Benefit of GEOSS Interoperability in Assessment of Environmental Impacts Illustrated by the Case of Photovoltaic Systems

International audienceAssessment of environmental impacts of a power system exploiting a renewable energy needs a large number of geographically-dependent data and of technological data. These data are located in various sources and available in various formats. To avoid the burden of data collection and reformatting, we exploit the interoperability capabilities set up in GEOSS and combine them with other GEOSS-compliant components proposed by projects funded by the European Commission. This is illustrated by the case of photovoltaic systems. A Web-based tool links the various sources of data and executes several models to offer various impacts factors in different areas: human health, climate change, primary energy, ecosystems

Environmental impact assessment of electricity production by photovoltaic system using GEOSS recommendations on interoperability

International audienceWithin the Architecture Implementation Pilot (AIP-3) of GEOSS, we have developed a scenario called "environmental impact assessment of the production, transportation and use of energy for the photovoltaic (PV) sector through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)". It aims at providing decision-makers and policy-planners with reliable and geo-localized knowledge of several impacts induced by various technologies of the PV sector. The scenario is implemented in the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI) and benefits from the GEOSS interoperability arrangements. The FP7-co-funded EnerGEO project provides a GEOSS compliant Catalogue Service for the Web (CSW) that permits to discover the Web Processing Service (WPS) allowing computation of the environmental impact. A WebGIS client provided by the FP7-co-funded GENESIS platform allows users to interact with geospatial data and computation processes. This scenario has proven to be an efficient tool to disseminate knowledge on environmental impacts related to PV because of the GEOSS capabilities in interoperability

EuroGEOSS: An interdisciplinary approach to research and applications for forestry, biodiversity and drought

GEOSS envisions a future wherein decisions and actions for the benefit of humankind are informed by coordinated, comprehensive and sustained Earth observations and information. Ultimately, this requires the ability to integrate information across scientific domains to address issues at regional and global levels. EuroGEOSS, an EC-sponsored FP7 project, has built an initial operating capability (IOC) in the three strategic areas of drought, forestry and biodiversity to facilitate and demonstrate multi-disciplinary applications. EuroGEOSS has implemented a brokering service that allows finding and accessing data from a wide range of standards and domainspecific practices including the use of a semantically rich querying capability. The paper presents the functionalities achieved by EuroGEOSS. The paper also presents the impact of advanced services through an assessment of societal benefits of the extended information availability

Geospatial Web Services, Open Standards, and Advances in Interoperability: A Selected, Annotated Bibliography

This paper is designed to help GIS librarians and information specialists follow developments in the emerging field of geospatial Web services (GWS). When built using open standards, GWS permits users to dynamically access, exchange, deliver, and process geospatial data and products on the World Wide Web, no matter what platform or protocol is used. Standards/specifications pertaining to geospatial ontologies, geospatial Web services and interoperability are discussed in this bibliography. Finally, a selected, annotated list of bibliographic references by experts in the field is presented

Facilitate Visualization and Distribution of NASA\u27s Environmental Science Data through Open Standards and Open Source Software for Geospatial

This paper introduces the utilization of open standards and open source software for visualization and distribution of geospatial environmental science data at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center (ORNL DAAC). The ORNL DAAC is one of the NASA Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) data centers. A big challenge for the ORNL DAAC (https://daac.ornl.gov) is to efficiently manage over a thousand heterogeneous environmental data, collected through field campaigns, aircraft/satellite observations, and model simulations. ORNL DAAC also has to provide tools to easily find, visualize, and access the heterogeneous data. To address this challenge, the ORNL DAAC has leveraged Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards and open source software to develop the Spatial Data Access Tool (SDAT, https://webmap.ornl.gov/ogc). SDAT is a suite of open standards-based web mapping, subsetting, and transformation services and applications that allow users to visualize and download geospatial data in customized spatial/temporal extents, formats, and projections. The open source MapServer/Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) powers the backend OGC Web services of SDAT. Open source Javascript libraries, including OpenLayers, GeoExt, and proj4js, were used to create the SDAT Web User Interface and MapWidget, a light-weight Javascript library that allows SDAT visualization to be easily embedded on any webpage. SDAT also provides KML files to enable interactive data visualization in the popular Google Earth application or any KML-compatible client. SDAT provides a common framework and standard service interfaces for ORNL DAAC data holdings. SDAT user interface hides their heterogeneity from end users, and promotes their usage. SDAT facilitates integration of ORNL DAAC data resources with other related data systems. In 2016, SDAT served more than 2 million mapping requests and 72 thousand customized data downloads from over 2500 distinct data users

Next-Generation Digital Earth: A position paper from the Vespucci Initiative for the Advancement of Geographic Information Science

This position paper is the outcome of a joint reflection by a group of international geographic and environmental scientists from government, industry, and academia brought together by the Vespucci Initiative for the Advancement of Geographic Information Science, and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. It argues that the vision of Digital Earth put forward by Vice-President Al Gore 10 years ago needs to be re-evaluated in the light of the many developments in the fields of information technology, data infrastructures, and earth observation that have taken place since. It focuses the vision on the next-generation Digital Earth and identifies priority research areas to support this vision. The paper is offered as input for discussion among different stakeholder communities with the aim to shape research and policy over the next 5-10 years

Communicating thematic data quality with web map services

Geospatial information of many kinds, from topographic maps to scientific data, is increasingly being made available through web mapping services. These allow georeferenced map images to be served from data stores and displayed in websites and geographic information systems, where they can be integrated with other geographic information. The Open Geospatial Consortium’s Web Map Service (WMS) standard has been widely adopted in diverse communities for sharing data in this way. However, current services typically provide little or no information about the quality or accuracy of the data they serve. In this paper we will describe the design and implementation of a new “quality-enabled” profile of WMS, which we call “WMS-Q”. This describes how information about data quality can be transmitted to the user through WMS. Such information can exist at many levels, from entire datasets to individual measurements, and includes the many different ways in which data uncertainty can be expressed. We also describe proposed extensions to the Symbology Encoding specification, which include provision for visualizing uncertainty in raster data in a number of different ways, including contours, shading and bivariate colour maps. We shall also describe new open-source implementations of the new specifications, which include both clients and servers

La interoperabilidad legal en bioinformática a partir de la experiencia norteamericana y la europea : ¿es posible la interoperabilidad legal a nivel global?

