Every person who uses a product, wants to be sure that it works as expected, wants to trust in the product. This is no different for spatial data products. Quality of geo-information is being assured by means of independent validation, which is a key requirement for users and producers for providing and working with data of known quality. Validation is a key for evaluating fitness-of-purpose of the information for a particular application. Quality assured validation must follow the principles of transparency, traceability, independence, accessibility and representativeness (QA4EO).
We generally differentiate between “quality assurance” or “verification” which is a process put in place during the production process to ensure a correct production flow with pre-defined quality milestone. On the other hand “quality control” or “validation” is the quantitative assessment of the product by means statistical accuracy figures using independent reference information.
At national level space4environment has been responsible for the quality control of the Luxembourg national land cover database (OBS – Occupation Biophysique du Sol) and parts of the validation of the Land Information System Austria (LISA).
Experts of space4environment have also been involved in the independent thematic validation of the first Copernicus Urban Atlas data commissioned by DG ENTR.
For the GIO / Copernicus activities space4environment is responsible for the technical quality assurance of the GIO High Resolution Layers for “Water” and “Wetlands”, the Urban Atlas and the assessment of the quality of the GIO New Grassland Layer.