Nature-GIS Guidelines: Technical Guidelines for Spatial Data Infrastructures for Protected Areas

This book has been produced under the EU IST project Nature-GIS ((www.gisig.it/nature-gis) co-ordinated by the GISIG Association. Nature-GIS is a European Thematic Network funded by the EU Commission and aimed at demonstrating the current webGIS technology as applicable in the field of protected areas and nature preservation as well as at favouring the involvement of users and stakeholders. It pays a special attention to the European "nature" networks to which it offers expertise in the field of geo-information, individuating in this way an opportunity to exploit the mutual complementarity with those networks. These Guidelines are one of the main outputs of the project. They have been designed as a reference book with the aim to offer to the reader an overview on the technologies relevant to web-based geographic information sharing and spatial data services in the field of protected areas. The guidelines are in this way complementary to the Nature-GIS Thematic Portal (www.naturegis.net/). We hope that Nature-GIS can give a contribution towards a pan-European and disciplinary GI Community.