GAOS: Spatial optimisation of crop and nature within agricultural fields

This paper proposes and demonstrates a spatial optimiser that allocates areas of inefficient machine manoeuvring to field margins thus improving the use of available space and supporting map-based Controlled Traffic Farming. A prototype web service (GAOS) allows farmers to optimise tracks within their fields and explore planning alternatives prior to downloading the plans to their RTK GPS-guided steering system. GAOS retrieves accurate data on field geometry from a geo-database. Via a web interface, the farmer sets options regarding operation properties, potential locations for field margins and headlands, etc. Next, an optimisation script that employs an open source geospatial library (osgeo.ogr) is called. The objective function considers costs involved with un-cropped areas, turning at headlands and subsidies received for field margins. Optimisation results are stored in a database and are available for (1) viewing via the web interface, (2) downloading to the GPS-guided steering system and (3) communication to third parties

Can WFS-T replace SQL ?

Background With the advent of rich internet applications (RIA’s), part of processing has been transferred from the server to the client. However, many geo-spatial applications still require serverside access to a geodatabase to select and manipulate data using SQL. It would be profitable if these actions could be handled by an out of the box serverside component, thus eliminating the need for the development of a custom serverside component. Can OGC standards like WMS and WFS play a role here? Since WFS-T provides select, insert, delete and update methods much like SQL, it was decided to investigate whether the WFS-T implementation specification could replace SQL when developing complex geo-spatial applications. Or is SQL still needed? Method To answer this research question, this approach was tested during the development of several tailor made internet GIS applications: - a wheater and crop growth monitoring system; - a discussion support system for the water domain; - a national cultural heritage portal. Results Filtering and manipulating serverside data by WFS-T using the OpenGIS Filter Encoding Standard (FES) fullfills the needs to a large extent. Almost all of the desired functionality is there. There is one major limitation: FES lacks the ability to define a filter expression based on a joined table. Dependant on the implementation a work around may be available. Xml-schemas support 1-to-many relationships. They can be implemented as a joined table, which as a result can be queried. For larger datasets - a couple of ten thousand records or more - WFS-T tends to end up with a bad performance. Larger datasets should be processed serverside. Downloading large amounts of data and processing them clientside is too time-consuming. Compared to SQL WFS-T has less possibilities to influence the serverside performance. So for performance reasons SQL stays inevitable to handle larger datasets

Samenwerkingsproject Frysk Ynformaasjesysteem Greidefûgels : voorstudie

In de provincie zijn veel mensen op de een of andere manier betrokken bij bescherming of het monitoren van weidevogels. Helaas blijkt dat de gegevens die door al die mensen zijn en nog steeds worden verzameld elkaar niet altijd aanvullen. De provincie zou hier graag verandering in aanbrengen en heeft daarvoor een samenwerkingsverband opgericht waarbij alle partijen die weidevogelgegevens verzamelen zijn betrokke

D3.4 + D3.6: Annex 2 Results logistical case studies Aragon

In the S2Biom project the logistical case study in Burgundy was the first that wasperformed. The data were based on the results of the LogistEC project, which had already performed a thorough assessment of the case. Therefore, the S2Biom case study was especially used to develop the new tool LocaGIStics, and to illustrate the possibilities of such a new logistical tool in combination with an existing tool, the BeWhere model. So the results of the case study were not primarily intended to further assess the real life case or to advise an actual company for taking decisions on their biomass supply chain yet.The BeWhere model has been applied for the case study of Burgundy in order toidentify the optimal locations of bioenergy production plants. It should be emphasized that the locations of the plants were highly driven by the location and amount of the demand of heat over the transport collection of the feedstock at least for this particular case study. The collection points of the biomass are nevertheless very well concentrated around the production plants. Anyhow to validate those results, LocaGIStics is a valuable tool for the simulation of the feedstock collection from the plants determined from BeWhere. The quality check controls the feedstock collection, capacity and therefore the validity of the chosen location.The LocaGIStics model has especially been developed using the Burgundy casestudy. Several logistical concepts have been tested in the Burgundy case. These are:i) mixing different biomass types (straw as a biomass residue and Miscanthus as an energy crop), ii) applying pretreatment technology (pelletizing) to densify the material in order to lower the transportation costs and increase handling properties, iii) switching between different types of transport means (truck and walking floor vehicle)and iv) direct delivery to a power plant versus putting an intermediate collection point in the value chain. Due to the nature of this development case less value should be given to the exact results of the five variants that are described in this report. However, these variants are perfect examples of what effects can be achieved if the set-up of a lignocellulosic biomass value chain is changed, even if that change is only slightly. So the case was used successfully to build a first version of the locaGIStics tool. However, many improvements are still possible and could be achieved in future project cases

Usability of Discovery Portals

As INSPIRE progresses to be implemented in the EU, many new discovery portals are built to facilitate finding spatial data. Currently the structure of the discovery portals is determined by the way spatial data experts like to work. However, we argue that the main target group for discovery portals are not spatial data experts but professionals with limited spatial knowledge, and a focus outside the spatial domain. An exploratory usability experiment was carried out in which three discovery portals were assessed by five participants representing the main target group “the professional outside the spatial domain”. The aim was to accept or reject our proposition that discovery portals are difficult to use for non-GIS specialists, and to identify the main obstacles in the interface. The Think Aloud Protocol was used to conduct the test. The participants were asked to perform the same search task in three discovery portals. Performance, accuracy and emotional response of the participants were assessed. Given the language constraints and the concise task the differences between the discovery portals were found to be relatively small. We conclude that for all portals indexing and underlying techniques are well implemented. The content of metadata is a point of concern. We recommend that more attention should be given to the requirements and expectations of the end-user and the discoverability of the data sets when creating metadata. But most of all the design and implementation of the client interface should be improved

Online hulp bij mozaïekbeheer

De term mozaïek wordt al ongeveer tien jaar in het weidevogelbeheer gebruikt en is vast onderdeel van het collectieve weidevogelbeheer. Staatsecretaris Bleker gaf in oktober 2011 in antwoord op Kamervragen over de weidevogelstand aan dat hij hier veel van verwacht. De vraag is evenwel hoe je nu kunt beoordelen of een mozaïek goed is. Om dat op een praktische en eenduidige manier te kunnen doen is Beheer-op-Maat (BoM) ontwikkeld, een online kennissysteem waarmee beheerders kunnen zien of hun beheer voldoet voor het in stand houden van de nagestreefde aantallen grutto's