S.L. 552.31 Art. 2Interpretation.

For the purpose of these regulations and unless the context otherwise requires:

"the competent authority" means the Planning Authority;

"Directive" means the Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14th March, 2007 establishing an Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE) and includes any other European Union rules and regulations implementing the Directive;

"infrastructure for spatial information" means meta-data, spatial data sets and spatial data services; network services and technologies; agreements on sharing, access and use; and coordination and monitoring mechanisms, processes and procedures established, operated or made available in accordance with these regulations;

"INSPIRE Geo-portal" means an internet site, or equivalent, providing access to the services referred to in these regulations;

"interoperability" means the possibility for spatial data sets to be combined, and for services to interact, without repetitive manual intervention, in such a way that the result is coherent and the added value of the data sets and services is enhanced;

"meta-data" means information describing spatial data sets and spatial data services and making it possible to discover, inventory and use them;

"public authority" means:

(a) any government or other public administration, including public advisory bodies, at national, regional or local level; SPATIAL INFORMATION

(b) any natural or legal person performing public administrative functions under national law, including specific duties, activities or services in relation to the environment; and

(c) any natural or legal person having public responsibilities or functions, or providing public services relating to the environment under the control of a body or person falling within paragraphs (a) or (b):

Provided that when bodies or institutions are acting in a judicial or legislative capacity, they shall not be regarded as a public authority for the purposes of these regulations;

"spatial data" means any data with a direct or indirect reference to a specific location or geographical area;

"spatial data services" means operations which may be performed, by invoking a computer application on the spatial data contained in spatial data sets or on the related meta-data. These regulations shall also cover spatial data services related to the spatial data sets covered by these regulations;

"spatial data set" means an identifiable collection of spatial data which:

(a) are in electronic format;

(b) relate to one (1) or more of the themes listed in the First, Second and Third Schedules;

(c) are held by or on behalf of a public authority;

(d) relate to Maltese territory, including territorial waters, or adjacent marine areas; and

(e) are held by public authorities provided that their collection or dissemination falls within the scope of its public tasks:

Provided that, spatial data sets not held by public authorities, but which meet the requirements of a spatial data set, shall be covered by these regulations if the national geo-portal has been made available to the holder of such data:

Provided further that, public authorities may only take action regarding spatial data sets on which a third party holds intellectual property rights with the consent of that third party: Provided also that, in cases where multiple identical copies of the same spatial data set are held by or on behalf of several different public authorities, these regulations shall only cover the reference version from which copies are derived;

"spatial object" means an abstract representation of a real-word phenomenon related to a specific location or geographical area;

"third party" means any natural or legal person other than a public authority.