• Database applications - clear application needs are important
• Database developer consortia - large consortia with divers interests of the members may be difficult
• Data sources, copy-right and pricing - flexible and inexpensive mechanisms to resolve the 'cocktail' of legal and institutional issues related to the creation and distribution of multi-national European GIS databases are needed (David Rhind, 1995).
• Financial resources - although no primary data collection are involved, still much (manpower) resources are needed and adequate funding are therefore needed.

Introduction

The development of seamless GIS databases for European transborder regions are growing at a rapid pace (GI2000, 1996; Masser and Salgé, 1996). These rapid developments take place, despite a generally unfavourable European 'climate' until recently with respect to the institutional, legal, commercial and technical problems in assembling GIS data from several countries. These new trends are driven mainly by two factors, as pointed out in the recent European Geographic Information Infrastructure (GI2000, 1996). The first is the escalating internationalisation that take place in most sectors of society, in the business, governmental, and the environmental sectors to mention a few. The expansion of the 'geographical arenas' in which processes and activities take place requires transborder geographic to perform rational analyses and assessments. The second factor is the general growth in the information technology business. This expansion, which to a large extent has been focused upon the PC segment of users, has led to increased opportunities for supply of cheap, powerful information and communications technology. As an example, the Windows 95 version of Microsoft Excel now has in-built a sub-set of the desktop GIS software MapInfo.

Within this European context the present paper aims to describe past and current attempts to build seamless multi-layer GIS databases of the Baltic Sea region. This region has a long tradition of environmental co-operation, quite notably also during the Cold War (Westing, 1989). More recently, following the disintegration of the Soviet Union with the associated regain of independence for the three Baltic States and the unification of Germany, the co-operation has deepened and expanded into other areas of the public and commercial sectors. A main change has been in the openness by which information can be changed across the national boundaries. As a consequence of these profound political changes in the early 1990'ies, a number of Baltic GIS data initiatives have appeared, all aiming towards seamless GIS datasets covering the Baltic region.

This chapter sets out with describing and defining the Baltic Sea region and the needs for seamless Baltic region GIS data sets. Emphasis is given to the water quality definition of the region and this issue as an argument for establishing seamless databases. The diverse geopolitical context are also briefly touched upon as it is atypical for the usually EU centric EGII debate. The technological differences and differences in (geographic) information and data policies among the countries will be taken up. The main part of the paper will describe and examine the development of a number of regional database initiatives shown in Figure 1. Special attention will be given to the GIS database originating from the Baltic Drainage Basin Project.

Figure 1. Status of the main regional GIS database initiatives for the Baltic Sea region

The Baltic region, needs for seamless GIS data and related issues

Needs for seamless Baltic region GIS data

The need for Baltic Sea region wide GIS databases can best be approached by considering various 'actor' groups in the Baltic region and their requirements for spatial information to support their activities.

Until quite recently, the main actor group was the 'environment, hydro-meteorology and marine science' actors. Lately, other actor groups have become more active, groups that begin to or most probably soon will request Baltic region spatial data sets. These are actors in the spatial (physical) planning, the political and the business communities. The Baltic Sea States Summit on the island of Gotland in May 1996, strongly indicated the upcoming needs.

Environmental, hydro-meteorological and marine science needs

The Helsinki Convention of 1974, founded to protect the marine environment of the

Baltic Sea, was the first international agreement to cover all sources of marine pollution, both from land and from ships as well as airborne. To accomplish its aim, the Convention calls for action to curb various sources of pollution. In this context the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM) Baltic monitoring programme, which supports environmental assessment activities, has increasingly started to ask for and use GIS data in their work.

The Baltic Sea Joint Comprehensive Environmental Action Programme (JCP) was developed and approved in 1992 with the aim to "assure the ecological restoration of the Baltic Sea". The JCP is co-ordinated by the Helsinki Commission, and shall be implemented over 20 years (1993-2012) at an estimated total cost of 18 billion ECU. Its major focus is to reduce point and non-point sources of pollution, particularly at 132 (now 124) 'hot spots' identified by the JCP. The 'hot spots' are mostly of a municipal waste and industrial nature. Despite a very obvious need (at least for GIS persons) for a spatially driven information system to measure progress and achievements, no strong demands have yet come from the co-ordinators.

