Geoportal – www.geoportal.gov.pl – is a central node of the Polish Spatial Data Infrastructure with access to spatial data and related services. The project started development in 2005, but during the last three years it has been significantly enriched with new services and data sources. It is composed of the main website www.geoportal.gov.pl and a list of related applications, the most important being the central map website – National Geoportal and other components including Geoportal Mobile, Geoportal 3D, Geoportal INSPIRE, the system of the State Geodetic and Cartographic Resource or BDOT10k portal.
The main purpose of Geoportal is to integrate dispersed data from multiple services and agencies on every level of governance and provide citizens, entrepreneurs and public administration with spatial information from official registers guaranteeing its quality, timeliness and reliability. Due to this, Geoportal is regarded as the most important project conducted by the Office of Geodesy and Cartography.
Most of the network services are featured as layers on National Geoportal and all their web addresses are present on the main project website www.geoportal.gov.pl so that they can be used in any software compatible with the standard. The still-growing list of services contains:
- National Integration of Land Records (KIEG) with additional interconnected Service of Location of Cadastral parcels (ULDK);
- National Integration of Terrain Utilities (KIUT);
- National Integration of Local Spatial Development Plans (KIMP);
- Topographic Objects Database (BDOT10k);
- Orthophoto map;
- Digital Terrain Model (NMT);
- Digital Surface Model (NMPT).
In most cases, knowledge acquired through Geoportal meets or exceeds the users’ requirements, especially in terms of obtaining various information about a given parcel. For example, it is possible to check whether property is located in a comfortable place considering noise or restrictions of local development plans, or to evaluate the probable view of surroundings from your future home’s windows. Moreover, users can see if a parcel lies where there is high risk of flooding. All of that also means that the public offices are partly relieved of providing data to users; it serves the bigger purpose of creating easily accessible and user-friendly digital administration.