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The role of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) to integrate, update or complement authoritative datasets released by governments has become increasingly important. This work analyses the contribution of OpenStreetMap (OSM), the most popular VGI project, as one of the input sources that the Military Geographic Institute (IGM), one of the Italian governmental mapping agencies, has used for producing the National Summary Database (DBSN). This database, which was recently released for 12 out of the 20 Italian regions, has a schema organised into a hierarchical structure composed of 10 layers, 30 themes and 93 classes, where each geospatial object carries information on the specific data source it was derived from. For each DBSN layer and theme, we first calculated the fraction of objects derived from OSM in all the Italian regions and related provinces. We found a heterogeneous picture with OSM contribution generally being limited, with the exception of few regions and layers/themes where the DBSN was almost exclusively derived from OSM. An in-depth comparison between the DBSN and OSM building datasets showed that OSM building completeness is varying across Italian regions and provinces, but in all regions there are buildings in OSM that are not included in the DBSN. The work shed light on the opportunities and obstacles for OSM to become a primary input source for the production of governmental datasets.

Presentazione del 16 giugno 2023 alla conferenza GEOdaysIT 2023, svoltasi a Bari dal 12 al 17 giugno 2023. La raccolta, la cura e la pubblicazione di informazioni territoriali è stata per secoli prerogativa esclusiva delle organizzazioni del settore pubblico. Tuttavia, più recentemente sono emerse nuove fonti dati (ad esempio dal settore privato e generati dai cittadini) che mettono sempre più in discussione il ruolo del settore pubblico come figura predominante nella produzione cartografica. In risposta a ciò, gli enti cartografici governativi stanno progressivamente esplorando nuove modalità di gestione, creazione e aggiornamento dei loro set di dati territoriali. Un numero via via crescente di iniziative del settore privato (su tutti Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon e la recente Overture Maps Foundation) producono dataset di grande rilevanza al fine di migliorare la copertura delle informazioni territoriali governative esistenti attraverso il rilascio di dati aperti generati e fortemente dipendenti da OpenStreetMap (OSM). Recentemente, l'Istituto Geografico Militare (IGM, uno degli enti cartografici governativi in Italia) ha rilasciato un dataset multistrato, chiamato "Database di Sintesi Nazionale" (DBSN, https://www.igmi.org/en/dbsn-database-di-sintesi-nazionale), che ha lo scopo di includere informazioni territoriali rilevanti per l'analisi e la rappresentazione a livello nazionale per ricavare mappe alla scala 1:25.000 attraverso procedure automatiche. La creazione del DBSN si basa su diverse fonti informative, con i dati geotopografici regionali come fonte primaria di informazioni e i prodotti di altri enti pubblici nazionali (ad esempio le mappe catastali) come fonti aggiuntive. Tra le fonti esterne utilizzate in input per il lavoro di integrazione nel DBSN, OSM è stato esplicitamente considerato e utilizzato. Attualmente, il DBSN include dati che coprono 12 delle 20 regioni italiane (Abruzzo, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Lazio, Marche, Molise, Puglia, Sardegna, Sicilia, Toscana, Umbria). I dati per le regioni restanti saranno rilasciati nei prossimi mesi. Uno degli elementi di novità, almeno nel contesto italiano, è il rilascio del DBSN sotto licenza Open Database License (ODbL, https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl), dovuto al fatto che l'inclusione dei dati OSM richiede che i prodotti derivati siano rilasciati con la stessa licenza. Lo schema DBSN, che è un sottoinsieme delle specifiche definite nel “Catalogo dei dati territoriali - Specifiche di Contenuto per i DB Geotopografici” (Decreto 10 novembre 2011) e che è composto da 10 layer, 29 temi e 91 classi, è stato confrontato con le specifiche di OpenStreetMap, selezionando due temi principali (edifici e strade), analizzati attraverso una serie di script Python disponibili con licenza aperta https://github.com/napo/dbsnosmcompare. In primo luogo, è stata analizzata la percentuale di edifici e strade nel database IGM in cui OSM è stato utilizzato come fonte primaria di informazioni. La percentuale di edifici derivati da OSM è minima, con valori

