In order to ensure interoperability for all different platforms and operating systems used by partners, we introduced strict guidelines about formats to be used for both data and documents.

All formats used to exchange geo data of any kinds among partners must be INSPIRE compliant and based on OGC (Open GIS Consortium) recommendations, in order to ensure easy interoperability, even when different programs are used. Also, keep in mind that target sites are localized in various areas of the globe, so a global coordinate reference system should be preferred.

• Preferred format (up to 4GB): multiband/multifile GeoTiff
• Reference ellipsoid/datum: WGS84
• Reference plane projection: UTM (zone depends on area considered → to be detailed later)
• Optional Color table: 24 bits (note that only 8 bit LUTs per band are supported by *all* programs)
• Always provide a companion world file (.TFW) to allow at least a rough localization for people who do not use GIS tools

• Use NULL/ALPHA whenever reasonable/useful
• You have to adopt a suitable tiling for big grids (> 4.GB) and possibly provide a vector skeleton of the tiles boundings in geo coordinates
• Avoid as much as possible proprietary formats (e.g. ECW, Kakadu, MrSid, etc.)
• Eventually ask for advice before providing/ordering data

• Vector formats: shapefile and/or KML
• Reference ellipsoid/datum: WGS84
• Reference plane projection: UTM (zone depends on area considered → to be detailed later)
• Provide an OGC WKT (or .PRJ) companion file.
• Avoid non ANSI 7bits ASCII encoding for alphanumeric data, or use UTF8 just in case.

• Italy: 33-34N
• Portugal: 28-29N
• Brasil: 21-22S
• Greece: 34-35N

Geographic data can be manipulated using quite a lot proprietary and free tools, available on different platforms. Each tool is capable of managing at different levels of usability/flexibility most of the common formats and all formats suggested in this policy.

• Grass GIS
• Qgis
• SagaGIS
• Mapwindow
• Monteverdi
• Gdal/FWtools

• TatukGIS
• Erdas Titan Viewer

• ESRI ArcGis
• ITT Envi/IDL
• Erdas Imagine

BIOSOS documents have to be provided in ISO/IEC 32000-1:2008 Portable Document Format (PDF) for all (read-only) deliverables. It is strongly suggested to use the ISO/IEC 26300:2006 Open Document Format (ODF) for all internal use editable documents (text, presentations and spreadsheets), which could be shared among partners. The reference platform for that is Open/LibreOffice 3.2+. MS Office 2007 SP2 has native ODF support, even. (previous versions have ODF plugins supported). That would avoid usual mess among different platforms and versions of proprietary formats and tools.