 The portal offers free access to an important collection of regional geospatial information, it contains detailed descriptions of thousands of spatial datasets, and connects the user to a great variety of maps and geographic services operated and maintained by participating institutions from 24 countries.The Portal has a complete data base of metadata that describes the spatial data that have been developed by the participating institutions.This data base is connected to similar catalogues operated by these institutions and is periodically updated through an automatic metadata collection mechanism.