RISK ASSESSMENT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL APPLICATIONS: INTEGRATED 
ANALYSIS OF SPATIAL DATA USING MULTI-TEMPORAL DIGITAL 
ORTHOPHOTOS AND REMOTE-SENSING SATELLITE IMAGES. 
Raffaella BOLOGNA* - Maurizio MINCHILLI? - Alfredo SCOGNAMIGLIO* 
*POLITECNICO DI BARI - via E.Orabona, 4 -70126 BARI (Italy) 
"UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI SASSARI - 07041 ALGHERO (Italy) 
raf(@dau02.poliba.it - minchilli@uniss.it; 
Key words: multi-temporal analysis, digital orthophoto, image processing, H.R. satellite images, land use. 
ABSTRACT: 
A recently instituted National Park, in Southern Italy, is offering a wide experience in landscape knowledge and planning from 
multiple sources finalized to the environmental analysis. The study is conducted, in conjunction with the Italian Ministry of 
Environmental Affairs, to construct a large multi-disciplinary data-base for monitoring environmental risk and a GIS based 
management tool. 
The full integration of multi temporal digital orthophotos, on a scale of 1:10.000 and Im ground resolution, with historical and actual 
vector and raster maps, GPS ground acquisition and Landsat and Ikonos rectified satellite images, was made possible by geometric 
transformation in the same cartographic projection and datum. 
The risk assessment is actually analyzed, using multi-temporal land covers, about the vegetation, forestry, hydrogeology and quarries 
topics. The paper, concerning the hydro-geological order, describes the linkage between spectral analysis through satellite images 
and aerial photo coverage on the “stone grinding”: this change of soil composition, executed for agricultural improvements, provides 
  
  
an high increase of terrain permeability. 
The area of the National Park, about 1.500 Km”. has given the possibility to test advanced GIS procedures upon a very large region 
g p y p p 3 g g 
with a high number of correlated information levels. 
INTRODUCTION 
The construction of a detailed knowledge base, specialised in 
environmental analyses, emerges always as preliminary to 
any territorial planning and management operation. During 
the last few years there has been an exponential increase in 
the number of information levels both purposely built or 
acquired from external sources; a catalyst for this trend has 
been the digitalization of both graphical and alpha-numerical 
data, and the relative easiness in the exchange and 
acquisition of data-bases of large dimension. A drawback of 
this increase in the quantity of information available is the 
inability to filter, order and, in the cartographic field, overlay 
in a usable way representations often inhomogeneous in 
terms of structure, orientation and measures tolerance. 
  
Fig.1. Aerial photography of “stone grinding" 
Pressure on natural resources, the progressive increase in soil 
consumption and the changes caused by the mechanised 
transformation of agricultural land, require a territorial and 
environmental knowledge oriented to the present as well as 
to the dynamics of historical transformations. 
This knowledge includes both the spatial and temporal 
understanding of the environmental phenomena and of the 
processes that govern real land use. 
These considerations, and others, have led and oriented the 
methodologies elaborated for the construction of the basic 
instruments for the understanding and monitoring of the 
territory included in the proposed National Park of “Alta 
Murgia”. The absence, within. the perimeter under 
investigation and within the official one, of urban areas of 
high settlement density has created the conditions to orient 
the study more toward the analysis of agrarian and forested 
territory than to the examination of invasive anthropic 
transformations. 
  
  
Fig.2. “Murgia” landscape. 
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