The development of the integrated GIS was preceded by a number of related projects including the acquisition and improvement of hardware equipment, the implementation of basic softwares as well as digitised topographic maps serving as the basis for installing the related application. The ArcInfo - ARCVIEW - ORACLE environment was selected for the realisation of the project in a client-server architecture. It proceeded according to the traditional phases of analysing the equipment/softwares available and the user requirements, system design, software development, installation and training. It is composed of three sub-systems as follows:
- Environment Protection
- Nature Conservation
- Register
Apart from the Information Centre of the MERP the system is implemented at 22 other Central and Regional Authorities for Environment Protection and Nature Conservation all over the country. It serves as an inventory for analysis, modelling and decision making concerning the issues of environment protection and nature conservation.
The idea of the improvement of the information infrastructure of MERP and its Regional Authorities dates back to the late 1980s. The opportunity for its realisation became evident in the early 1990s thanks to the funding of environmental projects in Hungary through the PHARE European Community Environment Programme. This programme targeted four priority areas:
- Strengthening the environment management capacities
- Air pollution abatement
- Municipal solid waste management
- Nature conservation management and habitat reconstruction
Devoted to a common purpose several individual but interrelated projects have been launched in the frame of this programme. One of them was the combined project 303: MERP Informatics Development and 802: Installation of a Computerised Information System for Nature Conservation.
Mr. Pál BOZÓ, Chief Information Officer of MERP, the Project Manager of the Contracting Party was responsible for the project preparation, development and implementation.
The large scope of this task required a sophisticated preparatory work. Its main aspects included - the detailed examination of systems and applications available prior to the project
- determination of priority issues to be handled by the new application
- definition of optimum balance between priorities to be solved and funding available
- preparing and announcing tenders for realising the projects
The aforementioned issues had to be co-ordinated among the Centre of MERP and 22 other Central and Regional Authorities for Environment Protection and Nature Conservation all over the country.
As a matter of fact a considerable number of related projects funded from diverse sources have already been realised before. None of them had brought however the desired result of setting up and implementing a system that would have offered a solution to the urgent need of Central and Regional Authorities of MERP for having a common, more or less standard application. Though providing valuable advice concerning how to set up a nation-wide environmental information system they were essentially stopped on the level of system design.
The highest priority of this project has thus been the very implementation of an integrated system according to the instructions defined in the system design that would be the basis of and provide substantial help in the daily work of the staff of Central and Regional Authorities.
Among the projects set up and ordered by MERP in the preparatory phase of its information infrastructure development the reports providing guidelines for the future strategy to be followed by the Ministry have to be mentioned. They were prepared by the DASY Decision- and System Analysis Ltd. and included the following reports:
- Preparation of the information strategy project of MERP
- Analysis of the information centre of MERP
- Analysis of Regional Authorities of MERP
- System design of the information system of MERP
The last report served as the basis for announcing the tenders of the Information Infrastructure Development of MERP including the project of the development and implementation of its Integrated GIS.
- Agency for Environment Protection
- Agency for Nature Conservation
- Agency for Regional Policy
The software development concerned the two first agencies.
The Agency for the Environment Protection includes the Supreme Authority for Environment Protection seated in the Ministry itself and 12 Regional Authorities scattered throughout the country. The Supreme Authority of the Agency for Nature Conservation (National Authority for Nature Conservation) has its individual headquarters in Budapest and supervises 9 Regional Authorities for Nature Conservation. Including the Information Centre of MERP there are thus 23 sites where the system has been implemented.
Environment Protection and Nature Conservation Authorities act essentially as professional authorities possessing jurisdiction for issuing first instance decisions and permissions concerning environment pollution and degradation of sites of national value. Second instance jurisdiction is practised by the related Supreme Authorities. The scope of task of Environmental Authorities is strictly restricted to this official activity, whereas for Nature Conservation Authorities there is in fact a place left , even if on limited scale, for collecting and analysing scientific data focusing chiefly on field observation of protected species. These so-called scientific data serve as the basis for issuing decisions and permissions.
In this respect, the main objective of the development and installation of the Integrated GIS of MERP was to work out an information system with GIS functionality supporting efficiently both the official and scientific fields of activity of Environment Protection and Nature Conservation Authorities providing the best possible support for their requirements concerning the capturing, processing and analysis of data.
