Michael Lutz is a scientific officer in the "Digital Earth and Reference Data" unit at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. Michael's research interests include the semantic modeling of geospatial data and processes to support the discovery, access, and re-use of geographic information. As the technical and data modelling contact point for the INSPIRE [1] data specifications, he has been supporting the work of 19 expert groups to ensure cross-thematic harmonisation of the INSPIRE data models and cross-cutting architectural consistency with other aspects of INSPIRE (e.g. metadata, services and registries). He has been applying INSPIRE principles to the wider domains of e-Government and the Semantic Web as co-chair of the Core Location Vocabulary Working Group [2] and the W3C Location and Addresses Community Group [3] and in the context of the EU Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations (ISA) Programme [4]. Michael has a PhD in geoinformatics from the University of Münster, Germany.