Digital transformation is at core of Europe’s future and the importance of data is well highlighted by the recently published European strategy for data, which envisions the establishment of so-called European data spaces enabling seamless data flows across actors and sectors to ultimately boost the economy and generate innovation. Integrating datasets produced by multiple actors, including citizen-generated data, is a key objective of the strategy. This study focuses on OpenStreetMap (OSM), the most popular crowdsourced geographic information project, and is the first step towards an exploration of pros and cons of integrating its open-licensed data with authoritative geospatial datasets from European National Mapping Agencies. In contrast to previous work, which has only tested data integration at the local or regional level, an experiment was presented to integrate the national address dataset published by the National Land Survey (NLS) of Finland with the corresponding dataset from OSM. The process included the analysis of the two datasets, a mapping between their data models and a set of processing steps – performed using the open source QGIS software – to transform and finally combine their content. The resulting dataset confirms that, while addresses from the NLS are in general more complete across Finland, in some areas OSM addresses provide a higher detail and more up-to-date information to usefully complement the authoritative one. Whilst the analysis confirms that an integration between OSM and authoritative geospatial datasets is technically and semantically feasible, future work is needed to evaluate enablers and barriers that also exist at the legal and organisational level.

The concept of roughness is fundamental for the investigation of a wide variety of earth surface processes as every process acting over a surface either encounters or generates rough surfaces (Smith, 2014). Acknowledging the crucial role that roughness has across Earth sciences and recognizing the past and ongoing efforts carried out in roughness formulation, quantification and scaling properties, the present work wants to tackle a very specific roughness usage in geomorphometric investigations. In recent years the geomorphological community has indeed (re-)discovered the hydrological and sediment (dis-) connectivity paradigm as a valuable approach to better characterize sediment dynamics and effective sediment contributing area. This rediscovery is also being favored by quantitative methods and available software tools to carry out connectivity assessment considering diverse approaches such as DTM-based indices or graph description of sediment routes. For our purpose, we take here as an example an index of connectivity (Cavalli et al. 2013) as it represents a parsimonious approach (only requiring a DTM) and due to its numerous applications in contrasting physiographic contexts. In the above-mentioned index, surface roughness enters as a weighting factor to represent impedance to the fluxes and is computed as a detrended surface variability by deriving the standard deviation of residual topography over a desired window size. The convenience of having easy-to-use software tools for computing such an index might represent a tempting easy path to carry out connectivity assessment with the risk of avoiding a robust reasoning on the most appropriate moving window and cell size for our specific application. We show how the tested roughness index changes its hydraulic significance in relation to the scale of analysis, in terms of DTM resolution and window size. In a complex topographical setting, at fine resolution the index can be reasonably interpreted as a proxy of flow impedance; however, at larger scales, it provides information on long-range morphologies, therefore becoming a proxy of topographic gradient more than flow impedance. This behavior, apart from being expected, should trigger an alert especially when carrying out geomorphometric analyses such as the one herein reported. In fact, as we increase the cell size, we drift towards a metric that represents a proxy of slope and this in turn is actually favoring the flow, thus conceptually misusing the original formulation and introducing the opposite information in respect to the one intended.Through such an example we would like to raise awareness over a known scale-related issues when using roughness metrics and to elicit some discussion on the topic for more robust approaches in geomorphometry. The mere availability of a DTM in fact should never be regarded as a green light for proceeding with processing techniques without a profound thinking on the most appropriate analyses. References:Cavalli, M., Trevisani, S., Comiti, F., Marchi, L., 2013. Geomorphometric assessment of spatial sediment connectivity in small Alpine catchments. Geomorphology, doi: 10.1016/j.geomorph.2012.05.007 Smith, Mark W. (2014). Roughness in the Earth Sciences, Earth Science Reviews, doi: 10.1016/j.earscirev.2014.05.016

