HUMBOLDT Scenario: Protected Areas - Harmonisation capabilities for a future ESDI

The HUMBOLDT project, started in October 2006 and supported by the European Community has the aim of implementing a Framework for harmonisation of data and services in geoinformation domain, under the INSPIRE Directive and in the context of GMES Initiative. The two-pronged approach of HUMBOLDT comprises a technical side of framework development and an application side of scenario testing and validation. As the outcomes of implemented harmonisa-tional framework grows mature, the application side of the project grows more and more promi-nent. Among the HUMBOLDT application Scenarios designed to demonstrate the capabilities of the Framework there is the one covering Protected Areas themes and use cases. Protected Areas Scenario aims to transform geoinformation, managed by park authorities, into a seamless flow that combines multiple information sources from different governance levels (European, national , re-gional) , and exploits this newly combined information for the purposes of planning, management and tourism promotion. The scenario defines a number of use cases to address and examine plan-ning and management issues, as well as tourism added value. The scenario develops the harmoni-sation process via active engagement with various stakeholders at the national and trans-national levels including national authorities and European agencies. To test and create examples of the use of the HUMBOLDT tools a Desktop and Web GIS environment together with a server environ-ment was set up and the resulting tests with two HUMBOLDT Web Processing Services have been documented.