International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructures Research (Joint Research Centre of the European Commission)
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Multi-Disciplinary Forest Fire Danger Assessment in Europe: The Potential to Integrate Long-Term Drought Information
Get PDFA key motivation for multi-disciplinary collaborations is the inclusion of data and knowledge from contributing disciplines for the further development of existing models. The objective of this research is to evaluate the potential of using drought information from the European Drought Observatory (EDO) to complement the forest fire danger assessment of the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS). Drought conditions are provided through the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), which is a spatially invariant and probabilistic year-round index based on precipitation alone. For verifying the hypothesis that drought information can improve the danger assessment of forest fires, we statistically analyse the correspondence between multi-timescale drought condition information with the incidence of forest fires. Within this paper, we perform a detailed comparative analysis of the SPI frequencies for burnt areas with the respective SPI frequencies for the total study area during the same period. The research is carried out in the Iberian Peninsula for the reference year 2009, using the burnt areas mapped by the EFFIS Rapid Damage Assessment. The results clearly show that the frequencies of burnt areas in Iberian Peninsula relate to the regions with abnormal 24-month accumulated precipitation totals, as mapped by the SPI. This suggests that the long-term lack of water contributes to vegetation dryness in the region and thereby increases its risk of fire danger. The added value of including drought information in the fire danger assessment lies in particular outside the forest fire season, when it provides complementary information on areas under risk that are not necessarily marked with a high fire risk following the risk assessment of EFFIS. Based on the results of the study, we suggest an operational integration of drought information coming from EDO into EFFIS using the existing web service infrastructure
A multidisciplinary research framework for analysing the spatial enablement of public sector processes
Get PDFAlthough Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) is a complex concept with many facets, it is widely recognised that SDIs are about facilitating and coordinating spatial information flows. This paper argues that the analysis of spatial information flows should not be separated from the processes in which they are embedded. The paper presents the development of a multidisciplinary research framework to study the spatial enablement of public sector processes, and the application of this research framework in a case study on zoning planning in Flanders (Belgium). The paper demonstrates the applicability of the proposed research framework for enhancing our understanding of factors that may influence the role of spatial information in public sector processes. The identification of these decisive factors may contribute to the further advancement of SDI as an enabling platform
Shibboleth Access Management Federations as an Organisational Model for SDI
Get PDFShibboleth is an open source implementation of the OASIS standard Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML). Shibboleth Access Management Federations (AMFs) are used daily around the globe by millions of users – mainly in the academic realm – in order to securely exchange the identity information necessary to make authorisation decisions concerning protected web resources. AMFs are typically comprised of a number of entities, eg, organisations working together to achieve a set of shared objectives while each member retains control over its own internal affairs. There are three main categories of entities: identity management is devolved to individual member organisations who act as Identity Providers, Service Providers are established by organisations wanting to make protected resources available, and finally, there is a small Coordinating Centre. Principally through the European Spatial Data Infrastructure Network (ESDIN) project and the OGC Web Service (OWS) Shibboleth Interoperability Experiment, it has been established that Shibboleth provides a production strength, standards based, open source, interoperable mainstream IT solution to the problem of how to implement AMFs around the OWS central to SDI’s. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated using a prototype federation of INSPIRE compliant services established under ESDIN that this can be done without modifications to either mainstream Shibboleth or OWS. However, non browser based clients require adaptation. Various options exist as to how the main actors within a European SDI/Federation may organise themselves in order to realise the objective of allowing authorised users from key organisations, eg, EU bodies concerned with environmental policy formation, seamless access to harmonised protected geospatial information through OWS. This paper proposes that a parallel security infrastructure is necessary to realise SDI where protected resources are involved and gives an account of work undertaken demonstrating how Shibboleth based AMF’s meet this need
Using Balanced Scorecard for Evaluation of Spatial Data Infrastructures: A Case Study in accordance with INSPIRE
No full textSpatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) have been identified as essential for environmental management and development activities around the world. The development of frameworks to monitor and evaluate SDIs is currently an important research area. This study proposes Balanced Scorecard (BSC) as a framework for evaluating and monitoring the implementation of SDIs. The concept and advantages of BSC for strategy implementation are described in the paper. Furthermore, a general framework for the evaluation of Swedish NSDI in line with the INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe) directive is presented. The case study shows that BSC is suitable for evaluating Swedish NSDIs and the results can be used by other SDIs
ATLAS of INSPIRE – conceptualizing SDI implementation through an inventory of experiences, successes and headaches of European national mapping agencies
No full textThe paper describes the current results of a EuroSDR (European Spatial Data
Research) project ‘Atlas of INSIPRE implementation methods’. Aim of the
project was to make an inventory of experiences when implementing INSPIRE. This
inventory shows the variance and communalities regarding the implementation
of INSPIRE by national mapping agencies and national INSPIRE contact points.
This inventory formed the basis for the generation of the prototype Atlas for
all national mapping agencies, policy makers and other stakeholders who have to
implement INSPIRE. The Atlas formed the first step towards the conceptualization of SDI implementation approaches.
The inventory of INSPIRE implementation experiences relied on a qualitative data collection through a survey and two workshops. The data collection derived primary data on experiences of representatives from twelve European countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Germany, Netherlands, Poland Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom). The data analysis compared the inventory of INSPIRE implementation experiences to two theoretical information infrastructure approaches, derived from organizational and information sciences literature: cultivation approaches and design approaches.
