RAPID WEBGIS DEVELOPMENT FOR EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT

The use of spatial data during emergency response and management helps to make faster and better decisions. Moreover spatial data should be as much updated as possible and easy to access. To face the challenge of rapid and updated data sharing the most efficient solution is largely considered the use of internet where the field of web mapping is constantly evolving. ITHACA (Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action) is a non profit association founded by Politecnico di Torino and SITI (Higher Institute for the Environmental Systems) as a joint project with the WFP (World Food Programme). The collaboration with the WFP drives some projects related to Early Warning Systems (i.e. flood and drought monitoring) and Early Impact Systems (e.g. rapid mapping and assessment through remote sensing systems). The Web GIS team has built and is continuously improving a complex architecture based entirely on Open Source tools. This architecture is composed by three main areas: the database environment, the server side logic and the client side logic. Each of them is implemented respecting the MCV (Model Controller View) pattern which means the separation of the different logic layers (database interaction, business logic and presentation). The MCV architecture allows to easily and fast build a Web GIS application for data viewing and exploration. In case of emergency data publication can be performed almost immediately as soon as data production is completed. The server side system is based on Python language and Django web development framework, while the client side on OpenLayers, GeoExt and Ext.js that manage data retrieval and user interface. The MCV pattern applied to javascript allows to keep the interface generation and data retrieval logic separated from the general application configuration, thus the server side environment can take care of the generation of the configuration file. The web application building process is data driven and can be considered as a view of the current architecture composed by data and data interaction tools. Once completely automated, the Web GIS application building process can be performed directly by the final user, that can customize data layers and controls to interact with the

MSUO Information Technology and Geographical Information Systems: Common Protocols & Procedures. Report to the Marine Safety Umbrella Operation

The Marine Safety Umbrella Operation (MSUO) facilitates the cooperation between Interreg funded Marine Safety Projects and maritime stakeholders. The main aim of MSUO is to permit efficient operation of new projects through Project Cooperation Initiatives, these include the review of the common protocols and procedures for Information Technology (IT) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). This study carried out by CSA Group and the National Centre for Geocomputation (NCG) reviews current spatial information standards in Europe and the data management methodologies associated with different marine safety projects. International best practice was reviewed based on the combined experience of spatial data research at NCG and initiatives in the US, Canada and the UK relating to marine security service information and acquisition and integration of large marine datasets for ocean management purposes. This report identifies the most appropriate international data management practices that could be adopted for future MSUO projects

A Geographic Database Design for Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response

The international humanitarian assistance community responds to a wide variety of crises and disasters that are challenging in their variability, scale, timelines, resources, and politics. The implementation of a geographic database model, or Geodatabase, of geographic information resources will provide emergency responders with a functional relational database to support disaster response missions. The Geodatabase will be compact and deployable, improve functionality and efficiency, reduce error, increase standardization, and record an institutional knowledge base. Distributing the Geodatabase model in the form of a WebGIS website can additionally facilitate organizational communication and decision-making during the phases of emergency management by providing a thematic attribute query search capability. This Project will serve as a proof-of-concept design for future potential implementation and enhancement of the recommended models. The December 26, 2004 tsunami disaster in Indonesia and the surrounding region is the primary study area for this project. The recommendations outlined in this Project will help to support the initial data delivery steps of future humanitarian assistance and disaster response missions

DEVELOPMENT OF A WEBGIS FOR UNIVERSITY CAMPUS USING AN APPROACH BASED ON USER-CENTRED DESIGN TECHNIQUES

The techniques that seek to attend the user’s needs in a product’s development, like the Requirements Engineering (RE) and the User-Centred Design (UCD) have been increasingly used in different areas. The RE is a computer science area that seeks the development of methods and techniques to software elaboration, while the UCD is an iterative design process, where designers focus on users and place them at the center of the development process. This study approached the application of these techniques to developing a WebGIS oriented to university applications. In this research an interface to the WebGIS was proposed, with an application to assist the navigation in indoor and outdoor environments. The study case was applied in Polytechnic Center campus of Federal University of Paraná (UFPR). The interface was evaluated through tests with users, using tasks that allowed to explore its functionality. The methodology used was elaborated by Brooke (1996) to measure the usability through the System Usability Scale (SUS), and the classification of this scale adopted by Bangor, Kortum and Miller (2009) and Sauro (2011). The results show punctuation indices based on the SUS, what indicated that the use of UCD techniques allow to improve the interface development in a WebGIS

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

"Whose data is it anyway?" The implications of putting small area-level health and social data online

International audienceThe planetary exospheres are poorly known in their outer parts, since the neutral densities are low compared with the instruments detection capabilities. The exospheric models are thus often the main source of information at such high altitudes. We present a new way to take into account analytically the additional effect of the radiation pressure on planetary exospheres. In a series of papers, we present with an Hamiltonian approach the effect of the radiation pressure on dynamical trajectories, density profiles and escaping thermal flux. Our work is a generalization of the study by Bishop and Chamberlain (1989). In this second part of our work, we present here the density profiles of atomic Hydrogen in planetary exospheres subject to the radiation pressure. We first provide the altitude profiles of ballistic particles (the dominant exospheric population in most cases), which exhibit strong asymmetries that explain the known geotail phenomenon at Earth. The radiation pressure strongly enhances the densities compared with the pure gravity case (i.e. the Chamberlain profiles), in particular at noon and midnight. We finally show the existence of an exopause that appears naturally as the external limit for bounded particles, above which all particles are escaping

Open Web Services: new tools for Medievalist Historians to manage and share their research work

The research project presented in this paper regards a joint cooperation between Medievalist Historians and Geomatics experts. The idea was to study if new tools based on Geomatics technologies could provide Historians with new methods to develop their studies, archiving digital data in a geo-database and “spatializing” the information sources to produce maps in a GIS environment. So, in the first part of the project, a GIS was designed and implemented based on data collected from documents preserved in the Italian National Archives. Afterwards, the problem of data integration and sharing among research groups working on Medieval History was dealt with, in order to make data available for the consultation and query by several research groups. Three approaches based on a client-server architecture have been explored: one is typical of the WebGIS architecture; the second one is based on OGC Web services and the third one exploits a Web page while the GIS tools are provided by a Desktop GIS installed locally on a PC. In the paper, the different approaches will be described, in order to underline advantages and disadvantages with respect to the Historians' requirements

Construction of trace element in coal of China Database Management System: based on WebGIS

The combination of geographic information system and mineral energy data management is helpful to promote the study of mineral energy and its ecological damage and environmental pollution caused by its development and utilization, which has important application value. The Trace Elements in Coal of China Database Management System (TECC) is established in this paper, applying the techniques of B/S three-layer structure, Oracle database, AJAX and WebGIS. TECC is the first database system which aims at managing the data of trace elements in coal in China. It includes data management and analysis module, document management module, trace elements in coal data maintenance module and authority management module. The data entry specification is put forward in the present study and the spatial data is included in TECC system. The system achieves the functions of data query, analysis, management, maintenance and map browsing, thematic map drawing as well as satellite video display, which lay the foundation for the analysis of large data of trace elements in coal. It is a practical platform for the acquisition, management, exchange and sharing of trace element research and geochemical research data of coal