Europe’s digital transformation of the economy and society is one of the priorities of the current Commission and is framed by the European strategy for data. This strategy aims at creating a single market for data through the establishment of a common European data space, based in turn on domain-specific data spaces in strategic sectors such as environment, agriculture, industry, health and transportation. Acknowledging the key role that emerging technologies and innovative approaches for data sharing and use can play to make European data spaces a reality, this document presents a set of experiments that explore emerging technologies and tools for data-driven innovation, and also deepen in the socio-technical factors and forces that occur in data-driven innovation. Experimental results shed some light in terms of lessons learned and practical recommendations towards the establishment of European data spaces.

Gathering systematic information on the effects of extreme weather events (e.g., floods, landslides and debris flows, windthrows) is a fundamental prerequisite to establishing rapid-response strategies and putting into practice management policies. However, the collection of field data requires significant economic and human efforts by local authorities. Furthermore, events occurring in remote areas are rarely detected and mapped accurately as they have a low chance of intersecting human infrastructures. These missed detections lead to incorrect assumptions in relation to both the extreme events’ spatial distribution and, especially, the real occurrence probability. This work proposes a framework for obtaining the automatic identification of severe weather events that may have caused important erosion processes or vegetation damage, combined with a rapid preliminary change detection mapping over the identified areas. The proposed approach leverages the free availability of both high-resolution global scale radar rainfall products and Sentinel-2 multi-spectral images to identify the areas to be analyzed and to carry out change detection algorithms, respectively. Radar rainfall data are analyzed and the areas where high-intensity rainfall and/or very important cumulative precipitation has occurred, are used as a mask for restricting the subsequent analysis, which, in turn, is based on a multi-spectral change detection algorithm. The whole procedure feeds a geodatabase (storing identified events, retrieved data and computed changes) for proper data management and subsequent analyses. The testing phase of the proposed methodology has provided encouraging results: applications to selected mountain catchments hit by intense events in northeastern Italy were capable of recognizing flooded areas, debris-flow and shallow landslide activations, and windthrows. The described approach can serve as a preliminary step toward detailed post-event surveys, but also as a preliminary “quick and dirty” mapping framework for local authorities especially when resources for ad hoc field surveys are not available, or in the case of an event that triggers changes in remote areas. Such a systematic potential change identification can help for a more homogeneous and systematic detection and census of the events and their effects. The workflow herein presented is intended as a starting point on top of which more modules can be added (e.g., radar climatology, SAR change detection for near real-time, other severe sources such as lightning, earthquakes or wildfires, machine learning algorithms for image classification, land use and morphological filtering of the results). Future improvements of the described procedure could be finally devised for allowing a continuous operational activity and for maintaining an open-source software implementation.

This document presents the mission and strategy of the Italian Competence Centre on Open Science, FAIR, and EOSC. The Competence Centre is an initiative born within the Italian Computing and Data Infrastructure (ICDI), a forum created by representatives of major Italian Research Infrastructures and e-Infrastructures, with the aim of promoting sinergies at the national level, and optimising the Italian participation to European and global challenges in this field, including the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), the European Data Infrastructure (EDI) and HPC. This working paper depicts the mission and objectives of the ICDI Competence Centre, a network of experts with various skills and competences that are supporting the national stakeholders on topics related to Open Science, FAIR principles application and participation to the EOSC. The different actors and roles are described in the document as well as the activities and services offered, and the added value each stakeholder can find the in Competence Centre. The tools and services provided, in particular the concept for the portal, though which the Centre will connect to the national landscape and users, are also presented. This record is the english translation of the original Italian (2021). Competence Centre ICDI per Open Science, FAIR, ed EOSC - Mission, Strategia e piano d'azione. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5071055, This record is the english translation of the original Italian (2021). Competence Centre ICDI per Open Science, FAIR, ed EOSC - Mission, Strategia e piano d'azione. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5071055

