International cooperation and technology transfer

Fras, Mojca Kosmatin

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Persistent identifier:: 856490555

Author:: Fras, Mojca Kosmatin

Title:: International cooperation and technology transfer

Sub title:: Ljubljana, Slovenia, February 2 - 5, 2000 : proceedings of the workshop

Scope:: VI, 163 Seiten

Year of publication:: 2000

Place of publication:: London

Publisher of the original:: RICS Books

Identifier (digital):: 856490555

Illustration:: Illustrationen, Diagramme

Language:: English

Usage licence:: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Publisher of the digital copy:: Technische Informationsbibliothek Hannover

Place of publication of the digital copy:: Hannover

Year of publication of the original:: 2016

Document type:: Monograph

Collection:: Earth sciences

Chapter

Title:: A MAP-BASED WEB SERVER FOR THE COLLECTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF ENVIRONMENTAL DATA. G. Guariso, M. Ferrari, D. Macchi

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

76 A MAP-BASED WEB SERVER FOR THE COLLECTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF ENVIRONMENTAL DATA G. Guariso, M. Ferrari, D. Macchi Politecnico di Milano, Facoltà di Como, Como, Italy KEY WORDS: metadata, data retrieval, world wide web, Internet, client-server architectures. ABSTRACT Environmental data constitute a very wide and poorly structured knowledge domain. The only characteristic that they share is to be associated to a certain geographical object, either a point, or a line, or a polygon. These geographical objects have in turn known relationships among them (e.g. inclusion, closeness). A map can thus constitute a unique way for structuring such a wide domain, thus allowing an ordered data storage and retrieval. A web server for collecting and distributing environmental data has been built on this principle. Its main aim is to facilitate the sharing of information among all the subjects and institutions operating on a given territory, for planning, management and also educational purposes. The system adopts the classical client-server architecture and the user can contribute to its growth under the supervision of an administrator. It has been implemented for the Lombardy region in Northern Italy at the address http://pc-ambiente. como.polimi. it. 1. INTRODUCTION Environmental data cover a very wide and heterogeneous knowledge domain: they refer to different environmental compartments (air pollution, water quality and quantity, population dynamics, and so on), they are usually collected by different agencies at different locations and time intervals and they are stored in different ways. Proposals for a standard environmental data format have been put forward by several institutions (e.g., FGDC, 1994: Library of Congress, 1997; Phelps and Wilensky, 1996; Koschei et al., 1997), but have not been widely adopted. Environmental databases are growing up in dimension and complexity so as to make any search extremely difficult (see, for instance, the US Geophysical or Climatic Data Centers or the NOAA Environmental Services Data Directory — http://www.edsim.noaa.gov/ NOAA-Catalogue/). Their production and maintenance requires an effort in terms of economic and human resources that cannot be sustained by all institutions. It is thus of interest to exploit the only characteristic that environmental data share: to be associated to a certain geographical object, either a point (for instance, a rain gauge) or a line (the flow rate of a river), or a polygon (the population of a municipality). These geographical objects have in turn some known relationships among them (e.g. inclusion, closeness), that can also be automatically managed. A map can thus be used to provide some structuring to such a wide information domain, which in turn may allow for an easier data storage and retrieval. A web server for collecting and distributing environmental data has been built on this principle. Its main aim is to facilitate the sharing of information among all the subjects and institutions operating on a given territory, for planning, management and also educational purposes. The storage and retrieval system is based on the classical client-server architecture, but cannot be considered as a standard database since it grows up with the participation of the users, on the client side, and is only supervised by an administrator, on the server side. Additionally, there is no specific structure for the data stored in the system, except their reference to a geographical entity. After briefly revising some map-based environmental information systems in Section 2, the paper presents in the following sections, first the data structures and then the architecture of the web site. Section 4 gives some technical detail on the system implementation and Section 5 provides some examples of its use. 2. WEB BASED GIS SYSTEMS The diffusion of the Internet has significantly changed the approach to storage and distribution of environmental data. Problems related to the planning, management and conservation of the environment are, for their own nature, distributed in space. Various public authorities and agencies, as well as private citizens are normally involved in any such problem. The Internet is thus a natural mean to share the information, support the debate, create consensus and thus ease the implementation of solutions. Unfortunately, the set of data required for a specific environmental problem is relative unique, in many instances, and thus it is almost impossible to structure a classical database that may be useful in different situations. Fig. 1 - Berkeley's Digital Environmental Library. The photo is obtained by clicking the required position on the map

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