SDI Days 2016

8th conference dedicated to Spatial Data Infrastructure, SDI Days 2016 was held on 24th and 25th of November at the Faculty of Geodesy, University of Zagreb in joint organisation between State Geodetic Administration (SGA) and the Faculty of Geodesy. This year's conference was attended by more than 170 participants from the public, private and academic sector. SDI Days 2016 included a workshop dedicated to local NSDI promoters that was held during the first day, and the central part of the conference "8th NSDI and INSPIRE Day" held on November 25th.

Local promoters were welcomed by the deputy director of the SGA Vladimir Majetić. The workshop was attended by 19 local promoters of NSDI, which within their communities have a role of contact persons for issues related to NSDI.

This workshop presented basics themes on NSDI. It was also described the procedure on how to become NSDI subject, on maintaining NSDI Registers as well as Metadata Catalogue and an overview of network services. Local promoters had the opportunity to learn to use application NSDI Registers and the NSDI Geoportal, and its view, search and download services.

The picture shows the practical work of the participants of the workshop dedicated to local promoters, which was held in the premises of the Faculty of Geodesy.

The second day "8th NSDI and INSPIRE Day" was held, where participants were welcomed by the Head of Department for Spatial Data Infrastructure, SGA, Ljerka Marić, Dean of the Faculty of Geodeys, Damir Medak, PhD, Director of the SGA, Danko Markovinović, Ph. D. and Mr. Igor Čižmek, Assistant Minister for Physical Planning, Legal Affairs and EU Programmes at the Ministry of Construction and Physical Planning, who officially opened "8th NIPP and INSPIRE day".

The atmosphere at the opening was complemented with performance by young talents from "Elly Basic" music school with two compositions on the guitar.

At the beginning of the conference we had the opportunity to listen to two keynote speakers: Vlado Cetl, PhD from Joint Research Centre (JRC) and Tomaž Petek from Surveying and Mapping Authority of the Republic of Slovenia. Vlado Cetl in his presentation gave an overview of the current status and future activities of INSPIRE and pointed recommendations on how to overcome existing shortcomings in the implementation of INSPIRE. Tomaž Petek gave an overview of the status and activities of Surveying and Mapping Authority of Slovenia carried out in the framework of the implementation of INSPIRE in Slovenia and challenges that arise in their work.

The picture shows the grand hall of the Faculty of Geodesy during the second day of the conference when the 8th NSDI and INSPIRE day were held. More than 170 participants attended.

Afterwards, forum named "NIPP yesterday, today, tomorrow", moderated by Tomislav Ciceli, M.Sc., Head of the NSDI office in the SGA, was held.
The participants were: T. Petek, Surveying and Mapping Authority of the Republic of Slovenia, V. Cetl, Joint Research Centre of the EC, I. Čižmek, Ministry of Construction and Physical Planning, Lj. Marić, SGA, D. Šiško, City of Zagreb and T. Pušelj Ostroški, Croatian Association of Employers. During the forum participants have mentioned the status of INSPIRE in Croatia and pointed out the satisfaction with the implementation status of the directive, and the need and desire to include more institutions in the NSDI, thus improving the usage and benefits of NSDI. V. Cetl pointed out as a major goal of further development of the NSDI increasing benefits of spatial data infrastructures for NSDI subjects, while D. Sisko noted necessity to inform the public about the concept of smart cities and its connection to the SDI. Assistant Minister I. Čižmek believes that INSPIRE is complex and difficult to understand to the public, so there is a need to raise awareness on the NSDI and the spatial data infrastructure to all generations. Lj. Maric suggests the development of the national business model which would ease and accelerate implementation of the INSPIRE directive and the development of the NSDI.

The picture shows the participants of the forum entitled "NSDI yesterday, today, tomorrow" T. Petek, V. Cetl, I. Čižmek, Lj. Marić, D. Šiško and T. Pušelj Ostroški and moderator T. Ciceli.

In the following two sessions we had the opportunity to listen to 11 presentations that have covered a variety of topics related to NSDI; the status of the SDI at the local level, the review of projects of various spatial data infrastructures, ideas and realization of the project of smart cities, examples of GIS applications and presentation of open data in Geodetic Technical School, which has shown a number of student projects and their interest in use of SDI.
The interest for the conference is growing every year as an indirect indicator of recognition of the importance of problems related to the establishment and development of the SDI regardless of local, regional, national or global level. We thank all the speakers and participants who, through their involvement helped this year's NSDI to be interesting, educational and very useful, with the hope that next year we gather in even bigger number with more interesting topics and lectures on spatial data.

All presentations are available on the official NSDI website and on the webpage dedicated to the conference.