New perspectives in INSPIRE application for environmental protection in Italy

On the 22nd of January 2010, Italy has approved the Legislative Decree that transposes Directive 2007/2/CE, opening a new phase in the use of the INSPIRE principles, rules and infrastructures in the Italian contest. The present paper will focus mainly on the use of the INSPIRE National infrastructures in the daily development and application of environmental policies. The impact of the new organisational model as designed by law will be analysed as well. In previous works, the project DIVA of the Italian Ministry for Environment and Land and Sea Protection has been described. In this paper, the validity and usability of the results of this a project from the technician point of view will be analysed more deeply. The basic idea of the DIVA project has been to give fast and certified access to spatial, territorial and environmental information needed for environmental analyses, in particular for Environmental Impact Assessment. The project has put together technological developments, in line with INSPIRE rules as developing, with users requirements. At the present moment, the Italian infrastructure is under development and it is interesting to check and analyse perspectives and problems of the sharing mechanism among public authorities, in particular at local level. Italy is characterised by the presence of more than 8100 municipalities, most of which are very small but with the same administrative burdens of the big municipalities. In this contest, it is important to check how INSPIRE infrastructure can help in practise the activities of the small municipalities and in particular those related to development of territorial plans and relative environmental reports. In fact, in parallel with Directive 2007/2/CE, the transposition of Directive 2001/42/CE is obliging municipalities to deal with SEA without being well prepared for this job.