Buildings related datasets accessible through the INSPIRE geoportal : European Union Location Framework (EULF) project energy pilot

The European Union is giving more and more emphasis to its energy policy, whose strategy and actions are included in the Energy Union Package and the 2030 Framework for Climate and Energy. Buildings in which people live and work are responsible for an important portion of the energy consumption in Europe and there are a series of policies and initiatives that are aiming at improving their energy performances and to collect data of sufficient quality on the effect of energy efficiency policies on building stock across Europe. A related initiative is the EC INSPIRE Directive establishing an Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community [1], addressing a number of data themes, including buildings. This report aims to assess the extent to which the buildings-related datasets which European Member States are sharing following INSPIRE provisions are of good quality and can serve the purposes of the initiatives related to energy efficiency of buildings. A step by step methodology has been applied and documented to guide the reader through the discovery of building-related datasets in the INSPIRE geoportal, focusing primarily on datasets usability in a GIS environment. A first finding is the high number of building related datasets discovered through the INSPIRE Geoportal, which confirms its importance as a source of data for energy efficiency initiatives. Given the several hundreds of datasets discovered, a sampling mechanism to select a small number of datasets to be further inspected has been adopted. Following a more detailed analysis, in particular on datasets that can be downloaded from the Geoportal, we can conclude that some of them are of good quality, in terms of data accuracy and national geographic coverage, while for others these criteria are not fulfilled. This can be related to the fact that the INSPIRE roadmap foresees the full implementation of the Directive in Member States by 2020, so there is the need to wait that date to exploit the full potential which we are starting to see in countries that are already advanced in the implementation for historic and cultural reasons. Moreover, this work has been useful also to identify some recommendations to INSPIRE implementers working in energy thematic communities, in order to better address their efforts in fulfilling on-going and future INSPIRE obligations.