The IGN’s vocation 

The Institute’s main vocation is to describe the surface and land use of the national territory, from a geometric and physical perspective, and also to work out and update the permanent inventory of the national forest resources. 

The Institute makes all appropriate representations thereof, distributes them and archives this information. This way, the IGN contributes to development planning, sustainable development, environmental protection, national defense, civil security and risk prevention, as well as to the promotion and standardization of national and international applications of geographic information and French forest policy. 

New head office of IGN and Météo-France  

The new Institute’s objectives

The main goal of this merge is to benefit from joined skills within the new Institute, in order to increase the capacity of description of the surface and land use of the national territory, and of the forest resources inventory, in favour of public policies and development planning activities or sustainable development.  

Not only does the new Institute keep all the missions of both previous establishments, but it also gains new remits. 

Specifically, the Institute is in charge of : 

• implementing the national geographic information infrastructure, 

• making the forest map a digital system of reference,

• implementing  programs for observation and monitoring of the ecosystems, 

• providing information that contributes to define, implement and evaluate national policies, concerning ecology, energy, forest, development planning, prevention of climate change,

• implementing and running the state portal INSPIRE.

More about the IGN, pdf 3.65 Mb 
More about INSPIRE, pdf 1.23 Mb