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ReSAC experts engaged in the Danube Strategy

ReSAC experts are actively involved the development of common resources for a territorial planning for the cross-border area between Bulgaria and Romanian, which comprises large part of Lower Danube. The work is in the scope of a Cross-Border Cooperation (CBC) Project “Common Strategy for Sustainable Territorial Development of the cross-border area Romania-Bulgaria”, funded by the European Regional Development Fund.

The Bulgarian Agency for Sustainable Development and Eurointegration (ASDE) is the leading partner of the work package, related to the development of a comprehensive spatial database for the cross-border area for the needs of the elaboration of common strategy for sustainable territorial development. The project started in February 2012 and will end in February 2014.

The detailed technical activities comprise a setting-up and development of systems and information services allowing the integration of the new, harmonized spatial databases and services with the existing information systems at county/district level. The database will ensure the necessary data for a comprehensive set of indicators at NUTS 3, 2 and LAU (local administration unit) level.

A particular output of the project will be the generation of detailed common land cover database for the cross-border area, built-up on the base of the philosophy of the Land Cover Meta Language (ISO 19144-2) and fully in compliance with INSPIRE principles. Common specification will ensure efficient cross-border analysis and reporting.

In parallel to that, ASDE and ReSAC initiated a technical collaboration with the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC) in Ispra within the scope of the Danube Strategy, and in relation to the CBC project. The MARS Unit of JRC currently prepares a set of activities, aiming to provide a methodological support in various land monitoring aspects of the project, such as:

  • Use of the CAP management tools (LPIS, CwRS …) as a successful example of ‘project’ development and good governance practice of EU fund expenditure
  • Land cover classification and harmonization approaches (TEGON concept, test-bed of INSPIRE data specification for land cover – Annexes F and G).
  • Tool to extract land cover information from IACS data (land cover/land use, indicators, geo-referenced statistics).
  • Selection of relevant indicators (agri environment indicators, urban indicators).


Fig. 1: Reference Land cover and Land Use (LC/LU) Layer for the Danube border area of Bulgaria, scale 1:50 000

Source ReSAC