Binding and planned community regulations regarding INSPIRE and other documents resulting from work on INSPIRE have forced the member countries to implement new or updated regulations. The purpose of creating the spatial information infrastructure was to unify the exchange of geographical data at the national and international levels, create transparent and favorable conditions for the use of geographical data, facilitate decision-making and develop business activity, and, as a consequence, facilitate the creation of the INSPIRE geoportal by the European Research Center (JRC) of the European Commission, which aims be the central hub of the European spatial information infrastructure. Land management systems use layers from geoportals and are also a data source because their task is to develop sustainable space development. The article presents the rules for implementing EU directives in Poland and Italy at various levels of detail and examines access to data and spatial information infrastructure. A comparative analysis of geoportals was performed in terms of the functionality and availability of free data (types of data) at national and local levels in terms of verification of compliance with the Ubiquitous Public Access Context Information Model (UPA) defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 19100. National geoportals (Polish Geoportal 2 and the Italian-Geoportale Nazionale) and Municipal Spatial Information Systems from the cities of Olsztyn and Bari were compared.

Cultural heritage is a very important element affecting the sustainable development. To analyze the various forms of spatial management inscribed into sustainable development, information on the location of objects and their concentration at specific areas is necessary. The main goal of the article was to show the possibility of using various GIS tools in modeling the distribution of historical objects. For spatial analysis, it is optimal to use the point location of objects. Often, however, it is extremely difficult, laborious, expensive, and sometimes impossible to obtain. Thus, various map content generalizations were analyzed in the article; the main goal was to find the level for which the data with an acceptable loss of accuracy can be generalized. Such analyses can be extremely useful in sustainable heritage management. Article also shows how cultural heritage fits into the sustainable heritage management. The research included non-movable monuments in Poland. The obtained results showed the universality of this type of research both in the thematic sense (can be used for various types of objects) and spatial sense (can be performed locally, at the country level, or even at the continental level).

Motives: The problem of measuring the level of sustainable development is a subject addressed by many authors in their research. Aim: In this article the Authors proposed a new method of classifying objects based on Jenks’ Natural Breaks to measure the level of sustainable development. The analysis was carried out on the basis of the data obtained from Statistics Poland. An important element of the research was the development of the process of selection and rejection of input data on the basis of a variety of statistical indicators. This resulted in a set of data which, on the one hand, is statistically justified and, on the other, describes the examined phenomenon in a comprehensive way. Results: The research objects were 66 Polish district cities; Authors obtained a ranking of cities in terms of its Sustainable Development Level. The authors decided to verify the correlation of the results obtained from a proposed method of classifying objects based on natural breaks, with those from the chosen taxonomic method (Hellwig’s method) and the Classic Ranking. The fact of receiving highly correlated results confirms the validity and reliability of the proposed method.

Climate change resulting from global warming has an increasing impact on Earth. The resulting sea level rise is starting to be noticed in some regions today, and based on projections, could have severe consequences in the future. These consequences would primarily be felt by residents of coastal areas, but through the potential for irreparable damage to cultural heritage sites, could be significant for the general public. The primary aim of the research undertaken in this article was to assess the threat to cultural heritage objects on the case study area of Tri-City, Poland. A review of available elevation data sources for their potential use in analyses of sea level changes was required. The selection of the optimal data source for the cultural heritage threat analysis of historic sites was carried out. The analyses were conducted for three scenarios, using ArcGIS Pro 2.7 software. A series of maps were thus prepared to show the threats to specific historic sites for various global sea level rise scenarios. Even with the slightest rise in sea level, monuments could be permanently lost. The authors point out that a lack of action to stop climate change could result not only in economic but also cultural losses.

Sustainable rural development (with the development of social functions) is currently one of the basic objectives of the rural areas policy in Poland. The main purpose of this article is to determine the level of social development of rural areas and to examine whether the National Support Center for Agriculture (NSCA) activities (in the form of transferring land to communes for the implementation of social goals) have an impact on that development, and to what extent. In this article, an assessment of the social development level of rural areas using the Hellwig method was carried out. The research covered the years 2005 and 2018, on the districts of the Warmian-Masurian voivodship located in the northeastern part of Poland. The detailed analysis also covered the rural and rural-urban communes of Lidzbark, Kętrzyn, and Bartoszyce districts. The obtained results were compared with the area of land transferred by the NSCA Regional Office Olsztyn to local government units in 2004–2017, for the implementation of social goals. Pearson’s correlation coefficient was used for a comparison. The results are presented in tabular form and visualized using GIS software in the form of carto-diagrams (diagram maps). Results show a positive influence of NSCA on social development of rural areas.

The cultural heritage objects of each country should have a major impact on the development of space. Unfortunately, most often the investment needs prevail and only the most precious historical objects are protected. Thus often a monument is preserved, but its surroundings (which put it in context) are lost forever. This article addressed the issues of cultural heritage in relation to the spatial planning system in Poland. The legal bases for the protection of monuments and their compounds are discussed along with statutory requirements for space planning. On selected examples located in Warmia and Mazury (Poland) an analysis of the planning records connected with the protection of cultural heritage is also presented. The authors refer to the effectiveness of these records and their actual executive power, as well as indicate the needed legal changes leading to historical objects having a real impact on the change in land use planning.