Functional and Technical Requirements for a Regional Environmental Information System

Abstract

In the last decade public authorities have invested large amounts of money and time in metadata management projects in order to provide public access to environmental data held by them. Directive 2003/4/EC on public access to environmental information has enforced these activities. But most of the projects are initiated at a national or state level and are restricted to environmental data held by authorities at these levels. But Directive 2003/4/EC is also of importance for public authorities at a regional or local level. Therefore in this paper we discuss some central issues concerning the dissemination of environmental information at regional and local levels by means of Web-based information systems.