A web GIS based study for managing mangroves of Krishna Delta, Andhra Pradesh, India

Mangroves are one among the most productive ecosystem which provide a wide range of services to the coastal people, which includes the provision of food and timber products and coastal defense services by reducing risk from coastal hazards. Several research found that mangrove forests have been degraded throughout the world since 80s onwards due to anthropogenic factors and India is no exception for the same. The current study was conducted in the Krishna’s wetland, which is located in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh (AP), South India, India. The Mangroves of Krishna is second largest mangrove ecosystem in AP, fifth in East coast, eighth in India and it is rich in biodiversity but highly vulnerable because of anthropogenic and natural factors which makes this study area very scared. Information on Krishna mangroves and their geospatial information are owned by different institutions to build this geospatial dataset as open to access everyone. The WebGIS is a latest advancement and hybrid of GIS and Internet technologies for the dissemination of the geospatial datasets and its variations through the web. The main objective of the current study is to develop and demonstrate a WebGIS using open source software and integrate geospatial datasets of the mangroves of Krishna into WebGIS platform and to analyse and assess areas that are degraded by influenced parameters and in need of sustainable management.The result revealed that the area of mangroves in Krishna was decreased from 2,454 ha in 1990 to 1,363 ha in 2000 to 1,339 ha in 2011. On the other hand the areas of mangroves in the Krishna delta were increased to about 678 ha from 1990 to 2000 and 2,230 ha from 2000 to 2011. It may be pointed out that the variation in mangrove covers in the study area due to land use conversion for different purposes and mangroves provides coastal defense services by reduce risk of coastal hazards. It is may be concluded that this WebGIS study is very useful and unique because it is sharing data through internet to everyone as it save money, time and data duplication, which are needed to different stakeholders such as researchers, decision makers, planners for the sustainable management of mangrove ecosystem

An Interactive WebGIS Framework for Coastal Erosion Risk Management

The Italian coastline stretches over about 8350 km, with 3600 km of beaches, representing a significant resource for the country. Natural processes and anthropic interventions keep threatening its morphology, moulding its shape and triggering soil erosion phenomena. Thus, many scholars have been focusing their work on investigating and monitoring shoreline instability. Outcomes of such activities can be largely widespread and shared with expert and non-expert users through Web mapping. This paper describes the performances of a WebGIS prototype designed to disseminate the results of the Italian project Innovative Strategies for the Monitoring and Analysis of Erosion Risk, known as the STIMARE project. While aiming to include the entire national coastline, three study areas along the regional coasts of Puglia and Emilia Romagna have already been implemented as pilot cases. This WebGIS was generated using Free and Open-Source Software for Geographic information systems (FOSS4G). The platform was designed by combining Apache http server, Geoserver, as open-source server and PostgreSQL (with PostGIS extension) as database. Pure javascript libraries OpenLayers and Cesium were implemented to obtain a hybrid 2D and 3D visualization. A user-friendly interactive interface was programmed to help users visualize and download geospatial data in several formats (pdf, kml and shp), in accordance with the European INSPIRE directives, satisfying both multi-temporal and multi-scale perspectives. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerlan

DEVELOPMENT OF AN EFFICIENT APPROACH OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL HERITAGE IN THE INTERTIDAL ZONE OF THE BELGIAN NORTH SEA

[EN] The knowledge of the submerged cultural heritage in the North Sea is rather limited. The Belgian North Sea is being used for a lot of different purposes, such as fishing, aggregate extraction, wind farms, dredging, etc. Due to these increasing economic activities, the underwater archive is in danger. In the context of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage of 2001, gathering more information about the submerged cultural heritage in the intertidal zones of the North Sea is one of the main objectives of the Belgian scientific project ‘SeArch’. It will give a clearer picture of the broader cultural and archaeological heritage in the region and it can be used as a basis for a sustainable management by government agencies. The Department of Geography (Ghent University, Belgium) contributes to the SeArch project in two ways. First, an innovative survey methodology has been developed which allows an accurate and cost-efficient evaluation of the archaeological potential in the intertidal zones of the Belgian beaches. Secondly, the Department of Geography is developing an interactive webGIS platform, which makes it possible to share, integrate and visualize the gathered archaeological and environmental data and information in a user-friendly way. Hereby, the total potential of this project is fully exploited in a time-efficient manner. To create an interactive webGIS platform, a good structured spatial database is needed. It enables manipulation of a wide variety of georeferenced information in both raster and vector formats. This paper provides more information about the configuration and application of the spatial database. Moreover, it focusses on the development of a fully functional Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) using the most reliable, powerful and state-of-the-art technological components. Besides, a new way of collecting geomatic data in a fast and accurate manner will be discussed. Some processing results will show the possibilities for detecting and visualizing underground structures and archaeological objects.Decock, M.; Stal, C.; Van Ackere, S.; Vandenbulcke, A.; De Maeyer, P.; De Wulf, A. (2016). DEVELOPMENT OF AN EFFICIENT APPROACH OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL HERITAGE IN THE INTERTIDAL ZONE OF THE BELGIAN NORTH SEA. En 8th International congress on archaeology, computer graphics, cultural heritage and innovation. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 138-145. https://doi.org/10.4995/arqueologica8.2015.3554OCS13814

