The Goal of INSPIRE

The Directive creates the conditions for certain kinds of spatial information to be collected, stored, manipulated and made available for wide public use in a more standardised computer-based environment. 

When fully implemented it will enable data from one Member State to be seamlessly combined with data from all other States.

The Directive will ensure that it is relatively easy to find the spatial information data and that there are a variety of ways in which the data can be used. These range from “viewing” (e.g. when an image of all the railway lines and stations across Europe is brought onto a computer screen), “downloading” (taking data from wherever it is held into one's own computer) and “transforming” which allows greater compatibility between data from different sources.

In order to develop and make the relevant data and network services available, the Directive has had to deal with a number of related issues, such as making possible the charging of a fee for data and/or services, and safeguarding privacy and intellectual property rights, etc.