This document presents the mission and strategy of the Italian Competence Centre on Open Science, FAIR, and EOSC. The Competence Centre is an initiative born within the Italian Computing and Data Infrastructure (ICDI), a forumcreated by representatives of major Italian Research Infrastructures and e-Infrastructures, with the aim of promoting sinergies at the national level, and optimising the Italian participation to European and global challenges in this field, including the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), the European Data Infrastructure (EDI) andHPC. This working paper depicts the mission and objectives of the ICDI Competence Centre, a network of experts with various skills and competences that are supporting the national stakeholders on topics related to Open Science, FAIR principles application and participation to the EOSC. The different actors and roles are described in the document as well as the activities and services offered, and the added value each stakeholder can find the in Competence Centre. The tools and services provided, in particular the concept for the portal, though which the Centre will connect to the national landscape and users, are also presented. An english translation of this document is provided in Zenodo:Lazzeri, Emma, et all. (2021). ICDI Competence Centre for Open Science, FAIR and EOSC - Mission, Strategy and Action Plan. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5512638&nbsp

ECOSS Tools aims at providing interactive applications to respond to the needs of the sites involved in the ECOlogical observing system in the Adriatic Sea (ECOAdS) for the conservation strategies of the Natura 2000 sites and the contribution to the main EU directives. The ECOSS Tools provide graphical representations of monitoring activities at the sites, leveraging the information collected by the ECOSS project by means of their integration with other information sources already available on the internet., ECOSS project (Observing System in the Adriatic Sea: oceanographic observations for biodiversity) is an EU 2014���2020 Interreg V-A Italy-Croatia CBC programme ID number 10042301

This document provides references and links to the online implementation of the ECOAdS Data Portal, an overview of the software architecture and a brief description of the main data portal components. Finally, the last section provides references and links to the online repository where developed software has been released under an open source license., ECOSS project (Observing System in the Adriatic Sea: oceanographic observations for biodiversity) is an EU 2014���2020 Interreg V-A Italy-Croatia CBC programme ID number 10042301

Aquaculture is the fastest growing food production industry in the world yet research and guidance demonstrating strategic multi-objective zoning for sector expansion is scarce. Quantifying and mitigating conflicts and impact on sensitive coastal environments through jointly-optimized objectives for aquaculture and biodiversity simultaneously has not been tested yet. We here develop and evaluate six alternative planning scenarios for one of the European Union’s highest priority mussel aquaculture areas, the Emilia-Romagna Region in Italy. We i) develop an aquaculture profitability surface as a function of the distance from main ports, and in parallel build a fine-scale aquaculture suitability distribution surface for important commercial species using multi-criteria analysis; ii) prioritize protected areas for biodiversity while testing how different considerations of human impacts influence priorities; iii) simultaneously plan for aquaculture and biodiversity while minimizing impacts on other maritime activities. We compare results from different scenarios according to how well they capture suitable aquaculture habitats and minimize impacts. We introduce a new evaluation method for scenario comparison in spatial optimization using a nearest-neighbour analysis for spatial pattern similarities. Lastly, we test the “value of information” provided by our investment in developing the fine-scale suitability surface to improve efficiencies. We find that an integrated multi-objective zoning approach, which simultaneously optimizes for biodiversity and aquaculture, supports more efficient planning than traditional sector specific growth strategies. We also discovered that the fine-scale suitability model delivered an 8% more efficient solution than the simple distance function, highlighting the role of proxy surfaces and diminished returns from investing in comprehensive habitat suitability analysis in regions without much variation in key parameters. We offer evidence of improved efficiency and practical guidance for integrated planning in Blue Growth agendas. Our analysis can be applied in any context where multiple objectives occur for aquaculture sector growth and biodiversity conservation., This is a preprint (pre-peer reviewed) version of the following paper: "Chiara Venier, Stefano Menegon, Hugh P. Possingham, Elena Gissi, Andrea Zanella, Daniel Depellegrin, Alessandro Sarretta, Andrea Barbanti, Jennifer McGowan, Multi-objective zoning for aquaculture and biodiversity", in Science of the Total Environment, Volume 785 (2021) 146997 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.146997.

