INVESTING IN INFRASTRUCTURE – AN APPROACH TO
EVALUATE INSPIRE IN SWEDEN
Anders O. Rydén
Lantmäteriet, Gävle, Sweden
Investments need to be followed-up and INSPIRE is no exception to this rule. As with
all investments, decision makers need to see return on investment in order to justify
funds put into a particular project. As such, INSPIRE is one of the most important
infrastructural projects in Sweden today, and the benefits of this project should naturally
be identified, quantified and put into relation to invested funds.
Authorities, private companies and citizens alike have all expressed an interest in these
matters. What is in it for me? Yet, few studies on the benefits of the implementation of
INSPIRE have so far been done in Sweden. The underlying factor may very well be the
very complex nature of such an exercise. Already the distinction between benefits from
the datasets, and from the infrastructure itself poses a problem.
In order to address these issues, the NSDI Co-ordination Unit at Lantmäteriet initiated a
desktop-study on the development of an approach to evaluate the benefits of implement-
ing INSPIRE in Sweden (figure 1). The aim of the study was to set the frame for the
development of such an approach. The work was carried out in workshops with
representatives from Lantmäteriet, followed up with interviews of selected stakeholders.
Figure 1. The figure illustrates the approach proposed to evaluate the benefits of
Inspire in Sweden.
The results from the workshops and interviews provided the input needed to set the path
for the work ahead. It is clear that the issues have to be addressed from two different
perspectives, a technical perspective and a user perspective. Two important criteria’s
were also set; (i) the study should cover the society as a whole and not only environ-
ment and, (ii) the method should allow follow-up of benefits over time.
The technical perspective stems from what is technically possible to achieve having
access to multiple, standardised datasets through different types of services. The
technical perspective is important to visualise in order to get an understanding of the
benefits the implementation of INSPIRE will bring to different stakeholders, i.e. to
authorities (governmental and municipal), citizens and private companies.
To this end, prioritised sectors in society have been selected as pilot areas for further in-
depth studies, whereby benefits for the different stakeholders will be identified and
described. The selection of sectors has been based on criteria’s such as political
relevance, fundability, measurability, etc. The challenge is now to project the state-of-
play at future points in time, that is, when benefits will realise and why they will realise.
The user perspective is the actual value the implementation of INSPIRE brings to the
users. This perspective is important in order to justify funds put into the implementa-
tion. The work will have its starting point in the identified benefits the implementation
of INSPIRE will bring to the stakeholders within each prioritised sector. The assump-
tion is that even if the benefits themselves can’t be measured; they can be approximated
using a number of key indicators.
The work ahead will focus on the identification of key indicators that can be used to
quantify the benefits. These indicators may be of different types but must have in
common that they should be measurable and possible to convert into monetary terms.
Indicators will be sought at each stakeholder level, thus getting an indication of the
“hard” value the implementation of INSPIRE will bring to authorities, citizens and
private companies within each sector.
If successful, the approach proposed will provide a solid and generally accepted basis
for evaluation and quantification of INSPIRE in Sweden. The study will provide a
vision of a future state-of-play in Sweden, but will also provide quantified examples of
observed benefits. This in turn, will help engage more actors, generate development of
more services, sustain funding and, at the end of the day improve every-day life in
society.