INSPIRE and the CAFE Directive: The Portuguese state of play
Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) is legally mandated to collect and report to Community level the required air quality information in the framework of the existing Air Quality and CAFE Directives. The Geographic Information National System (SNIG) is the Portuguese Spatial Data Infraestructure (SDI) whose purpose is to provide, from several access points, services for the search, viewing and exploration of the georgaphic information (GI) over the Portuguese territory. Other attributions are the coordination of the national GI activities, namely in the INSPIRE context. This will be certainly an essential source of data in order to incorporate data layers of relevant information considered onto concentration mapping and improving the quality of data visualization, which will be incorporated into the GIS. This joint work will be certainly effective in order to achieve the operacinalization of the actions needed under the INSPIRE
requirements.
For Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) it will be necessary a set of regulated ways for collected, storage, processing and distribution of main elements concerning the geographical information under the GIS development. One of the methods for collected alphanumeric information after of its acquisition, it would be through a specific database with a convenient data model which could be taking into account only the relevant information for air quality legislation compliance, namely the new air quality Directive (CAFE) under the INSPIRE system. So, the GIS plays an important role because of the large amount of geographical data, needed in the decision making within the national air quality assessment.
This tool with extremely importance for decision support means to get the main information in order to allow making predictions for instances on the possible exceedances to the threshold limits, evaluating the situation and giving recommendations for actions.
