On the 12th of August, the nearly complete project team of GeoConnectGR gathered in Saarlouis, at the main branch office of the LVGL, the National Mapping and Cadastral Agency of Saarland, one of the seven project partners.

The meeting was planned in August – this unusual Summer period – with the aim to secure a swift development of this B-Solutions project.

During this meeting, the whole scheme of the project was carefully monitored by the participants and the draft convention, formalizing the cooperation within the consortium during and after the project termination was finalized.

The production process of the homogeneous hydrographic data layer is now in the hands of EuroGeographics aisbl and its sub-contractor, BKG (Bundesamt für Kartographie und Geodäsie, of the Federal Republic of Germany). The data layer produced following the Core Reference Data structure (CRD) developed by EuroGeographics, should be completed shortly and will then be delivered to the GIS-GR partner of the GeoConnectGR consortium, for evaluation. Since the original national hydrographic data were sent to BKG in diverse states of harmonization – from manually and totally harmonized to not harmonized at all – the outcome will offer an ideal occasion to compare the strength of the semi-automatic harmonization processes as developed by EuroGeographics. All the project partners are very keen to see the results soon.

The draft convention is now ready to be sent to the Directorates of the project partners, for final approval. The meeting in Saarlouis allowed to improve the first proposal prepared by the Franco (IGN-France) - German (LVermGeo – Rhineland-Pfalz) drafting team, by integrating the remarks from the Belgian IGN. It is clear now that the GIS-GR partner, represented by the Ministry of Energy and Landmanagement of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, will be in charge of the publication of the Unified Hydrographic Data Layer of the Grande Région, not only within the GIS-GR but also as a visualization and download service. The data will be available for non-commercial use, as a Creative Common, Non-Commercial Dataset, requiring that its users mention the source (CC By NC).

The project is clearly limited in time, since many problems due to different national types of licensing will remain unsolved after the project termination. However, via the convention, the project partners express their willingness to evaluate the feasibility of an extension of GeoConnectGR in updates and themes. Even the geographical extent of the project could be reconsidered, since the Lander of North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Wurttemberg could join, as they did in the past for other projects. The whole project could also be used as a benchmark for the rest of the EU.

At the very end of the meeting, there was a teambuilding activity with a visit to the Saarpolygon, memorial to the coalmining past of the region, part of the symbolic cradle of our Union (cfr. ECSC or European Coal and Steal Community).

Report made by Jean-Yves Pirlot, president of the working group Cadastre and Cartography