• How other EU countries did facilitate a communication process involving different institutions?

Answer is in progress and will follow
 

• It is possible to have individual national trainings from INSPIRATION project?

There is no training planned dedicated to national level only. But INSPIRATION project is offering two workshops on national level per country. In the framework of these two day workshops we will focus on the implementation progress of each individual country. If there is need to cover certain specific topics please communicate it to the project team.
 

• What is the status of INSPIRE in the Western Balkan in terms of their legal & institutional status?

This is subject of Activity 1 of the INSPIRATION project, namely Activity 1.1 Regional SDI Legislation Framework Analysis. This study will be published on the project webpage, http://www.inspiration-westernbalkans.eu/.
Besides this there is already a summary available on EU level including country reports for Croatia and FYROM. Even if this summary is out of date and covers the region only partly it provides an idea of the current status of INSPIRE implementation. http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.cfm/pageid/6/list/4
 

• What is the availability of data in terms of INSPIRE in other countries resp. is there a status report of INSPIRE in other European countries?

Regarding the status of implementation and the availability there are two sources of information available.
INSPIRE Monitoring & Reporting
According to Commission Decision 2009/442/EC of 5 June 2009 implementing the INSPIRE Directive, EU Member States have to report annually a number of indicators for monitoring the implementation and use of their infrastructures for spatial information. The information provided includes a list of spatial data sets and services belonging to those infrastructures.
According to the same Decision, a report including i.a. information on the coordinating structures, on the use of the infrastructure for spatial information, on data-sharing agreements and on the costs and benefits of implementing the INSPIRE Directive, is prepared and submitted every three years, starting in 2010.
Data and reports regarding the INSPIRE monitoring and reporting are available on the official INSPIRE webpage, http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.cfm/pageid/182.
INSPIRE State of Play
The State of Play reports are based on the INSPIRE Monitoring & Reporting reported by the EU member states, http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.cfm/pageid/6/list/4 .
 

• How the transformation between existing data and the requirements of INSPIRE data specifications should be made?

The INSPIRE Directive does not define  this specific aspect. In general it can be stated that ETL (Extract-Transform-Load) tools like Talend or Pentaho can operate with spatial datasets. On proprietary level FME is a well-known example for spatial transformation processes.
 

• How schema validation should be done?

The INSPIRE Directive does not laydown which tool should be used for XML schema validation. The validation of XML instances again their resp. schemas can be done by a wide range of tools available, proprietary or open source.
Examples for proprietary XML editors which are able to validate XML schema
XML Spy (Altova)
Oxygen XML Editor (SyncRO Soft)
Examples for Open Source XML editors which are able to validate XML schema
NotePad ++ (XML schema plugin)
Eclipse XSD Editor
 

• Which approach of setting up NSDIs has to be preferred – central vs. decentralised approach?

Which approach – decentralised or centralised – is more suitable highly depends on the specific situation in your country. Examples for both approaches can be found among the INSPIRE implementations in Europe. Depending on your political structure and situation one of the both approaches might be more suitable then the other.
 

• What is the lifetime of a Geoportal and its individual modules?

A “Geoportal” is mainly the interface of a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) to their users. According to current standards a Geoportal is a web based application which means it is has a similar lifecycle as many other web based applications. Even if it cannot not determined exactly significant changes has to be expected at least every 4 years. This means for example an adoption of Geoportal components in according to meet the user needs or new trends in technological developments.
As the Geoportal is just a single component of the SDI the lifecycle expectations of this web based application has not necessarily an impact on the lifecycle expectations of other SDI components.