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Track: Information Access and the Internet
Marc Van Liedekerke
Joint Research Centre of the European Commission
TP 280
Ispra (va), 21020
ITALY
Telephone: 39-332-785179
Fax: 39-332-789256
E-mail: vanliede@ei.jrc.it
Arwyn Jones
Integration of Internet Map Server Technology in Support of Water Resources Management
Topic: Application of WWW ArcInfo gateways to make GIS functionality available in an environmental agency; applied to information and work flows within that organization. Keywords: Internet Map Server, WWW, gateways, GIS, work flow. The authorities of the Italian Region of Lombardy are currently investigating ways to develop a regional information system for the acquisition, processing, archiving, and retrieval of surface and groundwater data and associated information. An initial phase studied the existing information flow and is concerned with the process and effectiveness of acquiring, storing, and disseminating water data within the region. After the identification of existing data management practices that could be enhanced by the introduction of current information technologies, a generic information system is being developed to satisfy the client needs. Since all data within this process are georeferenced, a GIS is one of the key components that are currently in use at the central head office.
Its potential is fully exploited to perform various tasks that require the processing of spatial data. However, GIS functionality is mainly used by highly trained and technical personnel, all GIS use is virtually concentrated in one office, and its use is not integrated elegantly with the current work and information flow. A prototype system is being developed which demonstrates the preliminary concepts of the generic system design and incorporates a subset of its full functionality. Since it is expected that required operations will dictate a distributed approach, this prototype will be based on WWW client/server architecture, whereby the WWW clients will be used to insert or upload new data, retrieve and display data in a variety of ways. Data and information will be stored, processed and disseminated by various dedicated servers (WWW, ArcInfo, databases), in a format appropriate for the clients. The prototype plans to use existing GIS applications in combination with a RDBMS to store information
centrally. Since the WWW is used as an environment to perform the desired operations, it is hoped to integrate some kind of GIS functionality into the prototype by exploiting the possibilities offered by the Joint Research Centre's WWW-ArcInfo Gateway and Esri's emerging Internet Map Server technology. These will be the building blocks to construct a system that brings central and timely data to the expected end users in an interactive graphical format as required by their capacity (technicians, managers, ...) and matched with their competence. The approach of delivering interactive maps on the fly to an end user through the WWW integrated with a GIS and an RDBMS is not new and has been demonstrated before by us (e.g. in previous Esri user conferences). What is novel however is that in this exercise an industrial strength product is used to support this process and that it is integrated with the work and information flow within a day-to-day operational environment.
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