Scientific Baltic Sea regional enterprises with thematically similar, but in many cases more analytical approaches, have increasingly taken GIS into use. The Baltic Drainage Basin Project (BDBP) and the Baltic Sea Experiment (BALTEX) Projects are prime examples of this, both demanding and using spatial data sets. The overall objective of the BDBP was to find sustainable development patterns where the significance of the Baltic region's natural resource base is taken into account and efficiently managed in both an economic and ecological sense. One of the project's main foci was the eutrophication of the Baltic Sea and its causes and effects (Gren et al., 1996; Sweitzer et al., 1996). BALTEX has been defined, (1) to explore and model the various mechanisms determining the space and time variability of energy and water budgets of the BALTEX area and its interactions with surrounding regions, (2) to relate these mechanisms to the large-scale circulation systems in the atmosphere and oceans over the globe, and (3) to develop transportable methodologies in order to contribute to basic needs of climate-, climate impact-, and environmental- research in other regions of the world (Raschke, 1994). It can be noted from these two examples that the delineation of the 'functional' Baltic region varies. Due to the meteorological modelling component, data from a large buffer zone outside the drainage basin is needed for BALTEX purposes (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. The Baltic Sea region as perceived from the environmental (BDBP project; top map) and hydro-meteorological science (BALTEX; bottom map) community, respectively. Note the model area for BALTEX stretching from Istanbul and Rome in south to north of the Barents region in the north. This large area is required for modelling of atmospheric transports. Sources: Sweitzer et al. (1996) and Raschke (1994).

Spatial planning and political needs

The environmental, hydro-meteorological and marine science needs for GIS data have increased substantially. On the other hand, the physical planning community was quiet until 1992. Then, the Vision And Strategies for the Baltic Region (VASAB) 2010 Project was initiated by the Baltic region Ministers of Physical Planning. Under the development of the first VASAB reports, the lack of spatial data sets showing inter alia communications infrastructure was identified. Figure 3 shows a map from the VASAB 2010 report and the area defined as the Baltic region according to this perspective. This definition is political and not restricted to the drainage area. The MapBSR database initiative described later is a direct response to the scarcity of physical planning relevant GIS data sets.

Figure 3. The definition of the Baltic region according to the Vision and Strategies around the Baltic Sea 2010 project pointing to the political dimension of this project.

The reinforced high-level focus upon the Baltic Region, demonstrated by the recent Baltic Sea Summit on Gotland, Sweden, in May 1996, clearly points to future needs for comparable socio-economic data and presentations thereof. These data sets are needed to support political agenda setting and policy developments on various political/administrative levels. Whether these upcoming needs will be met by the MapBSR project, or if the GISCO project of EUROSTAT will be expanded to cover also the European remains to be seen.

Business needs

While not yet seen explicitly expressed, there is certainly going to be an increasing need for GIS data in support of Baltic regional business activities. In particular, multi-national companies looking upon the Baltic region as a separate sales area, will most likely soon demand market relevant and comparable spatial information from the region. Equally, databases for in-car navigation will certainly be demanded from the entire Baltic region.

Delineation of the Baltic Sea region

In the case of GIS database building for the Baltic Sea region, most of the interest has centred around the water quality pollution of the Baltic Sea itself. This interest directly tends to limit the area to a closed area, the Baltic Sea drainage basin. However, as argued in Gren et al. (1996) and mentioned earlier in the case of the BALTEX project, when considering, for example, the sources of atmospheric nitrogen pollution, the functional area of interest has to include also remote areas from where air pollution originates. The political definitions of the Baltic region varies between the regional co-operative bodies and initiatives. In some definitions, based upon co-operation between nation states, the Baltic region extends from Greenland in West to the eastern part of Russia. The fuzziness in the delineation of the Baltic Sea region is a key point in a recent review of Baltic region co-operation (Stålvant, 1996).

The main section of this chapter deals with Baltic Sea region defined by the drainage basin. In this case, the region is constituted fully or partly of 14 different countries: Finland, Russia, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Geopolitically this is a diverse mix of European countries with, for example, four EU countries and three CIS countries. The technological and economical gap between these countries is huge. This also is a factor of importance in the development of GIS databases.

The total area of the Baltic Sea region, using the drainage basin definition, is 1,745,000 km2. About 85,000,000 million people is found within the area.