"La interoperabilidad legal en bioinformática a partir de la experiencia norteamericana y la europea: ¿es posible la interoperabilidad legal a nivel global?". A través de la comparativa de dos marcos normativos: el europeo y el estadounidense, se realiza un análisis de la interoperabilidad legal -es decir, de las fórmulas para lograr reducir o eliminar las restricciones jurídicas a las que está sometido el flujo de datos digitales-, en un ámbito concreto: la bioinformática, un campo en el que confluyen muchas ciencias y distintos tipos de datos: científicos, económico-sociales e incluso de humanidades. Y lo hace Abordar dicho análisis requiere una contextualización de sus dos componentes básicos: por un lado, la regulación de las nuevas tecnologías de la información (en particular las de carácter infraestructural) y los principios que regulan el flujo masivo de datos científicos; por otro lado, la regulación de la conservación del uso sostenible de la diversidad biológica. El primer marco de contextualización se estructura en torno a lo que ha supuesto, para el derecho europeo y el norteamericano, la digitalización y la economía del conocimiento. Partiendo del análisis del nacimiento de Internet y los efectos que ello ha tenido, examina la aparición de nuevas formas de gestión del conocimiento: las e-infraestructuras y la utilización por las mismas de los datos digitales y su regulación: el concepto mismo de dato, de su propiedad, si es que son apropiables y su protección por parte de aquellos que los generan y organizan. Y, en particular, lo hace estudiando los nuevos sistemas (open access, public access, open data, open science, etc.) todo ello en el contexto de una nueva cultura de data sharing. El segundo marco de contextualización se construye en torno al derecho global de la diversidad biológica que se inicia a principios de los años 70 y se plasma en la Convención para la Diversidad Biológica de 1992. La Plataforma Intergubernamental sobre Biodiversidad y Servicios de los Ecosistemas (IPBES) como, un paso más, es el instrumento que trata de recoger el testigo de la CDB cuyo órgano subsidiario científico, creado por la Convención, no acabó de funcionar correctamente, siendo sustituido, o mejor dicho, completado, por dicha Plataforma. Después de esta doble contextualización, estudia, en profundidad, el impacto de la aplicación de las nuevas tecnologías a la conservación de la biodiversidad; es decir, la confluencia de ambos contextos en la creación de instrumentos de bioinformática (la aplicación de la informática a la biodiversidad). Aborda, para ello, el análisis de la creación de la Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) y, sobre todo, de la elaboración y publicación del Global Biodiversity Informatics Outlook (GBIO): Delivering Biodiversity knowledge in the Information age, en el marco de la reunión de los 100 expertos de bioinformática. Dos proyectos europeos dentro del marco de los Programas FP7 y H2020 han permitido estudiar en detalle, de qué manera se están aplicando todas las cuestiones teóricas a la realidad y formas de abordar la interoperabilidad legal en el funcionamiento de las infraestructuras de biodiversidad. Antes de analizar el funcionamiento de dichas infraestructuras se estudia también GEO BON como instrumento de observación de biodiversidad enmarcado en el Grupo de Observación de la tierra (GEO). Precisamente el segundo de los proyectos acaba de finalizar el 31 de mayo de 2018, momento en el cual también se cierra el análisis con la incorporación de las conclusiones finales como anexo de la tesis

Using satellite remote sensing to quantify woody cover and biomass across Africa

The goal of quantifying the woody cover and biomass of tropical savannas, woodlands and forests using satellite data is becoming increasingly important, but limitations in current scientific understanding reduce the utility of the considerable quantity of satellite data currently being collected. The work contained in this thesis reduces this knowledgegap, using new field data and analysis methods to quantify changes using optical, radar and LiDAR data. The first paper shows that high-resolution optical data (Landsat & ASTER) can be used to track changes in woody vegetation in the Mbam Djerem National Park in Cameroon. The method correlates a satellite-derived vegetation index with field-measured canopy cover, and the paper concludes that forest encroached rapidly into savanna in the region from 1986-2006. Using the same study area, but with radar remote sensing data from 1996 and 2007 (ALOS PALSAR & JERS-1), the second paper shows that radar backscatter correlates well with field-measured aboveground biomass (AGB). This dataset confirms the woody encroachment within the park; however, in a larger area around the park, deforestation dominates. The AGB-radar relationships described above are expanded in the next paper to include field plots from Budongo Forest (Uganda), the Niassa Reserve (north Mozambique), and the Nhambita Community Project (central Mozambique). A consistent AGB-radar relationship is found in the combined dataset, with the RMSE for predicted AGB values for a site increasing by <30 %, compared with a site-specific equation, when using an AGB-radar equation derived from the three other sites. The study of the Nhambita site is extended in the following paper to assess the ability of radar to detect change over short time periods in this environment, as will be needed for REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation). Using radar mosaics from 2007 and 2009, areas known (from detailed ground data) to have been degraded decreased in AGB in the radar change detection, whereas areas of agroforestry and forest protection showed small increases