PortalU®, a Tool for Building a Single Information Space in Europe (SISE) for the Environment

Abstract

The German Environmental Information Portal, PortalU®, provides one-stop access to government-owned environmental information in Germany. PortalU® gives access to more than 2,500,000 web pages and more then 500,000 data and metadata sets from different national, regional and local authorities. Organizationally PortalU® is the result of a cooperation of the federal government and the 16 German states. PortalU® is build up by the software InGrid®. The software is realized very modular. It includes several interfaces including WMS, CSW and OpenSearch. The portal has a set of viewing components for the visualization of search results, maps and metadata content. A metadata catalog, the InGrid®Catalog, is integrated in the software. Core component of this catalog is the ISOand INSPIRE compliant InGrid®Editor for collection and maintenance of metadata. A concept for the exchange and visualization of monitoring data on the basis of the OGC-defined sensor observation service (SOS) is discussed. It is planed to expand PortalU® on eReporting functionalities. From organizational as well as from technical point of view, PortalU® could be a prototype for a pan-European shared environmental information system and a first step to a Single Information Space in Europe (SISE).