The first generation complete GIS database of the Baltic region

The first easy accessible multi-thematic GIS database with complete coverage of the entire Baltic region was created in a very simple manner (Langaas, 1992a,b). In 1992, GRID-Arendal, a centre in the United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) network of collaborating Global Resource Information Database (GRID) environmental data and information centres created a small scale or coarse resolution database of the Baltic Sea region using a series of global GRID data sets.

When this initiative was made, no easy accessible seamless GIS data sets of the entire Baltic drainage basin existed. The only data sets with spatial completeness of the entire region available to the GIS community at that time were the global GRID data sets available from GRID-Geneva. The global data sets distributed by GRID-Geneva are initially created at research institutions or other UN bodies. GRID are then provided the GIS data sets for further dissemination to other researchers, decision-makers and educational institutions with the exclusion of commercial users. Computer Compatible Tapes (CCT) was the data medium used by GRID-Geneva at that time to disseminate GIS data sets. This was a data medium not very wide-spread in the Baltic Sea region. Therefore, very few institutions had access to these data.

To improve the accessibility to these data sets, GRID-Arendal decided to extract the Nordic/Baltic region from about 20 of the global GRID data sets and distribute them as a small package of 4 floppy disks with an associated data document. The main intended application areas were GIS education, research and planning.

This initiative was well received, and definitively fulfilled a regional need (Langaas, 1994). Due to the fact that most data sets were initially of global scope, the applications of the database were found mainly in the GIS educational sector. Still, some applications of the vector part of the database, i.e. subsets of CIA World Databank II, were cartographic visualisation and more GIS analytical purposes (see, e.g., Lucas and Bivand, 1994). In 1995, this GIS database with documentation was also made available through Internet at http://www.grida.no/infop/db1.htm.

The inherent characteristics of this database; small scale, low resolution, inconsistency, lack of (environmentally and otherwise) relevant topics, still made subsequent database developments imperative.

The second generation complete GIS database of the Baltic region

Introduction

In 1993 and 1994 a research consortium of several research groups in Sweden, Norway, Poland, Germany, and UK carried out a joint research project, the Baltic Drainage Basin Project (BDBP), under the EU Environmental Research Programme 1991-94. The overall aims of the project were to -

• assess the linkages between economy and ecology related to the nutrient pollution to the Baltic Sea
• evaluate various ecological, technological, economical and institutional instruments to reduce the pollution
• assess the ecological effects of reduced nutrient pollution.

In sub-project 1, Land use and ecological carrying capacity of the drainage basin, the research group consisting of the Beijer Institute and Dept. of Systems Ecology, Stockholm University, and GRID-Arendal, Norway, developed a seamless, multi-thematic, and coherent GIS database of the drainage basin. Emphasis was given to land cover and population. The main applications of this GIS database in the BDBP were to -

• obtain reliable statistics on land cover, population and country distribution within the overall drainage basin as well as for sub-basins (Sweitzer et al., 1996) , and
• apply it for more targeted research (see, e.g., Gren et al., 1996 and Jansson et al., 1996)

For a comprehensive article on the technical and methodological aspects related to the development of the database, and some applications of it, the reader is referred to Sweitzer et al. (1996).

The project decided to make a slightly modified version of the GIS database publicly available on Internet. The development of the public GIS database was carried out after the BDBP formally ended with complementary funds from the Nordic Council of Ministers and GRID-Arendal. In August 1995 the GIS database, together with ready-made cartographic products in standard graphical formats, was released on Internet. To our knowledge this GIS database is one of the rare examples of publicly available on-line international GIS databases in Europe.

The main purpose of this section is to highlight some experiences in the compilation of the database, considerations and preparations of the 'research' database into a 'public domain' database, some user feedback given, and experiences gained. Most of the primary data sources used for the development were taken from the public domain, such as the Digital Chart of the World and the European Space Agency's Remote Sensing Forest Map of Europe. Therefore, the focus will be put on the administrative boundaries data set, which from legal and institutional perspectives are the most interesting aspects to discuss.

Data compilation and editing for research

Based upon extensive knowledge of existing sources for administrative boundaries, a pragmatic approach was taken in the assembling of data sets to be used in the research. This approach was dictated by a limited budget, which in some cases prevented the best possible and more costly sources to be used. The intended main purpose of the administrative units data set was to model population density by linking it with population statistics and land cover data. Therefore, the administrative unit level sought for the application was the highest (most detailed) for which population statistics could readily be obtained. For Denmark, Finland, Germany, Norway, and Sweden this meant second order unit (NUTS level III). First order sub-national was found appropriate for the remaining countries. The nominal scale for the final multi-thematic database was 1:1,000,000, and data sources around this scale was sought. The idea was to release the database in the public domain. Therefore, the legal issues surrounding redistribution were also considered. We were not too concerned with aspects like positional accuracy. 1990 was used as a nominal base year. In practice, however, the actual years represented a range from 1985 to 1993.

