Simon Barlow Joins INSPIRE Experts Panel

Following a competitive process, Simon Barlow, a director of Intelligent Addressing, has been selected as an Expert by the EU INSPIRE team. As the UK local government nominee, Simon will be part of the ‘Buildings\' Technical Working Group (TWG), tasked with the development of the Buildings theme data specification for annex three of the EU INSPIRE Directive.

As National Custodian for the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG), Simon has extensive and detailed knowledge of the processes behind recording and maintaining property information. He will be bringing this experience to the Building TWG as well as representing the interests of the local government community.

The selection criteria took into consideration the domain knowledge of the experts as demonstrated by their CVs. The Commission received over 320 offers for experts and close to 600 pieces of reference material for the Annex II and III themes.

Through INSPIRE the EU is creating a consistent framework for sharing information about the environment across European countries. There are 34 different data themes ranging from addresses, buildings, administrative units, environmentally protected areas, to atmospheric conditions and land use.

When complete this information can be used by any government organisation across Europe to enable strategic planning and service delivery for a variety of uses. This includes emergency planning, flooding and transport planning, regeneration and sustainable economic development and local service planning.

A surveyor with a Masters in Property Valuation and Law, Barlow joined Intelligent Addressing in 2000 from a background in property asset management and geographic information. He has been instrumental in the wider adoption of the NLPG by local authorities across England and Wales.