Starting from the premise that many problems in innovation are caused by traditional obstacles between academia and market, CENTRIC will work as an interface between R&D, cadastre and territorial data management, as a crucial element fostering innovative business.
CENTRIC will help solving societal problems by providing high quality and innovative geospatial solutions in the field of cadaster, mapping and territorial management. Current major challenges in different sectors such as transport and mobility, environment and climate change, spatial and urban planning, water management, security and disaster management, tourism … all require solutions based on geospatial technologies. CENTRIC will provide the necessary platform and support, the network of experts and know-how to address these challenges and to find solutions through added value R&D activities, education and training, and delivery of innovative services. —— CENTRIC radically redefined how value is delivered to clients, customers, and citizens. Models for successful innovation have changed: innovation is happening faster, increasingly multidisciplinary, and demand driven. However, even the best organizations are struggling to innovate, because transformative innovation is hard and often disruptive.
This objective will be accomplished because CENTRIC will be positioned in the value-generation chain from idea to market as an organization that fosters applied R&D. It will be organised to provide services aiming to close the gap between the market and R&D:
• by providing also incubation and acceleration services,
• by clustering services in the area of territorial and cadastre management and GIS.
While territorial management needs to provide the ultimate driver for research, CENTRIC’s principal aim will be to generate new insight and knowledge about land management, mapping and cadastre. The emphasis will be on integrative, systems-led approaches to unravel the interacting networks of actors underpinning the main land management processes. The scientific focus of CENTRIC will be on the following interlinked emerging topics:
• 2D-3D geo-information modelling and management. This area is concerned with the management of 2D as well as 3D geospatial data and services, including the research issues dealing geospatial data modelling, quality control, updating, data mining, cloud computing, etc. Nevertheless the potential of managing 3D data in the domain of territorial planning and cadastre is still considerably underexploited.
• Smart cities. Geospatial data and associated managing tools are key enablers of the concept of “smart” cities. This focus group includes research topics such as the development of Location-Based Services, crowd-sourcing, citizen as sensors, BIM, 3D Cadastre, etc.
• Interoperability. The emerging role of mobile geospatial technologies and sensors at territorial level, is calling for more advanced standards that can ensure high-performance on top of interoperability. This focus group includes research topics such as (inter)national standards, harmonization and Linked Data.
Technical and Regulatory Best Practices reports the state-of-the-art in Romania and Europe in cartography, mapping and spatial planning. It describes the best practices, guidelines and policy implementations related to important (and emerging) technologies (also in terms of regulations). Particular attention has been paid to how technological aspects are intertwined within regulatory issues, both at Romanian and international level. Solutions, potential barriers and opportunities, as well as the definition of suitable technical and regulatory integration and, more important, key recommendations were identified.
Such a comprehensive analysis has represented a fundamental input for the successive Tasks, envisaging the Cadastre as a veritable cornerstone: not only does the proposed cadastral 3-legged model (Territory-Cadastre-Land Register, with relevant consistency and assessment model) clearly manage to integrate the technical sectors, but also provides an organic base for the diverse actors involved in the territorial governance.
In other terms, “merging” territorial management, mapping and cadastre into one, organic and robust, cutting-edge territorial-knowledge-oriented structure, the Cadastre has clearly emerged as the key player, responding to both future expectations and current requirements of present-day society (“Spatially Enabled Society”).
CENTRIC will improve the instruments of territorial development and urban planning activities beyond the state-of-the-art in the field by integrating new emerging technologies such as photogrammetry, 3D mapping, surveying activities, etc. in the value-generation chain as an applied R&D organisation. The cutting-edge expertise provided by CENTRIC partners will be implemented in the Romanian context and further enhanced by the above mentioned new technologies.
By analysing the European innovation landscape related with the Romanian context as it results from national and regional strategies focusing not only on smart specialization but on research, development and innovation as well, a list of priorities was identified (Section 6), helping to determine the R&D issues of interest for CENTRIC and enhancing the scientific and innovation profile of the Centre (e-Government and social media, cloud computing, open data, big data, interoperability and cyber security, ICT in education, societal challenges, ICT in health, culture, e-Inclusion, research-development-innovation in ICT, broadband, digital services infrastructure e-Commerce).
By comparing these priorities with other innovation techniques used at international and national scale, a list of topics and R & D issues specific for activities of cadastre and territorial planning was obtained. Compared with the objectives of CENTRIC activities, the prioritization of these issues shows that some of them have a high priority within CENTRIC, especially those with a strong innovative aspect and which are not yet frequently used in Romanian innovation landscape. They will help CENTRIC to reach its main objectives: to improve 3D geo-information research in territorial planning, to develop 3D city and landscape models, to improve the quality and availability of cartographic products and geo-data by obtaining the 3D data version, to ensure interoperability, to promote smart city approaches together with strategic scenarios and applications of 3D city models, to promote new generation of LBS services, to contribute to the extension of current standards.
In this way, the centre will transfer in Romania not only the latest technologies, strategies and procedures in the field but, more than that, will develop itself into a crucial element into the value-generation chain, by integrating at a superior level R&D, innovative technologies, and the societal needs.
