GIS FOR MAZOWSZE REGION - GENERAL OUTLINE

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1 GIS FOR MAZOWSZE REGION - GENERAL OUTLINE S. Bialousz 1), K Mączewski 2), E. Janczar 2), K. Osinska-Skotak 1) 1) Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland 2) Office of the Surveyor of the Mazowieckie Voivodeship, Warsaw, Poland ABSTRACT Objective of the databases system for Mazowsze region is to deliver tools for better management of the voivodeship. Main user of the system will be Marshall Office (regional government), state administration and citizens. The studies made in voivodeship administration revealed that there are needs for 92 thematic databases. Databases are organised in Databases System. The Databases System means that all databases meet conditions which are required for spatial analysis. Homogenous geometric network for databases corresponds to the accuracy of the map at the scale 1: Geometric network is created mainly by locations and by the borders of administrative units. Main source of descriptive data are databases of the National Statistical Office. In order to develop and test methods of databases creation 15 pilots projects have been designed. Three levels of training have been drafted, starting from information level, through exercises in creation of simple databases, to spatial analysis and modelling. KEYWORDS: GIS, Mazowsze, Databases, voivodeship INTRODUCTION Mazowsze is the largest voivodeship in Poland ( sq. km, i.e. 11.4% area of country). There are 5.1 million inhabitants (13.3% of Poles). In this region the biggest Polish and international companies are located.warsaw is the capital of the voivodeship and the capital of Poland. On the other hand this voivodeship has also the agricultural character. Agricultural lands cover 67.3% area of the region. The average area of a farm is 7.2 ha. The forest cover equals to 22% area of the region. The access to geographic information is required for majority of tasks executed by voivodeship administration, organisations and enterprises co-operating with its institutions. It is assessed that presently more than 500 officials should have access to different forms of geographic information about voivodeship territory. Currently only a limited number of employees use geographic information, which meets the criteria of GIS technology. Most frequently the topographic maps are used as well as thematic maps in analogue and digital forms, but only a few spatial databases and other databases without spatial reference of objects are used. Maps are made in several different co-ordinate systems and cartographic projections (1965, GUGiK 80, 1942, PUG-92, 2000, UTM). Non spatial databases are created mainly in Excel and Access environment. Data resources are relatively rich, but their usability for spatial analysis and modelling is limited due to lack of consistency in geometry and uniformity in objects classification. That is why the Mazowieckie Voivodeship Management Board took the resolution allowing to make up the GIS for Mazowsze region. 1

2 OBJECTIVES AND USERS OF THE SYSTEM The most important objective of the system is to deliver tools for better management of the Voivoideship. Those tools include the uniform presentation of objects and phenomena within the Voivodeship, the possibility to apply spatial analysis and modelling. Results of multi-layer spatial analyses and modelling are the much better starting point for decision making in the process of the Voivodeship management. The system will be particularly important for development of new versions of Voivodeship development strategies and of physical management plans for the Voivodeship area. Future users of the systems have been divided into three groups: 1. The Marshall Office and entities which co-operate with this Office, e.g. The Mazowsze Office for Physical Management and Regional Development, 2. The Voivodeship Office, services, inspections, other state administration units and entities which co-operate with those units, 3. Individuals, social organisations, institutions dealing with economy, business, services and recreation etc. That group of uses will be developed along with the development of inhabitants initiatives and development of information society. Each group of users requires different scopes of data in the databases of the system. Levels of access to data should be designed for those groups, according to their demands and authorisation for the data utilisation. LEGAL BASIS FOR THE SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT Uniform legal regulations concerning the creation and operations of a Geographic Information System do not exist in Poland. A concept of the National Spatial Information System has been developed as a result of a research project. It also covers the legal aspects of the System; however, itself it is not a legal act. Two issues should be distinguished when considering the entire problem: The Geographic Information System (GIS) and the Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). The Spatial Data Infrastructure has been already partially regulated by law. The act Surveying and Cartographic Law of 1989 determines the rules concerning maintenance of the state cartographic resources and obliges the surveying administration to maintain selected databases (control networks, lands and buildings register, register of underground installations (facilities)). Recent administrative regulations to that Act, amended the list with topographic databases at the scale of 1: and topographic maps in numerical form. The new act Surveying and Cartographic Law, which is in the phase of preparation, deals with those in a wider sense and specifies, which databases and state registers will be included within the National Spatial Information System. Databases, listed in the Surveying and Cartographic Law as well as state registers, create the obligatory part of the Geographic Information System. Institutions responsible for creation and maintenance of those databases have been defined. For some of them technical standards have already been developed. Therefore it may be stated that the Spatial Data Infrastructure has been defined and made operational in the field of surveying-and-cartographic data. Metainformation concerning available surveying and cartographic materials are under preparation. Metainformation for the Mazowieckie Voivoodeship is available from the server of the Office of the Surveyor of the Mazowieckie Voivodeship. Thus, the Office of the Surveyor of the Mazowieckie Voivodeship fulfils tasks, which have been determined by legal regulations and which are related to creation of obligatory databases. However, those tasks fall into the scope of the Spatial Data Infrastructure rather than the Spatial Information System. 2