A cycle of four webinars on Open Science and Open Access for earth and environmental sciences, with discipline-specifictools and practical resources. Course outline: Module 1: - Introduction and motivations -Open Science in Solid Earth Science Module 2: - Research Data Management -OS in solid Earth sciences: the EPOS research infrastructure experience Module 3: -FAIR principles and Open Data -Implementing FAIR. Considerations from the solid Earth domain Module 4: - The Data Management Plan -The adoption of Open Science Paradigm at INGV - Practical Tips Scientific committee: Maria Silvia Giamberini, IGG/CNR Gina Pavone, ISTI/CNR

Component:1.3.4. Tools and methods supporting MSP process Sub-component: 1.3.4.1 Interactions between uses and between uses and environment, including cumulative impacts. - Interactions between uses, between uses and environment, including cumulative impacts. Review of evaluation methods carried out in France, Spain and Italy - Western Mediterranean Sea MSP as a process, must be based on a strong and shared knowledge of planned areas. Distribution of each activities and there needs have to be evaluated as well as location of species and habitats, associated with a good comprehension of ecosystems functionalities. Moreover, the understanding of how human and ecological components of the system interact is crucial. This concerns both interaction between various maritime uses (conflict or synergies) and between uses and environment (pressures and impacts). Here, we focus on approaches seeking to evaluate and map effects of human activities in marine ecosystems. Various tools and approaches have been developed throughout the world to do so. Their use as source of information to feed MSP is a ongoing question. This report aims to detail and compare the mains characteristics of the tools developed in SIMWESTMED countries. A better comprehension of divergence between approaches is a step toward an increased transboundary coherence for MSP processes., This report/document was produced as part of the SIMWESTMED Project (Grant Agreement N0. EASME/EMFF/2015/1.2.1.3/02/SI2.742101). PROJECT: Supporting Implementation of Maritime Spatial Planning in the Western Mediterranean region (SIMWESTMED) Competition for maritime space – for renewable energy equipment, aquaculture and other uses – has highlighted the need to manage our waters more coherently. Maritime spatial planning (MSP) works across borders and sectors to ensure human activities at sea take place in an efficient, safe and sustainable way. That is why the European Parliament and the Council have adopted a legislation to create a common framework for maritime spatial planning in Europe. The Directive 2014/89/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 July 2014 (said Maritime Spatial Planning Directive) establishes a framework in order to reduce conflicts between sectors and create synergies between different activities, to encourage investment – by creating predictability, transparency and clearer rules, to increase cross-border cooperation – between EU countries to develop energy grids, shipping lanes, pipelines, submarine cables and other activities, but also to develop coherent networks of protected areas, and to protect the environment – through early identification of impact and opportunities for multiple use of space. The SIMWESTMED project (Supporting Implementation of Maritime Spatial Planning in the Western Mediterranean region) is an EU/DG Mare co-funded cross-border project. It was launched on 1st of January 2017 and involves Spain, France, Italy and Malta, while these countries had just designated their Competent Authorities and transposed the Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) Directive. SIMWESTMED aims to support the implementation of the MSP Directive in the waters of Spain, France, Italy and Malta, as well as to establish cross-border cooperation mechanisms between these Member States, to contribute to the coherence of their marine spatial plans to be established by 2021. The action ran until 31st of December 2018 and was based on a partnership of public bodies of the countries and two international organisations. It was composed of CEDEX, IEO, AFB, CEREMA, Shom, CORILA and its affiliated entities IUAV and CNR-ISMAR, MIT, IMELS, PA, CPMR, UNEP-MAP and its affiliated entity UNEP-MAP/PAP-RAC. Shom acted as coordinator. The objectives of the SIMWESTMED project were addressed through a variety of activities and desktop or case studies. They are dedicated to identifying the methodology steps, and explore the challenges and opportunities of the MSP implementation in the Western Mediterranean area, including thus related to transboundary issues (Ecosystem based approach, marine policies, Barcelona Convention, Land Sea Interactions, geographical scale of the plans, data interoperability, tools to support MSP). The project led to a multiplicity of outputs including overviews of MSP relevant information related to the countries and on more focus areas, to a number of interviews and meetings where stakeholder views were collected to feed the reasoning, and to guidelines and good practices to be shared at a national and transnational level with marine stakeholders, scientists as well as planners, administrations and authorities. In addition, SIMWESTMED permitted a lot of progression internally in the countries and regarding transboundary cooperation. It led to establish and develop new dialogues and to connect the technical or scientific actors, the stakeholders, the administrations of the countries of a same sea basin, and the administrations within the countries, including the representative of Regions. It allowed to better understand Maritime Spatial Planning mechanisms, to share knowledge and as such reached to build capacities, which is of importance as there is such a need in the Mediterranean area compared to more Northern countries. The project also permitted to address topics which have never been addressed before. The involvement of some countries in SIMWESTMED and in the EU-DG Mare "brother" projects SUPREME, SIMNORAT and SIMCelt was useful for them to develop a global vision with their neighbours through the East and West side of the Mediterranean and in the Atlantic sea basin. At the end of this exercise, it is stated the need of pursuing the work and dialogue in particular through common tools, but at this stage, the SIMWESTMED has constituted a common knowledge and background. Disclaimer: The contents and conclusions of this report, including the maps and figures, do not imply the expression of any opinion or endorsement of the participating partners concerning the legal status of any country, territory, area, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The depiction and use of boundaries, geographic names and related data shown on maps included in this report are not warranted to be error free nor do they imply official endorsement or acceptance by any of the participating partners. This report is a working document and may rely on data from sources external to the SIMWESTMED project Consortium and, in addition to this, it may contain some information gaps. Neither the European Commission or Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises nor UN Environment/MAP Barcelona Convention Secretariat may be held responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained in this report.