The comparison showed that a conceptualization of cultivation reflects the INSPIRE implementation strategies and experiences closer than conceptualization of a design approach. Consequently , institutionalizing INSPIRE is likely to require a gradual approach towards increasing flatter inter-organizational working relations, and a scaling up strategy by iteratively linking (supra)national implementation plans to local implementation plans, and vice versa
A review of the implementation of OGC Web Services across Europe
Get PDFThis paper presents the results of an investigation conducted in the spring of 2010 to review the availability across Europe of public Web services conforming to the standard specifications issued by the Open Geospatial Consortium. The descriptive and statistical analysis of 6,544 geospatial network services might provide insight into the current level of implementation of these services in Europe. These services were discovered with the help of a focused crawler able to discover access points to public geospatial network services. This crawler relies on general-purpose search engines for finding seed URLs related with geospatial network services from which begin crawling. The work also identifies potential limitations and data biases derived from the methodology. Nevertheless, this kind of strategy might open up new opportunities to complement SDI implementation assessments when exhaustive, periodic and up to date monitoring is required
GIS Data Interoperability in Uganda
Get PDFIn this paper, we present and discuss data interoperability issues that limit the utilization of GIS Technology in Uganda and other similar developing countries. Using the European interoperability framework principles, organizational, semantic and technical interoperability issues pertaining to Uganda are discussed based on data collected from six major producers of spatial data. Organizational interoperability issues identified include lack of clear and harmonized policies on the exchange of spatial data across institutions and limited collaboration during data and systems development. The major semantic interoperability issues are associated to variations in feature semantics for duplicate datasets where different naming, coding and classification standards are used. Other semantic interoperability issues arise from using ‘equivalent’ spatial data in models that were designed for other environments such as those used for wetland assessment. Technical interoperability issues identified include variations in spatial reference systems and application of different constants to the UTM projection parameters. Documentation of data, development of policies on data sharing, implementation of awareness and capacity building programmes and legislation on SDI are recommended as key steps towards achievement of spatial data interoperability in Uganda
Developing a Spatial Data Infrastructure for Archaeological and Built Heritage
Get PDFAlthough the INSPIRE Directive provides a roadmap and technical specifications for providing interoperability of spatial information created and held by public bodies across Europe, its relevance to archaeological and built heritage information is unclear. Whilst there is a clear need for access to information about the historic environment by a range of audiences actively engaged in the management of Europe’s rich heritage, delivery of relevant services is restricted to a narrow interpretation of the Annex I Protected Sites theme that focuses on statutory designations. This paper explores business reasons for adopting a more expansive interpretation of what information should be considered as and distributed as part of the Protected Sites theme in order to support policies and activities that impact upon the wider historic environment. The paper also considers the range and potential of information created through investigation and recording of the historic environment, often at public expense or interest. The potential for data reuse generating savings, inspiring smarter working practices, and developing sustainable datasets is explored through case studies from Scotland and Ireland and proposals to establish a thematic geo-portal, web services and applications through the EU Culture funded project ArchaeoLandscapes Europe (ArcLand), are discussed
Semantics-Aware Indexing of Geospatial Resources Based on Multilingual Thesauri: Methodology and Preliminary Results
Get PDFthe discovery functionality implemented by geoportals is primarily based on the syntactic matching of users’ search pattern against descriptive metadata, such as title, abstract, or keywords. As a consequence, the retrieval process is often hampered by linguistic issues related to multilingualism, semantic heterogeneity (synonymy, homonymy, etc.), and terminology mismatch in general. We propose a novel criterion for associating resources to language-neutral identifiers, thus enabling multilingual access to datasets and services as well as query expansion and refinement. The methodology has been successfully applied to the ISO-compliant metadata records aggregated by the INSPIRE Geoportal and is driving semantics-aware extensions of the discovery functionalities of the latter
Community Image Data Portal: Sharing Licensed Earth Observation Data
Get PDFTUsage and sharing of Earth Observation data are typically restricted by various licensing terms and conditions imposed by commercial data providers. Standards defining the protocols to transmit such data do not include any identification or security layer yet: they allow optimum software interoperability for sharing data available to the public, but they cannot ensure the required security for licensed data, which requires limited and controlled access. This article aims to present the up to date solutions and recommendations in the fields of data dissemination, authentication and rights management from standard developing organisations and from the Earth Observation community. The project context is the Community Image Data (CID) portal, which is an application for managing and accessing data from a large digital repository of EO data located at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. Data discovery and data sharing between different and heterogeneous user groups require the provision of interoperability with a large variety of client software; emphasis has therefore been given to the implementation of an infrastructure based on INSPIRE-compliant Discovery, View and Download services, following the same direction undertaken by the EU Member States in their compliance to the European Parliament and Council (2007) INSPIRE Directive: 2007/2/EC, and European Commission (2009): Regulation 976/2009 on Network Services. During the study of standards for such data services, as defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium, the lack of authentication and security features has been identified. Even if numerous initiatives have filled this disparity, the technologies considered cannot assure the required interoperability, as they are not part of the standards implemented in common software. The CID project acknowledged this situation and implemented its own original solution that addresses both the interoperability and data security aspects. Inspired by the electronic commerce domain and its “shopping cart” feature, a “portfolio” concept has been introduced, allowing users to make selections from the available data products, filling up their own ”basket” of EO data. These portfolios are the basis for associated data services, which give access to the selected datasets for the single user, thus ensuring data security