Frequently Asked Questions

About Geodata

About the Geoportal


What are geodata?

As Geodata we can define every dataset that has a spatial aspect or component. Synonyms are "spatial data", "geographic data", "geographic data sets" or "GIS data". The syllable "Geo" implies that the dataset has a spatial component that allows to georeference the described phenomena to a location or region on the earth.


What are open geodata?

The idea of open data, and thus of open geodata, is that they should be freely accessible to the public in the sense of at no cost and without any restriction linked to patent or copyright. The following definition can be found on opendefinition.org:

A piece of data or content is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it — subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and/or share-alike


What is the political situation in Romania in regards to open (geo)data?

Thanks to its accession to the European Union in 2007, Romania has to implement EU initiatives like the Directive for an Infrastructure for Spatial InfoRmation in Europe (INSPIRE). Its purpose is the harmonization of geodata provided by the administrations of the member states. Furthermore it demands the implementation of a standardized interface for simplified exchange of geodata across borders. In Romania, INSPIRE started with the constitution of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure Council (INIS) based on a Government Ordinance in 2010. The INIS Council is responsible for the coordination and implementation of the INSPIRE Directive in Romania. The Romanian Government also signed the Open Governemnt Partnership in 2011 and launched an open data portal that include open data with a spatial component.

For more information about the legal and political situation, as well as the actual conditions, regarding open geodata in Romania, please visit the project website, and more specifically the Results page.


What are the sources of the geodata used by the Geoportal?

The two base maps Black and White and OpenStreetMap are directly used from the non-profit organization OpenStreetMap. Inspired by the success of Wikipedia, this collaborative project wants to create a free editable map of the world, independent of restrictions or availability. Additionally, there is a shaded relief background that the IKG derived from the GDLSDEM data.

The three layers covering the touristic area of Dobrogea along the Black Sea coast offer information about lakes and rivers, transport infrastructure and touristic information. These maps and data were produced and released under an open licence for touristic purposes by the University of Bucharest, Faculty of Geography.

The OSM4RO layer(OpenSteetMap for Romania) uses the OpenStreetMaps data and a similar symbolization and shows elements of landuse, transport and nature.

OSM4RO amenity layer extends the content by showing objects like points of interest, restaurants, bars, car parks or hospitals. Elements of transport like railway stations or bus stops are displayed in the layer OSM4RO extra.

The population density in 2012 are provided by the project “Despre Sate”, that offers statistical data regarding the administration, the economy, the demography and historical monuments for all Romanian localities.

The maps Municipality Mayor 2012 and Country Council President 2012 were developed using data from the following sources: The Central Bureau of Elections,The National Institute of Statistics,The National Agency for Cadastre and Land Registration, and http://www.ancpi.ro/dwf/INDEX_1_2.dwf and derivative works of the above. All the information and works in the current website are available in the public domain or are licenced via Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (as applicable). The source code of the application is licenced under GPLv3. All data and code source are available for download on the webpage www.politicalcolours.ro for personal use.

Additionally, we integrated one layers of data from the data.gov.ro open portal of the Romanian goverment. This example uses the number of livestock heads per square kilometer per județe.


How does the Geodata Viewer work?

We employ a three-tier architecture for our application: a database (the data tier), services (the logic tier) and the graphical user interface (the presentation tier). The PostgreSQL/PostGIS database stores the geodata that are access by a QGIS Server with a Web Map Service (WMS). The WMS generates the data visualization and sends the visualization, or map, to the graphical user interface (GUI) in an image format. The GUI is based on a simple use of the basic functionality of the Spark framework and the Leaflet library for the map delivery.


How can I download the geodata on the geoportal?

This is only an alpha version and the download tools are not available yet. However, in a further version, you will get the possibility to download geodata either by using a dataframe to define an area or by selecting a whole map layer. At the moment, you only can view geodata in The Geoportal Lite. For downloading data , you can visit the Geoportal Pro at Geoidea.ro - The Geoportal.

Contact

Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation (IKG) at ETH Zürich

Director: Prof. Dr. Lorenz Hurni

E-mail: lhurni@ethz.ch

Contact person: Nadia Panchaud

E-mail: geoidea@ethz.ch

Phone: +41 44 633 30 37

Address: ETH Zurich, Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation, Stefano-Franscini-Platz 5, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland

Groundwater Engineering Center (CCIAS) at UCTB, bucharest, Romania

Director: Constantin Radu Gogu

E-mail: radu.gogu@utcb.ro

Contact person: Dragos Gaitanaru

E-mail: dragos.gaitanaru@utcb.ro

Phone: +40 746 961 119

Address: Colentina Laboratories, Faculty of Hydrotechnics, Technical University of Civil Engineering, Str. Rascoalei 1907 nr. 5, Bucharest, Sector 2, Romania