About

GeoBru and the geoportal

This geoportal assembles the official geographic information on the Brussels Capital Region.

GeoBru is the name of the committee charged with the implementation of the European directive INSPIRE in the Brussels Capital Region. Its mission is described in the ordinance dated 28 October 2010 transposing the directive.

The GeoBru committee consists of representatives from the principal Brussels public partner organisations:

• Brussels Planning and Heritage (BRPS-BPH) 
• Brussels Environment (BE)
• Brussels Mobility (BRPS-BM)
• Brussels Regional Informatics Centre (BRIC)
• Brussels Institute for Statistics and Analysis (Brussels Perspective-BISA)
• Brussels Intercommunal Transport Company (STIB/MIVB)
• and many others …

INSPIRE

This stands for INfrastructure for SPatial InfoRmation in the European community.

“ INSPIRE “, a symbolic name for a European directive striving to simplify the access to and the exchange, sharing and use of spatial information.

This directive is meant to support the European Commission’s environmental policies and policies or activities that could have an impact on the environment. The directive came into effect on 15 May 2007, and applies to the digital geographic data held by the public sector. The public sector must distribute and share its data, from reference or basic data to environmental themes. Conversely, the sector must not collect any new data.

What are the basic principles?

• Any geographic data must only be collected once. The most competent (public) authority is responsible for producing, updating and sharing a given spatial fact.
• Data collected by a public authority must be shared with the other institutions of the public sector.
• It must be easy for anyone to know what geographic information is available, what needs it can fulfil, how the information can be obtained and used.
• It must be easy and possible to combine and share geographic data (regardless of their source) throughout Europe, between various users and Geographic Information System (GIS) applications.

What obligations stem from that?

• Describe the geographic data and the available services and their possible uses (metadata);
• Simplify the use of geographic data for everyone (by standardising and harmonising their format and their structure);
• Services to transform geographic data sets so as to make sure they are interoperable;
• Make these data available (e.g. through the Internet) by creating a range of services that enable the user to:
1. search the available data and the terms to access them;
2. visualise the data;
3. transform the data to ensure their interoperability ;
4. download data.

Terms of use

Using this portal is subject to compliance with the general terms of use. By accessing this portal, you declare having knowledge of and having accepted without reserve these general terms.