scale and topogrophic mapping, in GPS-application, image processing and Municipality Information Systems. Further steps are taken in order to involve all relevant organisations from all CEEC countries, and so establish the necessary co-operation with all these partners. The Hungarian surveying and mapping community supports this OMFB's initiative, which was discussed recently in Budapest with the active participation - among others - of the EC DG III, DGXIII, DGXVI and EUROSTAT, as well as by the CERCO, EUROGI, CEN TC 287 and MEGRIN GIE on 14th March 1997.
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