3 The Spatial Information System required for 3 user groups listed in item 2 must contain much more databases than obligatory databases, which are created and developed by the surveying administration. Formally, they are facultative databases. In practice, the obligation concerning creation of databases for the Mazowsze Spatial Information System will be imposed on the entities of the Marshall Office by the local law, resolved by the Mazowsze Voivodeship Board, after the approval of the concept of the Spatial Information System for Mazowsze. That law will assume co-operation and division of tasks between the local government administration (the Marshall Office) and the state administration (the Voivodeship Office), as well as voluntary participation of other institutions on the system creation. Voluntary participation in creation of the system will result in special privileges for those institutions in utilisation of the system. STAGES OF THE SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION Functional approach and conventional sequence of operations have been applied in the process the conceptual development of the System: 1. Specification of objectives and users of the System, 2. Analysis of scopes of required data, analysis and evaluation of required data accuracy, 3. Evaluation of possible sources of data, which may meet accuracy requirements, 4. The project of metainformation and its creation, 5. Identification of database types, 6. A structural concept of particular databases and the concept of the system database structure, 7. Rules for authorisation and updating of data, data flow streams, 8. A concept of the computerised system and diversified access to the data, 9. Testing the proposed solutions by means of pilot project, with the use of the suture users of the System, 10. Training for the System users, 11. Gradual implementation of the final System. The studies made in voivodeship administration units and in co-operating institutions revealed that presently there are needs for 92 thematic databases: 17 databases concerning the environment, 19 agriculture, 16 technical infrastructure, 6 administrative divisions, 2 industry, 6 demography, 2 education, 3 sport and recreation, 4 culture, 6 tourism, 8 health and social policy, 4 citizen security. Criteria concerning priorities of creation and importance of databases, with respect to demands concerning the Voivodeship management, have been developed. They also consider the existing situation, i.e. evaluation of existing databases and possibilities to adapt them to the System demands, possibilities to create databases by co-operating institutions, possibilities to acquire data, which is developed by research units, evaluation, which databases should be created with maintenance of the highest geometric and descriptive accuracy and which databases may exist in their simplified form, at least at the initial stages of the System. After successful creation of partnership between institutions, about 20% of databases might be acquired without any investment costs. The Databases System means that all databases meet conditions, which are required not only for separate utilisation of particular databases, but which would also allow to combine and compare data from various databases in order to perform spatial analyses and to generate reports and information. The minimum conditions include the same control geometric network for all databases (the same geodetic system and cartographic projection), uniform criteria of classification of objects, which are recorded in various databases, uniform standards of information. 3

