Product-level INSPIRE metadata no longer provided
The INSPIRE Directive, which entered into force in May 2007, established a European framework for spatial data infrastructure and standardised the description of spatial datasets. Terrascope has followed this directive for its geospatial satellite data collections.
INSPIRE-compliant metadata were also generated at individual product level, which was not strictly required by the directive. These product-level INSPIRE xml files provide limited additional information compared to the collection-level metadata, with a few exceptions such as geographic bounding boxes and acquisition and publication dates. All essential product-level metadata are already embedded in the products themselves.
Transition to STAC metadata from March 2026
With the transition of the Terrascope catalogue to the STAC format, important product-level metadata will be part of the STAC product metadata in JSON format, making the product-level INSPIRE metadata redundant.
Terrascope will therefore stop producing INSPIRE metadata at product level and encourages users who rely on these files to switch to the STAC metadata, which can be queried very easily. The removal of existing product-level INSPIRE metadata will take place from 1 March 2026 onwards.
