Geospatial Standardized Services for Integration of Weather Data Coming From Public and Voluntary Stations

The observation of the meteorological phenomena has evolved over the time time in the course of continuous technological change: - Visual reading and manual annotations. - The use of automated equipment which register and transmit observations. - The implementation of remote sensing - Algorithms that allow defining weather values. At the same time, all of those processes are some of the actual meteorological data sources. Despite of this, it is well known that the best weather values at surface are observed by stations located on earth, but this type of observations have the inconvenience of a low geographic distribution. An alternative information source for climate values at ground level could be the Volunteer Weather Observations (VWO) Networks. In Spain, we have detected several VWO networks covering an important area. But all of them have their own several features which imply complexity at working with all networks at the same time

Lluvia en tiempo real y sistema de alerta temprana por deslizamientos para Centro América, en base a imágenes de Satélite NOAA y aplicaciones con ArcObjects

Central America confronts countless properties damages and invaluable lost in human lives because of natural phenomena like hurricanes and landslides. The frequency of these events increases and the governmental authorities need some analysis tools that combined with geo-spatial information allow avoiding a disaster. In consequence, since July 2006, BGR (Federal Institute of Geo-sciences and Natural Resources of Germany) and INETER (Nicaraguan Institute for Territorial Studies) work together in an Early Warning System for landslides in Central America. The System can be consulted by Web and is based on ArcObjects and C Sharp programming languages. From NOAA satellite images information of rainfall is obtained automatically. Since January 2007, this information have been processed and stored in an ArcSDE Geodatabase. The information of rainfall can be displayed in accumulated of 1,3,6,12 and 24 hours through a web map service. The system also is connected with the national network of meteorological stations therefore is possible to evaluate the precision of the NOAA estimations. In October 2007, the tool was used for monitoring the rainfall during Hurricane Felix. And was useful to know the rainfall in areas where doesn’t exist meteorological stations. Now the challenge is to combine the information of the rainfall, geological data, land use and slopes to establish thresholds for prediction of landslides. The thresholds will be calibrated with the landslides registered during the 2008

Análisis de las Observaciones sub-hora de la Radiación Solar registrada por las Estaciones Meteorológicas Voluntarias de la red MeteoClimatic

Enriquecer el conocimiento sobre la Radiación Solar (RS) a nivel del suelo es de gran interés para diferentes aplicaciones meteorológicas entre ellas el área de las energías renovables como la energía solar. La interpolación de observaciones de RS por estaciones en tierra, los sensores remotos y la ejecución de distintos modelos son algunas de las formas que existen para obtener valores de RS con continuidad espacial en el terreno. Aunque se sabe que los mejores valores de RS en la superficie son los observados por estaciones terrestres, este tipo de observaciones presentan como desventaja una baja distribución geográfica. En este trabajo se propone el uso de estaciones meteorológicas de voluntarios no oficiales (Meteoclimatic, Weather, Underground, Weather, Link, CWOP) las cuales son fuentes de Información Geográfica por Voluntarios (Volunteered Geographic Information - VGI) que proporcionan sus observaciones RS en tiempo real a través de Internet como una alternativa para densificar la disponibilidad y distribución espacial de las observaciones por RS a nivel superficial. En este trabajo se desarrolla una metodología que contempla tanto la recolección de las observaciones, como su alineación temporal para finalizar con el análisis de los datos indicando sus valores de incertidumbre a medida que se integra en una Base de Datos que integra las distintas fuentes de datos utilizadas. Los resultados indican que el error RS relativo entre las estimaciones por satélite y las observaciones en superficie no es constante a lo largo del día y por tanto debe analizarse mediante agrupaciones. También se ha observado que dicho error puede verse afectado por la localización de la estación meteorológica, en concreto se ha apreciado una relación directa entre el error relativo y la diferencia entre las longitudes de la ubicación de las estaciones superficiales en tierra y el satélite. Ésta misma comparación siguiere que es correcto considerar el uso de Meteoclimatic (la red Voluntaria tomada como piloto) como una fuente de observaciones de la RS importante al presentar un error esperado y aportar aproximadamente 10 veces más estaciones meteorológicas RS que la red oficial en España aportando un buen precedente para la integración de más redes voluntarias en la densificación de observaciones de la RS con estaciones en tierra

Development of a GIS Application for seismic vulnerability and earthquake damage studies in Nicaragua

A GIS based software is presented which permits the estimation of seismic vulnerability and the presentation of results in digital maps for single houses, groups of buildings, parts of settlements or even complete towns

RISe: Illustrating geo-referenced data of seismic risk and loss assessment studies using Google Earth.