4 Creation of new databases according to the criteria assumed for the System and development of the existing databases to the level of those criteria will create the basis for flexible transformation from the databases to the Spatial Information System. GEOMETRIC NETWORK OF THE DATABASES For the needs of visualisation of data, which presents location of objects and phenomena within the entire Voivodeship, the geometric network has been assumed, which corresponds to the accuracy of the map at the scale of 1: The geometric network consists of point, line and surface elements. Point elements are mainly the locations (more than 8200 for the Voivodeship). Line elements are the elements of hydrography and roads. Surface elements are borders of administrative units: gminas (communes), powiats (districts) and the Voivodeship borders. All location have their own names, plane co-ordinates in the PUG-92 co-ordinate system, the unique identification code, the TERYT location identifier, according to the SIMC statistical system, and the gmina (commune) identifier, in which they are located. The system of identifiers allows for explicit spatial identification of data referred to those locations, which are included in the National Statistical Office databases. Line elements of the control network and their identifiers allow for creation of databases for roads and hydrography, as well as for overlaying the network of roads and hydrography on other thematic layers. Co-ordinates of the borders of administrative units are recorded in the uniform system PUG- 92; identifiers of those units allow for easy georeferencing of statistical data from the National Statistical Office databases, for visualisation of data and for spatial analysis. The uniform geometric network has been developed basing on the General Geographic Database of Poland 1:250000, which was made available by the Head Office of Geodesy and Cartography (GUGiK). Several applications, which adapt the GUGiK database to the Voivodeship needs, have been developed. The geometric part of the natural databases (soils, vegetation, geology, geomorphology) is developed by means of methods specific for particular databases, but in the uniform PUG-92 system. Thus, on the layer soils or vegetation, such layers as roads, hydrography, administrative division etc., may be overlaid in order to simplify interpretation and spatial analyses. Those layers may be also overlaid on the DTM. DATABASES BASED ON STATISTICAL DATA Since the main objective of the Mazowsze Spatial Information System is to support the voivodeship management, it must contain many databases, which present: economy, agriculture, education, culture, health, demography, social issues, unemployment etc. It has been estimated that almost 80% of databases will use in the semantic part from official statistical data (The National Statistical Office - GUS). Statistical data relate to locations, institutions located in those locations, to administrative units (gminas, powiats) or their parts. In the majority of cases simple procedures available in GIS technology allow for the unique georeferencing of statistical data, as well as for visualisation, map printing and for implementation of spatial analyses. In a limited number of cases it is necessary to develop additional applications, in order to automate production of maps of spatial data distribution. Automation is important in cases of dynamically changing phenomena, such as unemployment, which are investigated within monthly (or shorter) cycles. 4

5 Difficulties mostly occur when phenomena are investigated within longer periods, since administrative divisions have been changed within years, and now descriptive data must be modified in order to update them to the current administrative borders. THE SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE The System architecture consists of hardware solutions and distribution of particular databases. Purely IT solutions, concerning hardware and software, are not discussed in this document. They will be designed in order to follow the philosophy of distributed databases, data and information flow inside institutions, data distribution via Internet, data protection, various level of access to data. Hardware solutions must meet the requirements of the Spatial Information System as well as the requirements of the Spatial Data Infrastructure, related to acquisition and distribution of surveying and cartographic data. Distribution of databases considers thematic division of data, data models for the geometric and descriptive parts, co-operation of the database in the process of implementation of spatial analyses and modelling. Additional factor is related to obligations of particular institutions concerning creation, authorisation and updating of the databases. The geometric network and the main databases will be stored and distributed from the central server located at the Office of the Surveyor of the Mazowieckie Voivodeship. Here, data from the 1 st level (the general data) for the majority of thematic databases will be distributed from the same place. Complete databases, concerning selected topics (themes), such as monuments, education, natural environment, will be stored in the units of the Marshall Office or the Voivodeship Office. Three levels of access will be designed for those databases. Data to be used for management of those units will be exclusively used by them (data concerning personnel, finances etc.); those data will be used for supporting internal decision making systems. PILOT PROJECTS AND TRAINING In order to develop and test methods of database creation 15 pilot projects have been designed. Their results will become standards for implementation of 92 databases, which have been identified, as well as of new databases, which will be created in the future. The most valuable experiences have been gained from the process of creation of the uniform geometric network and assigning uniform identifiers for databases. Organisational experiences concerning data combination from databases, created by other institutions, which cover similar topics, are also important (education, environmental hazards and monitoring). Methodological conclusions are described in reports from implementation of pilot projects. Three levels of training have been drafted, starting from the information level (GIS and database foundations), through exercises in creation of simple databases, to spatial analyses and modelling. This component is of the same importance as the development of databases; it will influence the success of the System. Training is to prepare the personnel to understand the System, as well as to prepare the group of employees capable to create and update the databases. Development of a group of employees, who are competent in technology and organisation of the System, as well as the group of enthusiasts, who will popularise the idea, that the efficient voivodeship management will be impossible without GIS, will contribute to transformation from the databases to the Spatial Information System. 5