EU supports the development of the Moldovan National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI)

The technological progress, which constantly occurs in the geo-spatial community worldwide, brings about the need for a permanent improvement of the infrastructure, human skills and competences, as well as work processes in the field. Therefore, the activity during April and May months 2022 within the EU-funded Twinning project “Improving spatial data services in the Republic of Moldova following EU standards” focused on discussing and understanding more deep processes of work with spatial data, as well as on promoting best practices adopted within the European and international geo-information society.

In this context, several missions were developed, aiming, mainly, at preparation of the information flows and data processing within Moldovan public entities that are spatial data producers and users, and sharing of spatial data among state institutions and third parties.

First of all, several interviews took place with a view to assess the current state-of-play as regards data production, storing and processing within several Moldovan state organisations, and Croatian and Polish experts explained the above-mentioned processes within their countries and gave the appropriate recommendations for improvement.

Secondly, expert support was provided during the ongoing development of NSDI Metadata Geoportal, which the Agency for Land Relations and Cadastre of R. Moldova (main beneficiary organisation) is currently implementing and the assistance on behalf of the Twinning experts will be ensured throughout its development.

For the topic of sharing spatial data sets and associated services, which stands for the main purpose and ultimate goal of implementing national spatial data infrastructure in the country, the Member State experts prepared two types of Technical Operational Protocols (access and exchange) for data sharing, which will be an integral part of the Multi-Agency Data Sharing Agreement. Additionally, various scenarios for data sharing rules (also called “licenses” in EU Member States) have been developed and shared with ALRC colleagues. Next steps are for ALRC to identify the best data sharing rules, which would be most appropriate for each spatial data set and service under their responsibility, as well as to encourage all other NSDI stakeholders in R. Moldova to apply this practice of licensing for their own spatial resources.