Final European INSPIRATION Conference took place in Sarajevo - capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its largest urban, cultural and economical centre. This last regional event of the INSPIRATION Project was hosted by cadastral agencies of Bosnia and Herzegovina - FAGRPA Sarajevo and the Republic Authority for Geodetic and Property Affairs (RAGPA) Banja Luka. Before formal opening of the Conference high representatives of all INSPIRATION’s beneficiary organizations signed The Memorandum of Understanding on Regional Cooperation in Spatial Data Infrastructure.
 
Opening ceremony on the first day – 5^th November 2013 was begun with the Envoy of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina Mate Bandur. Welcome address was also given by project’s team leader Fritz Kroiss who showed for the first time printed version of the Croatian NSDI/INSPIRE Brochure and by Željko Obradović, Directof of FAGRPA.
 
After formal opening FAGRPA presented new Geoportal. Prime Minister of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina Nermin Nikšić was the first who symbolically launched Geoportal at the Conference. In introductory speech, Prime Minister stressed out increasing importance of spatial data collection and management, because there is growing awareness and demand for simple access to spatial information. This demand is influenced by internal needs of policy and decision making in spatial planning, environmental protection, natural resources management, cultural heritage protection and economic development and by requirements of the EU integration process.
 
First presentation was held by Hugo de Groof from DG Environment who pointed out that environmental information could prove crucial in some aspects of land administration. As an example he used energy efficiency index of houses, which could be used for improved taxation. Dragana Djurica presented on behalf of Regional Cooperation Council (RCC) and emphasized how main activity of RCC at the moment is development of the South East Europe 2020 strategy. Before the interesting panel discussion, moderated by Christian Ansorge, all participants had opportunity to see English version of the NSDI/INSPIRE Video film for the first time.
 
The afternoon session was devoted to INSPIRATION Project beneficiaries’ presentations. On behalf of Republika Srpska, BiH, Velibor Vitor presented the RGA Geoportal. Besnik Como presented on importance of the new reference station network being developed for NSDI Albania. Croatian representative was Tomislav Ciceli who elaborated on raising awareness and building capacity to meet INSPIRE requirements in Croatia. Final presentation “Can the AREC-MOEPP mash up application serve as a model for the region?” was given by Sonja Dimova from AREC, FYR Macedonia.
 
Second day started with a block of remaining three beneficiaries’ presentations. From Kosovo^*Cadastral Agency Amir Sogojeva presented topic “Address Register as a keystone for Kosovo NSDI”. Mirjana Ljumović (Real Estate AdministrationMontenegro) spoke about role of Geoportal in promoting the economic development. The Geoportal of the Real Estate Administration has been in use since 2010 and has three main functions – metadata management and search, set up of interoperable services (cadastral parcels, ortho-photo map and topographic maps) and web application for map viewing. On behalf of Serbian Republic Geodetic Authority (RGA) Saša Đurović presented the theme “Networking of stakeholders through building of NSDI institutional framework”.
 
Final block of the Conference started with presentation on outputs and results of Project INSPIRATION done by Fritz Kroiss (team leader) and Ivica Skender, (Key Expert II of the implementation team). Afterword, Ivica Skender presented the Regional Metadata portal and Mirel Ginu Popescu of (Romanian Cadastral and Mapping Agency) presented Romanian SDI/INSPIRE implementation as an example of a young EU member. Last presenter was Vlado Cetl from Joint Research Centre (JRC) who introduced main points from the Report on recent INSPIRE developments, MIG and M&R meetings. He introduced joint tasks of the INSPIRE Maintenance and Implementation Group (MIG) - exchange experiences in implementation of INSPIRE; identify priority issues in maintenance of the Directive and/or other documents; identify issues in INSPIRE implementation; Prepare the work programme etc.
In the end, winners of the “Best poster awards” were announced: REA Montenegro, KCA Kosovo and Gezim Gjata (Albania) and rewarded with Esri Press books