An overview of the data sources or the providers of the administrative unit GIS data is given in Table 1. All data sets, except the Lithuanian, existed already in digital format. The data sources most easy accessible were the ones existing on CD-ROMs (ArcWorld), and available on Internet (EpiMap boundary files). UNEP collaborating partners in Estonia (Estonian Environment Information Centre), Latvia (Latvian Environment Data Centre), Poland (GRID-Warsaw), and Switzerland (GRID-Geneva) kindly provided the remaining data sets.

Country		    Data source or institution		     Nominal scale



Belarus		     ArcWorld					 1:3,000,000

The Czech Republic   EpiMap boundary file			     Unknown

Denmark		     Nordic Cartographic Database		 1:2,000,000

Estonia		     Estonian Environment Information		   1:500,000

		    Centre

Finland		     Nordic Cartographic Database		 1:2,000,000

Germany		     EUROSTAT/GISCO & GRID-Geneva			 Unknown

Latvia		     Latvian Environment Data Centre		   1:500,000

Lithuania	     Valstybinis Zemetvarkos Institutas		   1:600,000

Norway		     Nordic Cartographic Database		 1:2,000,000

Poland		     GRID-Warsaw				     Unknown

Russia		     ArcWorld					 1:3,000,000

The Slovak Republic  EpiMap boundary file			     Unknown

Sweden		     Nordic Cartographic Database		 1:2,000,000

Ukraine		     ArcWorld					 1:3,000,000

The data set covering the Nordic countries, the Nordic Cartographic Database (NCD), was kindly provided by the Nordic Mapping Agencies as a beta version before they had finalised the NCD and determined the price and release policy.

The various GIS data sets were concatenated using the Political and Oceans Layer (PONET) of the Digital Chart the World (DCW) as a common 'glue' data set for all international boundaries and coastlines. The concatenation required that all the various data sets were converted into pcArc/Info vector format and georectified to the common Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area project. The use of the PONET land - sea boundary in all other layers in the BDBP database ensured consistency in land - sea demarcation. Population statistics were compiled in parallel with the assembling of boundary GIS data files. The year of the population statistics were different from the year of the boundary files for many countries. Therefore, adjustments of the boundary files sometimes were necessary to adjust for this. Finally, the vector database was rasterised into 1 km2 cell size and converted into Idrisi raster format for analysis.

Population statistics for the various administrative units were obtained from several sources, and mostly from Statistical Yearbooks. The four Nordic countries were represented by their second order administrative units. Statistics for these units were bought from the National Statistical Agencies (NSA). Actually, these payments were related to handling costs more than data costs.

Generally speaking, the identification of existing data sources proved not to be too difficult. This, was, however, more related to some years of international GIS experience and co-operation in the Baltic region than to the availability of an easy accessible data directory (or meta data) system. The actual acquisition of data sets worked well in most cases. No data sets (except the statistics for the Nordic countries) had to be bought. The data sets were either made available for free, were already in our possession, or were downloaded from Internet. In some cases the issue of copy-right and right to redistribution was raised as a concern by institutions providing data since it was explicitly mentioned that the intention was to publish the data in the public domain. Detailed meta data provided by the data providers in generally were very limited or missing. For example, data set lineage descriptions were in almost all cases missing.

Distribution of the BDBP database on Internet

The distribution of the seamless BDBP GIS database based upon a wide variety of primary data sources needed thorough considerations. Some data sources were not controversial to redistribute. Other data set were more questionable. Examples of the former were the boundary files based upon the ArcWorld, EpiMap and the data set provided by the Estonian Environment Information Centre. These were presumed or explicitly placed in the public domain. The Nordic Cartographic Database (NDC) and the EUROSTAT/GISCO & GRID-Geneva data set belonged to the questionable category. The NCDe is a database developed jointly by the National Mapping Agencies in the five Nordic countries (Persson, 1995). Given the fact that GIS data sets developed by the Nordic NMAs usually are embedded in copy-right restrictions, this data set presumably is too. The data set source given as EUROSTAT & GRID-Geneva is a data set is actually originating from EUROSTAT, further improved and corrected by GRID-Geneva. GRID-Geneva had requested EUROSTAT to redistribute this data set in an edited and corrected form. This request was not granted due to the uncertainties related to the future distribution and price policy of EUROSTAT. The statistical population data associated with the administrative units were intended to be distributed with the administrative units boundary files as attribute data. These associated attribute data further complicated matters.

