The European geoportal--one step towards the establishment of a European Spatial Data Infrastructure

This paper presents some of the work associated with the establishment of an ESDI, and the requirements for the EU Geoportal. The prototype version of the EU Geoportal demonstrates the feasibility to link distributed geographic information services but at the same time reveals a number of challenges that need to be considered in the path towards interoperability. The current obstacles related to technological interoperability issues are discussed in detail and proposals are made for the next steps to be taken to speed up the implementation of the ESDI.