The project ‘Integration and coordination of the electricity system with other systems (in particular gas and water) and analysis of needs, availability, performance and costs of storage systems’ has among its specific objectives that of preparing an information structure suitable for analyses and modelling studies concerning integrated energy systems; this structure should also provide a comprehensive framework of local references, including technological, territorial and socio-economic constraints, ultimately offering a combined and transversal vision of energy systems in the territory.

The activity carried out in this first phase concerns the preparation of a geographic database aimed at collecting, in a well-structured and transparent way, all the territorial information necessary to describe and model the energy system at different spatial scales. The prototype created, named GeoDB ETA (geographic database of Energy, Territory and Environment) has an interface for downloading and mining data of interest, and was preliminarily fed with data from the current version of Ai:SEN (Integrated Atlas for the National Energy System, developed in a previous System Research project); this data were re-arranged into a new structure to allow for easy and correct updates so as to ensure interoperability with other systems.

Particular attention was paid to the storage structure of the data relating to the ISTAT administrative borders, which have a high annual variability in both demographic and geometric terms. For each data or variable present in the GeoDB ETA, a metadata was created that reflected the guidelines of EU INSPIRE directive, using an appropriate template. For viewing and download data from GeoDB ETA, a prototype web interface has been created that allows for different search methods (text search, spatial search and search by thematic area) and export of data in geographic format, via an internet browser. In addition to the activity carried out for the development of the GeoDB, this document reports the maintenance and data updating activity of the Integrated Atlas, in which additional functions and new information layers have been inserted, and access monitoring, which in 2019 recorded a significant number of new users.