Practical rules of conduct and legal practices are virtually missing for how redistribution of assembled international GIS data sets derived from small scale and coarse resolution GIS data sets originating from various sources can and should be performed. Therefore, a sensible solution was designed which made us believe that none of the original data providers would react too strongly and with too much discomfort.

We decided to distribute the database in both vector and raster format, in pcArc/Info and Idrisi formats, respectively. Generally, we anticipated that the rasterised version of the administrative units boundary file would be less difficult to re-distribute from a copy-right perspective since the rasterisation was a data degradation that would mean irreversibility relative to the original data. Therefore, for the vector data we used the same logic. We first rasterised the vector data into a 500 m resolution, and subsequently vectorised it back again. The population attribute data, were also degraded. Instead of a precision of one, we rounded the data to a precision of hundred. In addition, metadata information was created for each data set made using a form based on a mix of UNEP/GRID's internal metadata tool and DIF.

The BDBP database was published on Internet in August 1995 at http://www.grida.no/baltic/. The database home page received around 13,000 'visits', and more than 2,500 GIS data files were downloaded in the 9 month period August 1995 - April 1996. In addition, a number of ready-made cartographic products in standard graphical file formats (GIF, TIF and EPS) were

created. Later on, also statistical files were published, developed directly from the GIS database.

Current initiatives

The Basic Geographic Information of the Baltic drainage basin (BGIS) initiative

The first initiative made to compile a multi-thematic Baltic region wide seamless database following the breakdown of the former Soviet Union and the German unification, was actually the Basic Geographic Information of the Baltic drainage basin (BGIS) initiative. The Statistical Division of the UN Economic Commission of Europe (ECE) was behind this initative. They had been given the task by the pan-European Conference of European Statisticians to work towards a drainage area based statistical database for the Baltic Sea region. Since they missed GIS competence UN ECE hosted a meeting in 1991 in Geneva with some international and national organisations to discuss the establishment of a "Baltic GIS". Several talks followed, the initiative matured and in 1994 a feasibility study for the establishment of Basic Geographic Information of the Baltic Drainage Basin (BGIS) database was carried out under the auspices of the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM). The feasibility study was funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers and carried out by the Finnish Environment Data Centre (now Finnish Environment Institute), Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, Swedish Space Corporation, GRID-Warsaw and GRID-Arendal; the BGIS Project Group. The feasibility study recommended a multi-purpose, although with an environmental focus, and multi-thematic database primarily based on existing data sources. Thus, the proposal in many ways were similar to the BDBP. Still, the ambitions were higher both in terms of scale and resolution and more notably the choice of themes. Due to difficulties in fund-raising for this initiative, the BGIS initiative has been put temporarily on hold.

Some of the recommended themes in the BGIS feasibility study has been included in a follow-up proposal for a HELCOM GIS. The HELCOM GIS proposal is directly addressing the needs of the Helsinki Commission for a spatial Decision Support System in support of the HELCOM assessment activities, and more importantly to monitor and evaluate the progress made in the 18 billion ECU Joint Comprehensive Environmental Action Programme. Funding is currently being sought for this proposal.

Even though many of the recommended themes have had a cartographical nature, the BGIS and HELCOM GIS initiatives had a clear environmental application focus. The leadership was taken by prominent environmental data and information institutions with considerable GIS experience. Noteworthy, the National Mapping Agencies, which one would expect to be the first to develop seamless GIS databases of this kind, were more or less absent during the discussions and open meeting leading to the BGIS feasibility study. This changed with the advent of the MapBSR project.

Map Data Sets in the Baltic Sea Region (MapBSR)

The MapBSR project can be looked upon as the response of the National Mapping Agencies on the international Baltic GIS arena to the other initiatives. The aim of the MapBSR project is to provide uniform, reliable map data sets for the Baltic Sea catchment area and the countries within its sphere of influence. The cartographic database is intended to promote various forms of international co-operation, for instance, in the environmental protection of the Baltic Sea. The uses for the database will include natural resource management, environmental impact assessment, administration, transboundary planning, research and map production.