Predicting the consequences of large earthquakes to the built environment is of high importance for disaster control, civil protection and emergency planning. A number of software tools are now available to estimate physical building damage and associated losses in terms of casualties and economic losses. In recent years, SELENA, a seismic risk and loss assessment software which makes use of the capacity spectrum method (CSM) has been developed into a widely applicable tool. Since SELENA functions independently from a Geographic Information System, we developed RISe (Risk Illustrator for Selena), a standalone tool that illustrates SELENA files in Google Earth. RISe is customized to the Selena file structure and allows easy conversion of all geographically referenced files such as building inventory data, soil conditions, ground motion values, as well as final risk and loss results. RISe is distributed as public domain open-source software that allows the user to take full advantage of Google Earth’s features including high-resolution satellite images from nearly every built environment worldwide

Interactive web visualization tools to the results interpretation of a seismic risk study aimed at the emergency levels definition

Results of a seismic risk assessment study are often applied and interpreted by users unspecialised on the topic or lacking a scientific background. In this context, the availability of tools that help translating essentially scientific contents to broader audiences (such as decision makers or civil defence officials) as well as representing and managing results in a user-friendly fashion, are on indubitable value. On of such tools is the visualization tool VISOR-RISNA, a web tool developed within the RISNA project (financed by the Emergency Agency of Navarre, Spain) for regional seismic risk assessment of Navarre and the subsequent development of emergency plans. The RISNA study included seismic hazard evaluation, geotechnical characterization of soils, incorporation of site effects to expected ground motions, vulnerability distribution assessment and estimation of expected damage distributions for a 10% probability of exceedance in 50 years. The main goal of RISNA was the identification of higher risk area where focusing detailed, local-scale risk studies in the future and the corresponding urban emergency plans. A geographic information system was used to combine different information layers, generate tables of results and represent maps with partial and final results. The visualization tool VISOR-RISNA is intended to facilitate the interpretation and representation of the collection of results, with the ultimate purpose of defining actuation plans. A number of criteria for defining actuation priorities are proposed in this work. They are based on combinations of risk parameters resulting from the risk study (such as expected ground motion and damage and exposed population), as determined by risk assessment specialists. Although the values that these parameters take are a result of the risk study, their distribution in several classes depends on the intervals defined by decision takers or civil defense officials. These criteria provide a ranking of municipalities according to the expected actuation level and eventually, to alert levels. In this regard, the visualization tool constitutes an intuitive and useful tool that the end-user of the risk study may use to optimize and guide its application on emergency planning. The use of this type of tools can be adapted to other scenarios with different boundary conditions (seismicity level, vulnerability distribution) and user profiles (policy makers, stakeholders, students, general public) maintaining the same final goal: to improve the adaptation of the results of a scientific-technical work to the needs of other users with different backgrounds

e-Report Generator Supporting Communications and Fieldwork: A Practical Case of Electrical Network Expansion Projects

In this piece of work we present a simple way to incorporate Geographical Information System tools that have been developed using open source software in order to help the different processes in the expansion of the electrical network. This is accomplished by developing a novel fieldwork tool that provides the user with automatically generated enriched e-reports that include information about every one of the involved private real estates in a specific project. These reports are an eco-friendly alternative to paper format, and can be accessed by clients using any kind of personal device with a minimal set of technical requirements

Diseño de Servicios Web para generar mapas de estimación de daños causados por riesgos naturales

ontinuamente daños materiales y desgraciadamente también humanos. Las herramientas de simulación/cálculo que modelan/estiman los daños causados por los riesgos naturales, necesitan datos geográficos de distinta temática (geología, tipologías constructivas asociadas a los bienes inmuebles, datos meteorológicos, etc.) y tradicionalmente éstas herramientas operan con datos locales. En esta ponencia se presenta una propuesta de diseño de arquitectura de servicios Web OGC para generar mapas de estimación de daños causados por movimientos sísmicos sutilizando una metodología desarrollada para Centro América. También se presentan otros desarrollos realizados para explotar mediante servicios Web OGC información meteorológica que pueda ser utilizada para generar mapas de riesgos naturale

Estándares OGC en el flujo de trabajo para la implantación de nuevas instalaciones eléctricas.

El desarrollo de la red de transporte de energía eléctrica implica la construcción de nuevas instalaciones de alta tensión, cuya materialización sobre el territorio implica la afección sobre una serie de propiedades inmuebles. El documento resultante de la combinación de la información geográfica catastral, la información de afección de la nueva instalación y la información de propietarios de las parcelas se llama Relación de Bienes y Derechos afectados (RBD). Las especificaciones y estándares del Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) habilitan, a través de internet, ambientes distribuidos e interoperables para compartir el acceso a juegos de datos y funcionalidad relacionados con información geográfica. Con el objetivo de estandarizar el flujo de trabajo de creación de RBDs, minimizar plazos de ejecución y aumentar la fiabilidad de los resultados, se promueve el uso de estándares del OGC. El presente trabajo muestra la metodología de generación de RBDs desarrollada en Red Eléctrica de España (REE)

The Development of an Empirical Workflow Process for Mapping Affected Communities of the Hurricane Felix, Nicaragua, 2007

In September 2007, the Hurricane Felix devastated the North-eastern of Nicaragua, near the Caribbean coast. The hurricane heavily affected about 400 communities from a total of 777 registered in this region. As part of the post-disaster relief measures, INETER (The National Geosciences Institute) in collaboration with other Nicaraguan agencies was requested to elaborate a GIS-based inventory for the analysis of the impact of the hurricane. The information about the affected communities by Hurricane Felix was gathered by the Civil Defence of the Nicaraguan Army. Unfortunate, the field staff had no GPS available, and in the best cases, the national topographic maps have been used to reference the affected settlements. Problems of georeferencing made it necessary to create an empirical workflow process in order to produce the affectation maps using several information sources. This paper describes the approach developed to design a workflow that allows the georeferencing of 64% of the reported sites. The remaining 36% were at least identified as belonging to a certain community in or near the affectation zone indicated