Creating a Multilingual Geospatial Thesaurus: GEOSS Societal Benefit Areas Translations for Italian, Spanish, French and Slovenian

The Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) Societal Benefit Areas (SBAs) are a set of terms of interest for the development of global spatial data infrastructures. These SBAs form a two level hierarchy (categories and subcategories) ranging from natural disasters to human health. The SBAs are used widely by international geographic information sharing initiatives and policy makers. One of the uses of the SBAs is to allow users to search a spatial data infrastructure for resources that relate to the theme of interest (category or subcategory) selected. However, the SBAs are currently only specified in English. In this paper, we provide a translation of the SBAs into Italian, Spanish, French, and Slovenian in order to support multilingual search, and we underline the issues involved in the translation. Since some of these issues seem to be strictly related to a few discrepancies present in the original version of the SBAs, this paper also proposes a revision of the original set of terms in English

Uporaba programskega okolja R v prostorskih analizah

R is a powerful and increasingly popular programming language with strong graphical and presentation features and large expanŽdability. Although primarily intended for statistical computing, R has paved its way to the field of GIS through the development of specialized extension packages. It offers a wide range of functions at all GIS levels: data acquisition, data manipulation, graphical reŽpresentation and quantitative analysis. The paper presents R as an open source alternative to the existing commercial GIS software. It proves especially well when advanced quantitative methods on spatial data are needed (e.g. spatial modelling). We demonstrate R capabilities through spatial analysis of forest area in Snežnik (South Slovenia), where the possibilities of data import, conversion and export into various GIS formats and possibilities of geostatistics, spatial modelling and spatial visualization are demonstrated.R je zmogljiv in vse bolj priljubljen programski jezik s poudarjenimi grafičnimi in predstavitvenimi funkcijami ter veliko možnostjo razširitve. Čeprav primarno namenjen statističnemu računanju, si je R z razvojem specialnih razširitvenih knjižnic utrl pot tudi na področje GIS. Omogoča široknabor funkcij na vseh ravneh GIS: na nivoju zajemanja podatkov, na nivoju manipulacije podatkov ter na nivoju grafičnih predstavitev in kvantitativnih analiz. V prispevku predstavljamo R kot odprtokodno alternativoobstoječim komercialnim GIS- orodjem, ki se izkaže še posebno tedaj, kadar želimo na prostorskih podatkih upoŽrabiti zahtevnejše kvantitativne metode (npr. prostorska modeliranja). Prikazujemo ga na primeru prostorskih analiz gozdŽnega območja na Snežniku (južna Slovenija), kjer demonstriramo možnosti vnosa podatkov, transformiranja in shranjevanja različnih GIS-podlag, možnosti geostatistike, prostorskega modeliranja in prostorske vizualizacije

Assessing the capability of multi-scale drought datasets to quantify drought severity and to identify drought impacts: An example in the Ebro Basin

Assessing the risk, the severity and the likely evolution of droughts are key tasks for improving preparedness of regions prone to drought conditions, and mitigation of drought consequences. The access to real-time and high-quality climatic information is essential for this purpose. Different climatic databases are being developed and made available on real time by climatic research institutions, but their capability for quantifying droughts characteristics including severity, or spatio-temporal variability, is uncertain given their low spatial resolution. In this study, we assessed the capability of three databases with contrasted spatial resolution for measuring spatial and temporal variability of drought occurrence. The standardized precipitation index, calculated for each database, showed that the low resolution datasets allow an acceptable measurement of the magnitude, intensity and duration of droughts, while failing mostly in detecting the spatial patterns of the specific drought episodes. Moreover, the capability of the datasets for assessing the impacts of droughts on surface hydrology and tree growth was examined. Results confirmed the usefulness of the drought index for assessing drought impacts on water resources and forest ecosystems even when low resolution databases are used. © 2012 Royal Meteorological Society.This work has been supported by the research projects CGL2008-01189/BTE, CGL2011-27574-CO2-02 and CGL2011-27536 financed by the Spanish Commission of Science and Technology and FEDER, EUROGEOSS (FP7-ENV-2008-1-226487) and ACQWA (FP7-ENV-2007-1-212250) financed by the VII Framework Programme of the European Commission, ‘Efecto de los escenarios de cambio climático sobre la hidrología superficial y la gestión de embalses del Pirineo Aragonés’ financed by ‘Obra Social La Caixa’ and the Aragón Government and Influencia del cambio climático en el turismo de nieve, CTTP01/10, Financed by the Comisión de Trabajo de los Pirineos.Peer Reviewe

Drought management center for South-eastern Europe: development of sub-continental drought monitoring in South-eastern Europe

  The evolution of geographic information systems towards the web services model has motivated development of interoperable monitoring systems on various spatial levels and in different societal benefits areas. The focus of this study is on presentation of implementation of interoperability arrangement in EuroGEOSS framework on Drought management centre for South-eastern Europe (DMCSEE). Interoperability arrangements are offering drought community broad range of possibilities for advanced monitoring of spatial and temporal development of drought occurrence. The case of development and implementation of interoperability arrangements in DMCSEE architecture is quite indicative for a large number of spatial monitoring systems in South-eastern Europe (SEE) because it is addressing problems connected with big differences in development of drought monitoring systems in the region, inefficient meteorological observing network and semantic barriers in multilingual Balkan Peninsula.