Miguel Ángel Latre

An architectural style for spatial data infrastructures

This work proposes an architectural style, a pattern, for spatial data infrastructures (SDIs). This style provides a tool and a shared vocabulary to help system architects to design these infrastructures, and facilitates the exchange of knowledge about them. This style is defined under the component‐and‐connector architectural viewtype, extending the client–server and shared‐data styles. The style has been created after analyzing six of the most relevant SDIs and geo‐service architectural proposals. Several architectural elements that these proposals have not properly addressed are considered. Three real projects, with published architectural views or models, have been examined to verify the applicability of the style. The proposed style offers a systematization and refinement of knowledge about SDIs, grounded in well‐known concepts in software architecture.

A Method to Derivate SOAP Interfaces and WSDL Metadata from the OGC Web Processing Service Mandatory Interfaces

Web Processing Services (WPS) expose processing functionality using Web Service technology. The WPS specification describes the interfaces to publish geospatial processes on the Web. It includes a platform-neutral and several platform-specific versions of its interfaces. Some of the platform-specific interfaces are mandatory and others are optional. In this paper, we present a method to support the automatic derivation of the optional SOAP interfaces and WSDL metadata from the mandatory ones in any WPS. These interfaces can then be used to facilitate the chaining of the WPS with other Web Services, using for example BPEL, and to improve the interoperability of these services. In addition to that, we have created a tool to validate the proposed method.

Spatial Data Infrastructures for environmental e-government services: The case of water abstractions authorisations

Environment-related authorisations are a relevant issue for environmental management. They require a considerable effort by the authorities, and this might result in substantial delays for the citizens. Implementing those authorisation processes by means of e-government services would improve efficiency and, consequently, citizen satisfaction. Environment-related authorisations usually require a variety of geospatial information, and have to deal with administrative areas which do not match physical and ecological ones. They also have to integrate heterogeneous information in different formats, data models and languages, and provided by distinct organisations, even from different countries. This paper discusses how Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) can deal with these problems in the environmental domain, while improving the level of service provision in terms of e-government applications. This is even more relevant within the European Union where there is a legal mandate to establish an SDI to support environmental policies and activities with an impact on the environment. As a proof-of-concept, an application to request and manage water abstraction authorisations, based on an SDI, is demonstrated. This application is part of SDIGER, a cross-border inter-administration SDI to support the water framework directive information access for the Adour-Garonne and Ebro River basins, that was a pilot project for the EU INSPIRE Directive. The introduction of this transactional e-government service modifies the administrative process of granting authorisations: it allows to re-use the effort in data capture made by the applicants in their requests, facilitates the submission of more feasible applications and reduces the workload of the office staff.

An Approach to Facilitate the Integration of Hydrological Data by means of Ontologies and Multilingual Thesauri

The general concern about environmental issues has involved the creation of national and international policies that require, at a technical level, the analysis, merging and processing of data obtained from very different sources. This paper proposes an approach for the integration of hydrological data that is based on the use of a multilingual ontology to facilitate the mapping across the local data models in the different sources. The novelty of the proposal is that the multilingual domain ontology is generated automatically by the merging and pruning of existing lexical ontologies. This approach has been tested in the context of the European Water Framework directive for the development of reporting applications in cross-border scenarios. Nevertheless, this approach could be easily extended to other domains.

A model driven approach for the development of metadata editors, applicability to the annotation of geographic information resources

Metadata are a key element for the development of information infrastructures because they facilitate the semantic description of contents and services. However, the diversity and heterogeneity of metadata standards have become a barrier for the generation of these metadata. Many metadata editors are not useful anymore because they do not support the latest version of metadata standards or the new profiles arisen in the market. Thus, this work proposes a model driven approach for the development of metadata editors, more focused on the generic treatment of metadata models than on the development of specific edition forms for a reduced set of metadata standards. This approach has been tested in the context of Spatial Data Infrastructures for the development of an Open Source tool called CatMDEdit. Additionally, the approach could be also applied to improve the efficiency of any metadata editor using a metamodeling development strategy.

Facilitating e-government services through SDIs, an application for water abstractions authorizations

In the last years, there has been a huge increment in the number of e-government services offered to the citizens and companies. However, environment-related permits are among the least developed kind of e-government services in Europe. Environmental management and government requires the use of geographic information and spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) are being providing the framework for optimizing its management, and they are becoming a legal obligation for some countries and institutions. In order to make profit of geographic information technologies and of the obligation of building SDIs to contribute to the development of e-government services, this paper analyzes an e-government opportunity in the environmental management linked to the use of SDIs and presents how to use them in a real tool: the application for a water abstraction authorization. SDI services are used for the capture, management, and assess of geographical information in a full transactional level e-government service.

SDI-based business processes: A territorial analysis web information system in Spain

Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) provide access to geospatial data and operations through interoperable Web services. These data and operations can be chained to set up specialized geospatial business processes, and these processes can give support to different applications. End users can benefit from these applications, while experts can integrate the Web services in their own business processes and developments. This paper presents an SDI-based territorial analysis Web information system for Spain, which gives access to land cover, topography and elevation data, as well as to a number of interoperable geospatial operations by means of a Web Processing Service (WPS). Several examples illustrate how different territorial analysis business processes are supported. The system has been established by the Spanish National SDI (Infraestructura de Datos Espaciales de Espana, IDEE) both as an experimental platform for geoscientists and geoinformation system developers, and as a mechanism to contribute to the Spanish citizens knowledge about their territory.

