Major events like the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany or the Floriade 2012 in Venlo often cause considerable traffic problems. Traffic jams, additional parking spots, evacuation routes, special trains or road blocks are just a few of the concerns involved with such functions. This is why cross-border information and coordination is especially important for large-scale events in regions close to the border.

An investor is looking for a site for a new works. Unaware that an ideal supplier is located just across the border, he decides against the location in the border town. Of course, this is a fictional example. Until now, however, it has not been possible to find out about industrial estates across national borders from a single source. The same applies for the agricultural business, especially with the two major markets of Venlo and Straelen.

Just a few metres away, in a different country, there is a water reserve, agricultural land and two cities with various conditions, restrictions and industrial applications. How clean can the groundwater be if fertilisers are used extensively just a few metres away? This example illustrates the importance of cross-border co-operation in land planning.

What do these three examples have in common? They show how quickly problems can arise and how they could be avoided in advance if people share geographic information across borders.

The “Cross-border Geographic Information (GI-X)” programme was started in the Euregio Rhein-Maas-Nord to promote co-operation in four main areas:

• Agricultural business,
• Industrial estates,
• Land planning and
• Transportation.

In this cross-border collaboration, a geodata infrastructure is to be established which links and geographic information with specialised technical information and makes this available to users. This system will also assist decision makers in the development of possible solutions to issues and questions like those mentioned earlier in this article. This cross-border co-operation will be put into practice in topic groups specialised in the areas listed above. All of these developments focus on applications based on geographic information. We will publish reports on specific applications developed in this region here soon.

For more information, see the press releases issued by Bezirksregierung Düsseldorf and Provincie Limburg, as well as the presentations in the download area.