The political context of the MapBSR project is the Vision and Strategies around the Baltic Sea (VASAB) 2010 project. The VASAB project was initiated by the Ministers of Physical Planning in 1992 and aims at a shared planning vision and strategy for the Baltic region. In 1994 and 1995 two Expert Seminars on the Creation of Spatial Data Sets in the Baltic Sea Region were organised by the National Land Surveys of Sweden and Finland, respectively, under the VASAB framework. These provided the background for the initiation of the MapBSR project. The MapBSR project is lead by the National Land Survey of Finland and comprise only NMAs and national surveying institutions.

Currently, the project is in its initial phase. A feasibility study of the project will be presented at the meeting of the heads of NMAs of the countries around the Baltic Sea in October 1996. The implementation of the project will be decided at the same meeting. Close co-operation will be sought with other GIS data organisations. The cartographic database is intended to include cartographic information at a scale of 1:1,000,000 (i.e. coastline, administrative boundaries, rivers and lakes, roads, settlements, altitudes, etc.).

The land surveys of each of the participating countries will produce the agreed map elements for the areas of their respective countries. These will then be combined into one cartographic database. Common standards and classifications will also be created, and other pan-European projects will be taken into account.

In many ways the MapBSR project can be looked upon like a regional Multipurpose European Ground Related Information Network.

Discussion and conclusions

The review of various initiatives clearly shows that there is a great interest in the development of seamless multi-thematic GIS databases for the Baltic Sea region. Many institutions have been and are involved in efforts aiming at improved databases. So far, only two multi-thematic seamless Baltic Sea region databases have been developed. The efforts leading to the creations of these databases can be described by a number of characteristics:

• Environmental application focus
• Small project groups
• Limited budgets
• Pragmatic scientific and technical approach ('best available information' philosophy)
• Raster data focus
• Limited number of themes
• Small scale and coarse resolution
• Public domain data (input and output)

The other efforts, the BGIS and the MapBSR project, are in many ways more ambitious. They can be characterised by:

• Multi-purpose application focus
• Large consortia involved
• Undefined, but large budgets
• Standardised, but still somewhat pragmatic approach
• Vector data focus
• Large number of themes
• Public domain data (output only)
• Associated training activities

From these characteristics it is possible to identify some issues that may be more or less critical in development of seamless GIS databases of the Baltic region and possibly elsewhere in Europe.

Database applications

The Baltic region experiences indicate that focused efforts driven by one or a few applications are more likely to succeed earlier than multi-purpose efforts with lack of application focus. This can not be interpreted very strictly since there are few case examples, but at least the clearly focused BDBP project showed that it is possible to come up with a small and quite coherent multi-thematic database of acceptable quality for regional analysis within a limited time period and with a limited budget.

Database developer consortia

It appears also that the institutional solution and size of the group or consortium developing the database has some relevance for the rate of success and more importantly the speed of development. This issue is also connected to the degree of application focus when developing the database. The larger consortium and more scattered the intended database applications are, the more difficult it appears to obtain tangible results. This is particular so for a region like the Baltic region, where considerable differences exist between the countries in terms of technological and economical capacity. For consortia that are made up of national representatives it is important that a shared regional database vision outweigh the national (institutional) interest of the consortia members. As pointed in GI2000 (1996), it is an advantage if an international GIS body with a true mandate to work on the international arena in question can be involved.

Data Sources, Copy-right and Pricing

The choice of quality and detail of primary data sources when compiling a transboundary GIS database for the Baltic region has a notable impact upon the possible obstacles in the compilation. The four main initiatives described have had an increasingly ambitious approach when it concerns the primary data sources.

The first generation Baltic GIS database was based upon global, and obviously coarse, GRID data sets that were found entirely in the public domain.

The BDBP database was more ambitious and used a mix of global (Digital Chart of the World, ArcWorld), European (European Space Agency's Remote Sensing Forest Map of Europe, Nordic Cartographic Database) and national data sources. For the redistribution of seamless data sets created, considerable modifications were done to the seamless data sets considered critical from the copy-right point of view. It is recognised that the modifications done are not sufficient from the point of view of the Berne Convention, but still sufficient to not make the data providers dissatisfied.

