Saviour Formosa

Sharing Integrated Spatial and Thematic Data: The CRISOLA Case for Malta and the European Project Plan4all Process

Sharing data across diverse thematic disciplines is only the next step in a series of hard-fought efforts to ensure barrier-free data availability. The Plan4all project is one such effort, focusing on the interoperability and harmonisation of spatial planning data as based on the INSPIRE protocols. The aims are to support holistic planning and the development of a European network of public and private actors as well as Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). The Plan4all and INSPIRE standards enable planners to publish and share spatial planning data. The Malta case tackled the wider scenario for sharing of data, through the investigation of the availability, transformation and dissemination of data using geoportals. The study is brought to the fore with an analysis of the approaches taken to ensure that data in the physical and social domains are harmonised in an internationally-established process. Through an analysis of the criminological theme, the Plan4all process is integrated with the social and land use themes as identified in the CRISOLA model. The process serves as a basis for the need to view sharing as one part of the datacycle rather than an end in itself: without a solid protocol the foundations have been laid for the implementation of the datasets in the social and crime domains.

Neogeography and Preparedness for Real-to-Virtual World Knowledge Transfer: Conceptual Steps to Minecraft Malta

Abstract: Societies have rapidly morphed into complex entities that are creating accessibility, yet, at the same time, they are developing new forms of neogeographic-poverty related to information uptake. Those that have managed to partake in the opportunities provided by the web have new vistas to survive in, in contrast to the new poor who have limited or no access to information. New forms of data in spatial format are accessible to all, however few realize the implications of such a transitional change in wellbeing: Whether entire societies or individuals. The different generations taking up the information access can face different levels of accessibility that may be limited by access to online data, knowledge of usage of tools and the understanding of the results, all within the limits on the spaces they are familiar with. This paper reviews a conceptual process underlining the initial steps of a long-term project in the Maltese Islands that seeks to create an online series of tools that bring the concept of “physical place” to the different generations through the management of a major project, the creation of a 3D virtuality, employing scanning processes, GIS, conversion aspects, and a small block-based Minecraft engine.

Spatial Information Preparedness for Environmental Enforcement in the Maltese Islands

Spatial analysis of the environment takes place within various competing but parallel domains; physical, social, and natural environments partake to datasets that have the same baseline requirements as are a reliable topographic layer, updated aerial/remote imagery and dissemination tools. The process has proven to be arduous, expensive and barrier-strewn due to data costs, access issues and lack of interactive sites. The Maltese Islands have implemented a system that integrates the transposition of legislative measures as well as ensuring free dissemination through the launching of an initiative based on the Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS). The latter activity sought to take the next step into the dissemination of spatial and environmental data to the academic, scientific and public communities. The Malta initiative was aimed to take national environmental monitoring capacity and the relative enforcement processes to a fully interactive online system, where users can analyse the potential infringements.

Submerged speleothem in Malta indicates tectonic stability throughout the Holocene

Submerged caves represent potential archives of speleothems with continental and marine biogenic layers. In turn, these can be used to reconstruct relative sea-level changes. This study presents new data on the tectonic behaviour of the island of Malta during the Holocene. These data were obtained from a speleothem sampled, during an underwater survey, at a depth of −14.5 m, inside a recently discovered submerged cave. Since the cave was mainly formed in a subaerial karst environment, the presence of a speleothem with serpulids growing on its continental layers permitted the reconstruction of the chronology for drowning of the cave. The radiocarbon dates obtained from the penultimate and last continental layers of the speleothem, before a serpulid encrustation, were compared with synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and global positioning system (GPS) data, together with published sedimentological and archaeological data. The radiocarbon analyses provided an average age of 7.6 ka BP that perfectly aligns with the Lambeck’s model of Holocene sea level. Morevoer, long-term data agree with published archeological and sedimentological data as well as with SAR interpherometric and GPS trends on a decadal scale. We conclude that the Maltese islands were tectonically stable during the Holocene, and this tectonic behaviour still persists nowadays. On the contrary, new informations on older deposits, such as MIS5e (Maritime Isotope Stage, corresponding to 125 ka ago) were not found in the study area, confirming the lack of older Quaternary marine deposits in these islands.

If Appleseed Had an Open Portal: Making Sense of Data, SEIS and Integrated Systems for the Maltese Islands

Much sought and realistically distant, an open data system can serve as the Holy Grail for many a policy-maker and decision taker as well as the operational entities involved in the field. The steady seeding of data-related legislative tools has aided the setting up of exploratory and active systems that serve the concept of data-information-knowledge-action to academia, the general public and the implementing agencies. Legislation, inclusive of Data Protection, Freedom of Information, Public Sector Information, Aarhus, INSPIRE, SEIS and the still embryonic SENSE, have all managed to create a new reality that may be too complex for some still caught in a jurassic analogue stage where data hoarding might still be prevalent and little effort is made to jump to the post-modern reality. Efforts to push the process through various domains such as census, environment protection, spatial development and crime have helped the Maltese Islands to create a scenario that is ripe for a national data infrastructure, inter-entity data exchange, open data structuring, and free dissemination services. This process enhances the knowledge-base and reduces redundancy, whilst creating new challenges on how to make sense of all the data being made available, particularly in the interpretation or misinterpretation of the outputs. The paper reviews Maltas process to go through the birth pains of SEIS as an open data construct, through to the dissemination of various spatial datasets and the first open portals pertaining to the various regulatory directives.

Spatio-Temporal Concepts and the Sociophysical Realities Impinging on the Rehabilitation of Incarcerated Youth

Youth operate in social and physical spaces. Youth engaged in crime operate within parameters bound by spatial and temporal realities that may be the cause or effect of the criminal activity itself. The study of youth in such a scenario requires the employment of environmental criminology theory that is the study of crime and victimisation in its relation to place and space.

Connecting geodata initiatives to contribute to a EUROPEAN spatial data infrastructure: the CRISOLA case for Malta and the project Plan4all

The Malta CRISOLA case study is investigated in terms of its analysis of the approaches taken to ensure that data in the physical and social domains are tackled within a reliable structure as that provided by the spatial domain through INSPIRE. The crime, social and landuse themes, being pivotal to the model, have served as a bridge across the landuse domains identified as fundamental in the INSPIRE Directive and as expressed in the Plan4all project. The case study is described in terms of its eventual take-up of functions developed by the Plan4all project which are essential for the future successful outcomes as identified in the CRISOLA model. The idea is to disseminate Maltese results to other geoportals including Plan4all geoserver which focuses on the interoperability and harmonisation of spatial planning data. The aims are to support holistic planning through the provision of data services across the spatial and social themes.