Urban Environment Quality in the Italian Spatial Data Infrastructure

Environmental Information And Inspire Directive

The 1972 Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, emphasizes the need of “acceptance of responsibility by citizens and communities and by enterprises and institutions at every level” in order to pursue environmental sustainability (United Nations, 1972).

In 1992 the United Nations formulated in principle 10 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development the citizens' right to participate in the choices of the public authorities in environmental matters at all stages of decision-making, also declaring that “each individual shall have appropriate access to information concerning the environment that is held by public authorities” (United Nations, 1992).

Subsequently, the “Convention on access to information, public participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters” (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, 1998), also known as Aarhus Convention, affirmed that:

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  Public administration “shall ensure that environmental information progressively becomes available in electronic databases which are easily accessible to the public through public telecommunications networks” (Article 5 paragraph 3);

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  Public administration “shall make appropriate practical and/or other provisions for the public to participate during the preparation of plans and programmes relating to the environment, within a transparent and fair framework, having provided the necessary information to the public” (Article 7).

The Aarhus Convention was ratified in Italy with L.108/2001, while the European Union implemented the Convention by adopting the specific Directives 2003/4/EC and 2003/35/EC.

During the last few years many studies attested that spatial information and web-based gis (WebGis) can play a major role in promoting participatory planning by disseminating environmental data (Culshaw et al., 2006; Simão et al., 2009). In this context the Directive 2007/2/EC establishes an Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community, also known as INSPIRE, “for the purposes of Community environmental policies and policies or activities which may have an impact on the environment” (Council Directive 2007/2/EC).