Gathering systematic information on the effects of extreme weather events (e.g., flooded areas, shallow landslide and debris flow activations, windthrows) is a fundamental prerequisite for local authorities to put into practice management strategies and establishing early-intervention priorities. The collection of these data is a resource-demanding task requiring huge personnel effort and financial means. Furthermore, events occurring in remote areas with a low chance of intersecting human infrastructure, are rarely detected and mapped accurately, thus leading to incorrect assumptions in relation to both extreme events spatial distribution and especially to the real occurrence probability. The present work aims at tackling some of the above-mentioned issues by providing a framework for obtaining the automatic identification of severe weather events that may have caused important erosional processes or vegetation damage, combined with a quick and preliminary change detection mapping over the identified areas. The proposed approach leverages the free availability of both high-resolution global scale radar rainfall products and Sentinel-2 multispectral images to identify the areas to be analyzed and to carry out change detection algorithms, respectively. Radar rainfall data are analyzed and areas where high intensity rainfall and/or very important cumulative precipitation has occurred are used as a mask for restricting the subsequent analysis, which, in turn, is based on a multispectral change detection algorithm. The testing phase of the proposed methodology provided encouraging results: applications to selected mountain catchments hit by the VAIA storm in northeastern Italy (October 2018) were capable of identifying flooded areas, debris-flow and shallow landslide activations and windthrows with good accuracy and with the ability to distinguish between erosional processes and windthrows. The described approach can serve as a preliminary step toward detailed post-event surveys, but also as a preliminary "quick and dirty" mapping framework for local authorities especially when resources for ad hoc field surveys are not available. Such a systematic potential change identification, in combination with regular expert-driven validation, can finally pave the way for a process of self-improvement in detection and classification accuracy: if classified changes are validated, machine-learning algorithms can be trained to learn and improve performance not only in change detection accuracy but also in single-scene classification. Future improvements of the described procedure could be finally devised for allowing a continuous operational activity and for maintaining an open-source software implementation.