The INSPIRE Conference is joining forces with the Geospatial World Forum Conference to host a joint INSPIRE-GWF Conference in Lisbon, Portugal on the 25-29 May 2015

Background:

Global and EU policies need better information. They call for smart, innovative and sustainable solutions to more efficiently use our resources, for protecting our environment and for dealing with risks and pressures such as those resulting from climate change.

Geospatial technologies are used increasingly to monitor the environment, for guiding policies and for the 'smart' implementation of plans and programmes based on the best geospatial knowledge available.  They are used by public authorities for implementing more efficient government services and industries in a wide range of economic sectors. But they are also part of everyday decision making, varying from routines like navigating to work, to spatial planning or dealing with emergencies, from saving lives to saving money. This has placed the geospatial technology sector in the top ten of the most rapidly growing employment sectors worldwide.

Spatial Data Infrastructures, such as those resulting from the implementation of the INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community) directive and many actions under the Digital Single Market, provide the framework for data policies and access and interoperability arrangements which together enable the combined use of geospatial data and all other kinds of data and information linked to location.
 
For that reason, the European Commission - Directorate General for Environment and its INSPIRE partners in the Joint Research Centre and the European Environment Agency are joining forces with the Geospatial World Forum Conference and the Portuguese authorities responsible for the development of their spatial information infrastructures.
 
The 2015 INSPIRE-Geospatial World Forum Conference will focus on the convergence of policies, geospatial technologies and practices.
 
It will bring together policy and industry leaders with practitioners and clients of geospatial technologies and INSPIRE.
 
It will provide a forum for interaction, for building public-private-partnerships, between those having the need for information in a wide variety of policy areas and economic sectors (environment, transport, energy, water utility management, agriculture etc.) and those capable for delivering and managing it through geospatial technologies and spatial data infrastructures such as INSPIRE.