Proceedings of the 3rd Open Source Geospatial Research & Education Symposium OGRS 2014

The third Open Source Geospatial Research & Education Symposium (OGRS) was held in Helsinki, Finland, on 10 to 13 June 2014. The symposium was hosted and organized by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Aalto University School of Engineering, in partnership with the OGRS Community, on the Espoo campus of Aalto University. These proceedings contain the 20 papers presented at the symposium. OGRS is a meeting dedicated to exchanging ideas in and results from the development and use of open source geospatial software in both research and education.  The symposium offers several opportunities for discussing, learning, and presenting results, principles, methods and practices while supporting a primary theme: how to carry out research and educate academic students using, contributing to, and launching open source geospatial initiatives. Participating in open source initiatives can potentially boost innovation as a value creating process requiring joint collaborations between academia, foundations, associations, developer communities and industry. Additionally, open source software can improve the efficiency and impact of university education by introducing open and freely usable tools and research results to students, and encouraging them to get involved in projects. This may eventually lead to new community projects and businesses. The symposium contributes to the validation of the open source model in research and education in geoinformatics

ISPRS-SHY – OPEN DATA COLLECTOR FOR SUPPORTING GROUND TRUTH REMOTE SENSING ANALYSIS

Abstract. The 2021 Scientific Initiatives in ISPRS funded this project called ISRS-SHY from "SHare mY ground truth". It was intended as a collector of geographic data to support image analysis by sharing the necessary ground truth data needed for rigorous analysis. Regression and classification tasks that use remote sensing imagery necessarily require some control on the ground. The rationale behind this project is that often data on the ground is collected during projects, but is not valued by sharing across projects and teams globally. Internet has improved the way that data are shared, but there are still limitations related to discoverability of the data and its integrity. In other words, data are usually kept in local storage or, if in an accessible server, they are not documented and therefore they will not be picked up during search. In this initiative we created a portal using the Geonode environment to provide a hub for sharing data between research groups and openly to the community. The portal was then tested within the framework of three projects, with several participants each. The data that was uploaded and shared covered all types of geographic data formats and sizes. Further sharing was done in the context of teaching activities in higher education.The results show the importance of creating easy means to find data and share it across stakeholders. Qualitative results are discussed, and future steps will focus on quantitative assessment of the portal's usage, e.g. number of registered users in time, number of visits, and other key performance indicators. The results of this project are to be considered also in light of the effort in the scientific community to make research data available, i.e. FAIR - Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reuse of digital assets

Information-Communication Technologies as an Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) Tool for Sustainable Development

Sustainability is a crucial and at the same time vital approach for satisfying future generations’ rights on natural resources. Toward this direction, global policies, supported by international organizations such as UNESCO and its international science programs, foster sustainable development as principal concept for the management of various thematic areas including the environment. The present work promotes the integration of information-communication technologies (ICTs) in the water resources management field as a state of the art concept that sets the basis for sustainable development at global scale. The research focuses on the ICTs contribution to the evolution of scientific and technological disciplines, such as satellite earth observations, real time monitoring networks, geographic information systems, and cloud-based geo information systems and their interconnection to integrated water resources management. Moreover, selected international research programs and activities of UNESCO International Hydrology Programme (IHP) are synoptically but comprehensively being presented to demonstrate the integration of the technological advances in water resources management and their role toward sustainable development

WebGIS applied to improve spatial knowledge of high school students

This research seeks to design and implement a WebGIS application allowing high school students to work with information related to the disciplinary competencies of the competency-teaching model, in Mexico. This paradigm assumes knowledge to be acquired through the application of new technologies and to link it with everyday life situations of students. The WebGIS provides access to maps regarding natural risks in Mexico, e.g. volcanism, seismic activities, or hurricanes; the prototype's user interface was designed with special emphasis on scholar needs for high school students

Acquiring vulnerability indicators to geo-hydrological hazards: An example of mobile phone-based data collection

Abstract Geo-hydrological risk reduction is a key issue for local governments in Italy. In this context, a collaboration was undertaken between multiple actors in the La Spezia municipality aimed at: (i) monitoring building characteristics, using specific and valuable indicators, and (ii) increasing the knowledge of geo-hydrological hazards across residents and local land planners (iii) implementing local emergency civil protection plan. An extensive mobile data collection was carried out through apps specifically developed for Android and IOS mobile devices. The digital forms were differentiated on the basis of the potential hazard: one of 46 fields and one of 125 fields designed for buildings respectively located in flood prone areas and in medium to very high landslide susceptibility areas. The digital version of the forms was designed using the Open Data Kit (ODK) and GISCloud client-server approach. All the collected data, including geospatial locations and images, were automatically sent to a central server, stored and organized in a database. Geospatial data-analysis and maps resulted useful in evaluating possible impacts to exposed buildings to potential geo-hydrological processes. The proposed public participation method for data-gathering increased the knowledge across residents providing a better understanding of the urban systems, of the buildings condition and their relation respect to the geo-hydrological risk. The method can be considered as part of the decision support systems for civil protection purposes to better planning geo-hydrological mitigation measures. The application of mobile technology for data collection can be effectively used when local government resources are limited