Sparx Systems recently attended the INSPIRE Conference in Florence to present the CEN/TC 287 Award for Academic Excellence in INSPIRE for the third year. This year the Award went to Aurete Pereira and Gabriel Luís of Laboratório Nacional de Energia e Geologia, and Pedro Cabral of Instituto Superior de Estatística e Gestão de Informação, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. 

The winning project "Implementation of the INSPIRE Directive in digital geological map production in Portugal" focussed on the elaboration of a harmonization approach applied to the geological datasets of Portugal in order to bring them in line with INSPIRE Implementing Rules. Ms Pereira noted, “the project development task was made easier through the availability of tools such as Enterprise Architect and the recently added ArcGIS profile.” This is the second consecutive year that a Portuguese university has received the award. 

Sparx Systems' ArcGIS plug-in was developed in conjunction with CSIRO and supports the creation of visual UML models of ArcGIS geodatabases. Visualizing geodatabase designs, facilitates traceability of geospatial systems to the broader enterprise model, communicates geospatial design concepts to a wide audience of stakeholders and leverages model driven architecture.