Ralf Denzer

Environmental Software Systems

Environmental Software Systems , Environmental Software Systems , کتابخانه دیجیتال جندی شاپور اهواز

Generic integration of environmental decision support systems - state-of-the-art

Environmental Information Systems (EIS) and Environmental Decision Support Systems (EDSS) are major building blocks in environmental management and science today. They are used at all levels of public bodies (community, state, national and international level), in science, in management and as information platforms towards the public. EIS and EDSS are usually said to have certain characteristics, which distinguish them from standard information systems, e.g. information complexity in time and space or uncompleteness or fuzzyness of data items. By the very nature of the complex tasks involved, different methodologies can be an option while developing new system, for instance modelling, decision theoretic approaches, artificial intelligence, geographical analysis, statistics and many more. As software developers, we face the situation where we have to recompose these different methodologies in different application scenarios over and over again. This paper discusses the question, how different EIS and EDSS tools can be integrated in a generic way. For this purpose, we discuss a number of integration strategies and give two examples of current EU-funded projects.

Visualization of an Air Quality Measurement Network

A basic task of environmental protection is the monitoring of the current environmental state. Although wishablefor most of the environmental parameters, it is not possible to make the monitoring process continually for everything. From the three basic media: air, water and ground, only for the air has continually monitoring widely been achieved within the last years.

Vision and Requirements of Scenario-Driven Environmental Decision Support Systems Supporting Automation for End Users

This paper discusses the vision and requirements of a highly interactive workbench which supports decision makers using distributed resources including models as automated components of an integrated environmental decision support system. The concepts discussed are results of the SUDPLAN project, an EU FP7 project which aims at developing advanced tools for climate change adaptation for city planners and city managers. To this end, SUDPLAN incorporates access to climate change models and model results as an important common service. This paper provides an overview of SUDPLAN, with special emphasis on the highly interactive Scenario Management System. It also includes an overview of the user requirements derived through a user-centred design process engaging highly diverse user representatives of four pilot application cities.

TEMSIS — a transnational system for public information and environmental decision support

Abstract TEMSIS — Transnational Environmental Management Support and Information System is intended to be a tool for transnational co-operation between the communities in the German–French urban agglomeration, Moselle-Est/Stadtverband Saarbrucken. Its main objective is to integrate existing information platforms of local environmental authorities in Germany and France, to support information exchange and thus strengthen the co-operation which is necessary to solve common problems. An important aspect is to inform the public very early if planning activities start, to create intensive discussions among all involved participants and thus to make decisions transparent. This methodology completely conforms with the EU guideline of 1990, which allows all citizens free access to environmental information. The project is funded by the Telematics Applications Programme of the European Community. The content of this paper was carried out in co-operation with all partners of the project. This article sets the focus on the description of the distributed architecture and on the integration issues in the project.

An EIS Called WuNDa

The WuNDa project intends to offer to the users in different sections of the environmental department of the city of Wuppertal an access to GIS-data and factual data by a unique and simple navigation user interface, based on internet/intranet techniques. The first step is a prototype for the management of contaminated sites but the system architecture foresees already the integration of other application areas. The system is based on the SIRIUS tool set.

An Architecture for the Semantic Enhancement of Environmental Resources

The vision of a Single Information Space in Europe for the Environment (SISE) requires seamless access to environmental resources, including data, models and services. Standardization organizations like OGC and OASIS have laid the foundations for interoperability on a syntactic level for many aspects of distributed environmental information systems (e.g. OGC SWE for sensor information). At the same time, the EC has undertaken a considerable effort to commit European stakeholders to offering their environmental information in such a way that it is accessible by interested parties, both on the scientific level by supporting research projects, like ORCHESTRA and SANY, and on the legal level by introducing directives (such as the INSPIRE directive). This development, amongst others, has led to the present situation in which a large number of environmental information sources are available. However, to implement the vision of the SISE it is not enough to publish resources. Environmental information must be discoverable, and it must be ‘understandable’ in different contexts in order to be used effectively by parties of various thematic domains. Therefore, in order to foster the implementation of SISE, semantic interoperability is a necessary element. Key to semantic interoperability is the presence of meta-information which describes the concepts of the environmental resources. Producing this meta-information puts a heavy technological burden on the individual resource providers such that it seems unlikely that enough semantic meta-information will ever be made available to reach semantic interoperability and thus accomplish the vision of SISE unless other ways to provide this essential meta-information are found. In this paper we introduce an architecture, developed in the FP7 project TaToo (247893), which tries to overcome the aforementioned obstacles by providing the possibility to easily annotate and rate environmental information resources, even by parties which do not own the resource, and transparently equipping this information with domain knowledge and thus enhancing discoverability and usability of resources with semantic technologies. The objective of the architecture is to seamlessly blend in with existing infrastructures by making use of de facto standards while offering support for discovery, annotation and validation of environmental resources through open interfaces.

SIRIUS — Saarbrücken Information Retrieval and Interchange Utility Set

The SIRIUS-project deals with the development of a prototype of a tool set for the integration of heterogenous subsystems fournishing environmental information. We first discuss the major integration problems which delay the development of Environmental Information Systems (EIS). The objectives of the SIRIUS-project and its integration concept are presented. Finally we describe the implementation of the prototype and its functionalities.

Environmental Software Systems. Infrastructures, Services and Applications

The history of a piece of information is known as “provenance”. From extensive interactions with hydro-and geo-scientists in Australian science agencies we found both widespread demand for provenance and widespread confusion about how to manage it and how to develop requirements for managing it. We take inspiration from the well-known software development Capability Maturity Model to design a Maturity Model for provenance management that we call the PMM. The PMM can be used to assess the state of existing practices within an organisation or project, to benchmark practices and existing tools, to develop requirements for new provenance projects, and to track improvements in provenance management across an organisational unit. We present the PMM and evaluate it through application in a workshop of scientists across three data-intensive science projects. We find that scientists recognise the value of a structured approach to requirements elicitation that ensures that aspects are not overlooked.

An Information System Supporting WFD Reporting

The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) defines the quality goals for European water bodies until 2027. Water bodies are managed on very different governmental levels in the member states. Due to the federal system, Germany has a complex structure of responsibilities regarding the management and maintenance of water bodies in Europe.