Web-based Implementation of Winter Maintenance Decision Support System Using GIS and Remote Sensing, May 2005

Winter maintenance, particularly snow removal and the stress of snow removal materials on public structures, is an enormous budgetary burden on municipalities and nongovernmental maintenance organizations in cold climates. Lately, geospatial technologies such as remote sensing, geographic information systems (GIS), and decision support tools are roviding a valuable tool for planning snow removal operations. A few researchers recently used geospatial technologies to develop winter maintenance tools. However, most of these winter maintenance tools, while having the potential to address some of these information needs, are not typically placed in the hands of planners and other interested stakeholders. Most tools are not constructed with a nontechnical user in mind and lack an easyto-use, easily understood interface. A major goal of this project was to implement a web-based Winter Maintenance Decision Support System (WMDSS) that enhances the capacity of stakeholders (city/county planners, resource managers, transportation personnel, citizens, and policy makers) to evaluate different procedures for managing snow removal assets optimally. This was accomplished by integrating geospatial analytical techniques (GIS and remote sensing), the existing snow removal asset management system, and webbased spatial decision support systems. The web-based system was implemented using the ESRI ArcIMS ActiveX Connector and related web technologies, such as Active Server Pages, JavaScript, HTML, and XML. The expert knowledge on snow removal procedures is gathered and integrated into the system in the form of encoded business rules using Visual Rule Studio. The system developed not only manages the resources but also provides expert advice to assist complex decision making, such as routing, optimal resource allocation, and monitoring live weather information. This system was developed in collaboration with Black Hawk County, IA, the city of Columbia, MO, and the Iowa Department of transportation. This product was also demonstrated for these agencies to improve the usability and applicability of the system.

Personalized touristic routes implementing semantic web on GIS

Nowadays, when a user is planning a touristic route is very difficult to find out which are the best places to visit. The user has to choose considering his/her preferences due to the great quantity of information it is possible to find in the web and taking into account it is necessary to do a selection, within small time because there is a limited time to do a trip. In Itiner@ project, we aim to implement Semantic Web technology combined with Geographic Information Systems in order to offer personalized touristic routes around a region based on user preferences and time situation. Using ontologies it is possible to link, structure, share data and obtain the result more suitable for user's preferences and actual situation with less time and more precisely than without ontologies. To achieve these objectives we propose a web page combining a GIS server and a touristic ontology. As a step further, we also study how to extend this technology on mobile devices due to the raising interest and technological progress of these devices and location-based services, which allows the user to have all the route information on the hand when he/she does a touristic trip. We design a little application in order to apply the combination of GIS and Semantic Web in a mobile device.

Rendimiento Web Gis en relación a servidores de mapas y sus orígenes de datos

El presente trabajo tiene el propósito de estudiar las herramientas para geoportales en relación a su rendimiento. Para esto se consideran los siguientes parámetros: servidor de mapas como GeoServer y MapServer, y orígenes de datos como son ShapeFile, PostGIS, GML, GeoJSON y WMS.

An interactive web-GIS tool for risk analysis: a case study in the Fella River basin, Italy

This paper presents a prototype of an interactive web-GIS tool for risk analysis of natural hazards, in particular for floods and landslides, based on open-source geospatial software and technologies. The aim of the presented tool is to assist the experts (risk managers) in analysing the impacts and consequences of a certain hazard event in a considered region, providing an essential input to the decision-making process in the selection of risk management strategies by responsible authorities and decision makers. This tool is based on the Boundless (OpenGeo Suite) framework and its client-side environment for prototype development, and it is one of the main modules of a web-based collaborative decision support platform in risk management. Within this platform, the users can import necessary maps and information to analyse areas at risk. Based on provided information and parameters, loss scenarios (amount of damages and number of fatalities) of a hazard event are generated on the fly and visualized interactively within the web-GIS interface of the platform. The annualized risk is calculated based on the combination of resultant loss scenarios with different return periods of the hazard event. The application of this developed prototype is demonstrated using a regional data set from one of the case study sites, Fella River of northeastern Italy, of the Marie Curie ITN CHANGES project.

