Harmonizing spatial databases and services at local and regional level A. Ionita 1, M. Caian 2, V. Vassilev 3, V. Craciunescu 2, I. Nedelcu 4 1 Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Bucuresti, Romania 2 National Meteorological Administration, Bucuresti, Romania 3 Remote Sensing Application Centre, Sofia, Bulgaria 4 Romanian Space Agency, Bucuresti, Romania
The context INSPIRE... a good start for many organizations and thematic networks to start or re-start building spatial data infrastructures (SDI) SDI: the policy, the people, the data and technology... experience gathered at local level... Trying to apply it at regional level... cross-border SDI
The local experience: AIR-AWARE Air quality is a major issue for all the important cities in the world. Bucharest is no exception. The air pollution in Bucharest, due to traffic and industry, is abundant, especially in areas the human population is concentrated. The fast rate of economic growth is bringing more sources of air pollution. In this context, the AIR-AWARE project, funded in the EU LIFE framework, is aiming to build a pilot air quality monitoring and forecasting system to ensure a sustainable development of the rapidly expansive urban areas in Bucharest, minimizing and preventing the air pollution impact on human health.
Project partners The AIRAWARE system users list include the main local and national authorities in the domain of air quality monitoring, forecasting, air pollution abatement and mitigation of impacts, such as: National Meteorological Administration Regional Environmental Protection Agency of Bucharest Direction for Public Health of Bucharest Centre for Urban Planning of Bucharest Institute of Biology of the Romanian Academy Meteo-France (as strategic European partner)
Components The AIRAWARE system has a distributed architecture with dedicated sub-systems for: air quality monitoring numerical modeling and forecast geospatial portal for data integration, visualization, query and analysis slow-flow and rapid-flow feedback
Components
System data flow
Painful harmonization process
AIR-AWARE online system
Web client
Web client
Web client
Google Earth
ESRI ArcScene
Intergraph Geomedia Professional
QGIS
The regional experience: RO-BG Cross-border Bulgaria-Romania Cooperation Programme specific objectives Improved access to transport infrastructure, to facilitate the movement of goods and people; Improved availability and dissemination of information on joint opportunities within the border area; Sustainability of the intrinsic value of the area s natural resources by prudent exploitation and effective protection of the fragile environment; Sustainable economic development of the border area, by joint initiatives to enhance comparative advantages and reduce disadvantages; Strengthened social and cultural cohesion, by cooperative actions between people and communities. Coordinated by the Romanian Ministry for Territorial Development and Tourism
Eligible area The eligible area addressed by the Cross-Border Cooperation Program Romania-Bulgaria (CBC RO-BG) is one of the longest borders within the EU. The border stretches for 610 km, and for 470 km is largely demarcated by the course of the River Danube. The eligible programme area is located in the Northern part of Bulgaria and in the Southern part of Romania along the national border that extends from Serbia to the Black Sea coast. It consists of seven Romanian counties and eight Bulgarian districts located directly along the national border
Goals establish a user community (mainly made of local governments) and ask them to work together to create and maintain a wish list ; framework and thematic, application specific data models allowing the appropriate level of semantics; establish tools and methodologies for collection, processing and analysis allowing effective access to data and information dissemination; catalogue of available data products and services made accessible to all stakeholder organizations; validation and quality control driven by demand-oriented approach; possibly integrate all above in existing infrastructures and workflows
Expected results a formally defined user community and rules of collecting requirements as well as for their fulfilment; common territorial development data model and data management methodology including collection, quality control, updating and publication; Harmonized database supporting the strategy for sustainable development of the region hardware and software elements allowing maintenance of the data, access to data services and effective use of data; a strategy for the further maintenance and development of the newly created cross border spatial data infrastructure.
Concluding remarks Experience gathered in developing systems around harmonized data services provided by organizations working with different data standards and technology was shown. The local experience proved that, even in a very heterogeneous environment in terms of data and technologies used an advanced system for monitoring the air quality could be setup by developing an intermediate layer whose main role is to harmonize the ways data is accessed and published, using open standards for data web services. At regional level, although there is no much experience in setting-up and developing SDIs, compromises can be found based on standards, either we talk about standards for data models or technology for accessing and publishing data. While technology standards such as CSW or WMS can play an important role in setting-up catalogues and data services, common standards for data models can play a crucial role in achieving interoperability up to a semantic level.
The end. More to come next year For more information, please contact: Angela Ionita Mihaela Caian Vassil Vassilev Vasile Craciunescu Ion Nedelcu aionita@racai.ro mihaela.caian@meteoromania.ro vassil.vassilev@resac-bg.org vasile.craciunescu@meteoromania.ro ion.nedelcu@rosa.ro