The BGIS plans were even more ambitious in terms of quality and detail. The BGIS consortium recognised the problems with data copy-rights and pricing among the NMAs, and therefore recommended that primary data sources to the largest extent possible should be found among public domain data sets (BGIS, 1994). Such problems may be overcome if the database development is for one particular application within one institution. When the purpose is to redistribute the data for free, then there are larger reasons to believe that the primary data institutions will be more negative.

The MapBSR project has the clearly highest ambition in this respect. They explicitly state that the idea is to rely entirely upon national data sets. Thereby, the MapBSR project in many ways resembles a regional Multipurpose European Ground Related Information Network (MEGRIN). MEGRIN makes geographic information from the National Mapping Agencies of Europe available to users of pan-European geographical data and are set up with the NMAs as the owner. The MEGRIN experiences with the development Seamless Administrative Boundaries of Europe (SABE) database (F. Salgé, communication at GISDATA Meeting) and national studies (Statskontoret, 1992), clearly forewarn that under the current European copy-right and pricing regime the MapBSR consortium will have great difficulties in agreeing upon the distribution policies and mechanism. The ambition of the MapBSR project that:

"Official map and geographic information created by the MapBSR project shall be made freely available at the regional level, and not be used for commercial purposes"

may be difficult to enforce, in particular if the intention is that the content shall be continuously updated.

In general, we find the Baltic cases of transboundary seamless GIS database development for public release, in the midst of the 'cocktail' of legal and institutional issues related to the creation and distribution of multi-national European GIS databases, as nicely phrased by David Rhind (1995). It is quite clear that flexible and inexpensive mechanisms to resolve such issues needs to be invented before enterprises of this kind will become legally and institutionally painless. The ambitions of GI2000 (1995, 1996) in this direction are crucial and clearly needs to be supported by all involved European GIS parties to become reality.

Financial resources

A most critical success factor, however, for the enterprises described for the Baltic region have been the financial dimension. The financial aspect are related to all the issues discussed earlier. The development of transboundary GIS databases will rely on existing data sources. Therefore, one may anticipate that this is inexpensive since no primary data collection is necessary. However, the experiences from the Baltic region, and elsewhere in Europe, have shown that the costs involved are considerable. In most cases these costs are related to the working costs related to the solution of the many issues involved in the establishment of European transboundary GIS databases. These are related to the time needed for developments of harmonised data models and standards. Nationally developed data sets use various national standards and data models. They require a common set of data models and standards to be used for a common region. Common data models and standards take time to develop, require resources, and the larger consortia involved, the higher the costs. Global and European standardisation efforts under the auspices of International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the European Committee of Standardisation (CEN) may reduce such work in the future.

The actual compilation work in front of the GIS also generally requires much more resources than one would expect. This is related to different national projection systems used, many GIS data formats, lack of detailed meta-data associated with the individual data sets, and frequently sub-optimal data quality.

The 'transactional' costs involved in resolving of legal and institutional issues related to transboundary GIS databases in Europe are probably a prime reason why the only pan European GIS database success story found in GI2000 (1996) are the commercial road network databases. They are obviously of high commercial value, and can thus make up for such 'transactional' costs. For other less wealthy GIS application areas, such as international environmental management, the high transactional costs can be critical.

In conclusion, the experiences from the Baltic region are by no means unique in a European context. Actually, the Baltic region is, relatively, in a quite good position compared to many other European transboundary region mentioned in GI2000 (1996). This is mainly due to the fact that the region, here defined as the watershed region, is a transboundary hydro-ecological region sharing a common environmental problem: The state of the environment of the Baltic Sea. This has lead to a number of initiatives from within the environmental GIS community. The tangible results so far have been two multi-thematic small scale GIS databases. The Baltic Drainage Basin Project GIS database is believed to be the most comprehensive publicly available transboundary European GIS database on Internet. Two other initiatives aiming at seamless database of higher quality, with more themes and larger scale, the BGIS and MapBSR project have gone on for a number of years. The untangling of the various issues identified earlier will determine whether or when the aspiration of these two initiatives will materialise.

References

BGIS. 1994. The Basic Geographic Information of the Baltic Drainage Basin, National Board of Waters and the Environment, Helsinki 1994. ISBN 951-47-9696-9.

Jansson, Å., Folke, C. and Langaas, S.1996. Quantifying the nitrogen retention capacity of natural wetlands in the large-scale drainage basin of the Baltic Sea. Submitted to International Journal of Landscape Ecology.

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