GIS in the cloud: implementing a web map service on Google App Engine

Many producers of geographic information are now disseminating their data using open web service protocols, notably those published by the Open Geospatial Consortium. There are many challenges inherent in running robust and reliable services at reasonable cost. Cloud computing provides a new kind of scalable infrastructure that could address many of these challenges. In this study we implement a Web Map Service for raster imagery within the Google App Engine environment. We discuss the challenges of developing GIS applications within this framework and the performance characteristics of the implementation. Results show that the application scales well to multiple simultaneous users and performance will be adequate for many applications, although concerns remain over issues such as latency spikes. We discuss the feasibility of implementing services within the free usage quotas of Google App Engine and the possibility of extending the approaches in this paper to other GIS applications.

A Web GIS Decision Support System For Coastal Risk Assessment and Mitigation Planning

Coastal flooding poses serious threats to coastal areas around the world, billions of dollars in damage to property and infrastructure, and threatens the lives of millions of people. Therefore, disaster management and risk assessment aims at detecting vulnerability and capacities in order to reduce coastal flood disaster risk. In particular, non-specialized researchers, emergency management personnel, and land use planners require an accurate, inexpensive method to determine and map risk associated with storm surge events and long-term sea level rise associated with climate change. This study contributes to the spatially evaluation and mapping of social-economic-environmental vulnerability and risk at sub-national scale through the development of appropriate tools and methods successfully embedded in a Web-GIS Decision Support System. A new set of raster-based models were studied and developed in order to be easily implemented in the Web-GIS framework with the purpose to quickly assess and map flood hazards characteristics, damage and vulnerability in a Multi-criteria approach. The Web-GIS DSS is developed recurring to open source software and programming language and its main peculiarity is to be available and usable by coastal managers and land use planners without requiring high scientific background in hydraulic engineering. The effectiveness of the system in the coastal risk assessment is evaluated trough its application to a real case study.

Web Mapping: dai GIS ai sistemi per la geolocalizzazione

L'elaborato tratta dell'evoluzione dei sistemi di raccolta dati geografici e mappatura grazie all'utilizzo delle tecnologie informatiche e di come sia cambiato il loro utilizzo nel corso del tempo e l'utenza che ne fa uso. Viene anche trattata in maniera tecnica la struttura che compone uno di questi sistemi per permettere l'interazione via web con una mappa digitale. Si effettuano inoltre ipotesi su possibili sviluppi futuri di tali tecnologie.

Context-Based Customization of Routing Functions for Web GIS Applications

This poster presentation features three route planning applications developed by the Florida International University GIS Center and the Geomatics program at the University of Florida, and outlines their context based differences. The first route planner has been developed for cyclists in three Florida counties, i.e. Miami Dade County, Broward County, and Palm Beach County. The second route planner computes safe pedestrian routes to schools and has been developed for Miami Dade County. The third route planner combines pre-compiled cultural/eco routes and point-to-point route planning for the City of Coral Gables. This poster highlights the differences in design (user interface) and implementation (routing options) between the three route planners as a result of a different application context and target audience.

FDOT District Six Pedestrian Safety Web GIS Application

A group of four applications including Top 20 Pedestrian Crash Locations: This application is designed to display top 20 pedestrian crash locations into both map- view and detailed information view. FDOT Crash Reporting Tool: This application is designed to simplify the usage and sharing of CAR data. The application can load raw data from CAR and display it into a web map interface. FDOT Online Document Portal: This application is designed for FDOT project managers to be able to share and manage documents through a user friendly, GIS enable web interface GIS Data Collection for Pedestrian Safety Tool: FIU-GIS Center was responsible for data collection and processing work for the project of Pedestrian Safety Tool Project. The outcome of this task is present by a simple web-GIS application design to host GIS by projects.

A Web-Based geographical information system prototype on Portuguese traditional food products

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies

The intersection of people, technology and local space. PPGIS and Web in practice for participatory planning

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies

The web feature service: transaction standard: an example of prototype implementation

Trabalho de Projecto apresentado como requisito parcial para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Ciência e Sistemas de Informação Geográfica