Water Quality Monitoring to Support the European Commission's Water Framework Directive Reporting Requirements

This article aims at providing a simple way for water quality monitoring in a set of reservoirs using an earth observation-based approach and the assessment of the use of this technique for a monitoring network in order to meet the requirements and objectives of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) by the Member States of the European Union. The study carried out was preformed in 42 reservoirs of the Ebro River Basin, in the northeast of Spain. The proposed methodology is based on the development of an algorithm for the estimation of water quality by means of LANDSAT TM band reflectance. Some band ratios were used in the model as well. Trophic State Index (TSI), calculated by means of Secchi Disc Transparency data, was estimated using a forward stepwise multiple regression analysis and the TM2 band and TM1/TM2 ratio. The final results showed a large variability in water quality across reservoirs. Moreover, substantial spatial heterogeneity was also observed in the water bodies. These results demonstrate the likelihood of developing a monitoring network based on remote sensing techniques for the implementation of the WFD.

Role of Decision Support System for Renewable Energy Outreach

E is affected by various natural and manmade phenomena such as natural calamities, disasters, urbanization, and pollution. One such major issue is exhaustive usage of fossil energy and its adverse impact on our social, environmental and economical conditions.The study and the increase in awareness levels of ‘”energy resources and their environmental impact” is essential for the development of a sustainable society. Considering that the society consists of domain experts, policy makers and the general public, it is important for everyone to get familiarized with available renewable energy sources and how to exploit their benefits. Easy access to information on the availability of energy resources and their geographical distribution will help in better planning and determining potential energy investments, development strategies and also increase awareness among the public. In general, decision-making is the process of selecting the best viable option from a set of different options. Study on spatiotemporal characteristics of the energy sources will guide government, experts or even general public in agile decisionmaking. For a renewable energy project or for an individual, it is an important aspect to acquaint and select suitable optimized location considering all factors such as best available energy sources, climate, social and economical conditions. From an investment proposal to complex scientific analysis, decision-making is a key aspect in projects. Decision Support System (DSS) is being used to address various problems like carbon emissions and cost of product designs, impact of pollution on environment, etc. Specifically in the energy field, there are also diverse DSS models such as NREL, and IREL. Nevertheless, a systematic and holistic approach with detailed data structuring, intuitive reporting and integration of other heterogeneous models like demography and climate are missing for local insights and ground realities. DSS should be able to graphically represent the profile of energy sources that includes spatiotemporal patterns, demographics, topography, data history and characteristics of each energy source. This kind of DSS will aid in better planning and enable in finding the resources for governments and experts. As the data presented in an easy and understandable format, it will draw attention from the general public as well. Study on renewable energy requires understanding various data models and lot of broad and in-depth data analysis. The challenge is to extract the data from various sources, store, analyze, and present the information in an easy and intuitive format to all kinds of users. Different sections of users will have different requirements and different level of understanding about the data as shown in Figure 1. Importance and Maturity of DSS in terms of analytical capabilities and data (quality and quantity) varies from profession to profession and situational requirements. For example, from a common user’s perspective, “what is the annual average energy output that this energy source of fers?” an expert may wish to research, “why is there a decline in solar radiation in year 2012 when compared to2000; August versus January?” and governments may ask, “what could have been the change in energy output and savings if this particular energy source was used over the last f ive years?” Hence, DSS should be able to understand the user needs and present the information in engaging and understandable format. The challenges identified from a technical point of view are 2-fold: First, to do a spatiotemporal analysis it is important primarily to analyze huge historical data sets. Second, loading the data with minimal or no latency effects and communicating the processed information in a comprehensive format e.g. drill down chats for when and where analysis. Data warehouse (DW), extract, transfer and load (ETL), and business intelligence (BI) are successful business analytics’ technologies. They are designed to deal with huge, historical data sets by structuring data into multilevels for rapid exploration and analysis to aid decision-makers. Empowering scientific data with these technologies will assist scientists and government in making faster, productive and sustainable decisions. These technologies have the capability to handle and present the data ranging from global to local level scenarios.

Behaviour-Driven Development Applied to the Conformance Testing of INSPIRE Web Services

The implementation of the INSPIRE directive requires to check the conformity of a large number of network services with the implementing rules of INSPIRE. The evaluation whether a service is fully conformant with INSPIRE is complex and requires the use of specialized testing tools that should report how verification has been made and should identify non-conformances. The use of these tools requires a high degree of technical knowledge. This fact makes very difficult for non-technical stakeholders (end users, managers, domain experts, etc.) to participate effectively in conformance testing, hinders stakeholders understanding of the causes and consequences of non-conformant results and may cause in some stakeholders disinterest in conformance testing. This work explores the suitability of a behaviour-driven development (BDD) approach to the conformance testing of OGC Web services in the context of the INSPIRE directive. BDD emphasizes the participation of non-technical parties in the design of acceptance tests by means of automatable abstract tests expressed in a human readable format. Using this idea as base, this work describes a BDD based workflow to derive abstract test suites and executable test suites from INSPIRE implementation requirements that can be written in the language used by non-technical stakeholders. This work also analyses if BDD and popular BDD tools, such as Gherkin and Cucumber, are compatible with ISO 19105:2000 testing methodology. As demonstration, we present an online conformance tool for INSPIRE View and Discovery services that executes BDD test suites.