Given the finite amount of the financial assistance of the European Community MERP has made a very serious effort to find the most cost-effective solution for implementing a system in all sites to be considered. The best alternative was apparently to set up an information centre for each of the concerned agencies of MERP. These are the so-called Thematic Information Centres (hereinafter referred to as TIC[s]) suggested to be pilot sites equipped by a high-level hardware and software basis that can be regarded as models for other authorities.
Selecting the Environmental Authority of Central Transdanubia as the TIC for Environment Protection (hereinafter referred to as EPTIC) was based upon the vicinity of Lake Balaton. As the authority having the largest portion of catchment area of Lake Balaton in its operation area it is responsible with two other Regional Environmental Authorities for implementing the so-called Lake Balaton Environment Management Project regarded recently as the environmental project of highest priority in Hungary. This project involves processing and analysis of an enormous amount of data requiring and eventually using the assets of the integrated system.
As for the Agency for Nature Conservation, the Directorate of the Hortobágy National Park was selected as TIC for Nature Conservation (hereinafter referred to as NCTIC) based on the experience of its staff in digital processing of nature conservation data from one hand and on the considerable value of sites and species occurring in this area from the other hand.
The next passage furnishes some general information on the following related projects:
- Implementation of hardware/basic software for the two TICs
- Establishing WAN and LAN and implementation of hardware/basic software for Regional Authorities
- Implementation of digitised maps for Regional Authorities and MERP
Implementation of hardware/basic software for the two TICs was realised by the Digital Hungary Ltd. Its main objective was to provide them with the necessary tools ensuring efficient GIS support in both workstations and PC-s. The related equipment will be specified in the next paragraph.
The establishment of WAN and LAN and implementation of hardware/basic software for Regional Authorities was completed by Albacomp Software Development Corporation. The establishment of X.25 communication ensures smooth data exchange between the 23 sites of MERP, whereas the LAN set up in the specific sites was needed for the operation in client-server architecture. The tasks included also the change of obsolete equipment into new ones and to bring them onto a standard level in each Regional Authority.
Implementation of digitised maps for Regional Authorities and MERP was realised by the Geometria Systems House Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Geometria Ltd.) and included digital capture of ca. 140, 1:25.000-scale topographic maps of Gauss-Krueger projection system. The area captured amounts to ca. 9.000 km2. Features to be captured and attributes to be processed were defined by MERP. Processing of data proceeded according to the traditional methods of getting clean line-work, linking attributes and eventually, processing topology. Features having common boundary were processed as regions. Data sets are provided in ArcInfo format. Additionally, a number of other digitised maps of different scales and themes can be used by Regional Authorities. Their utilisability and availability is restricted, however, by their partially insufficient detail and cost.
As it will be specified in the discussion of the sub-systems, application development was streamlined along the concept that less equipped Regional Authorities have the same opportunity to make use of the majority of its functionality. Consequently, the mapping module of the system is based on ARCVIEW 2.1 and uses the Avenue development environment. ArcInfo will be used for the management and maintenance of digital base maps. AML macros support this operation. ArcInfo on the server can directly be accessed from the PC's ARCVIEW through RPC protocol.
The mutual communication between the ARCVIEW graphic and ORACLE alphanumeric environments is realised through DDL and ODBC protocols.
The funds available did not allow to equip Regional Authorities with the same tools like TICs. TICs serve as models for them to be followed in case of obtaining other financial resources. In the frame of the present project Regional Authorities were provided with a Novell server running with Novell Netware 4.1. Like in TICs ORACLE 7 is the database server and ARCVIEW was installed on a high-performance PC station on DOS/MS Windows.
It must also be mentioned that TICs have both a UNIX and a Novell server.
- Geological Institute of Hungary (MÁFI)
- ECOPLAN Environment & Landscape Planning / GIS (ECOPLAN)
- Rudas & Karig Software Development, Trading and Services Ltd. (Rudas & Karig)
MÁFI, co-ordinator of the project was responsible for maintaining the contact between the Contractors and with the Contracting Party, carrying out the administrative tasks of the project, providing the ArcInfo platform for development and completing the analysis as well as loading the database of Nature Conservation Authorities.
ECOPLAN was responsible for designing and developing the turn-key Sub-system for Environment Protection as well as its implementation and training in EPTIC. Additionally, it developed an individual module aimed at capturing, processing and analysing data collected in the frame of the Lake Balaton Environment Management Project.
Rudas & Karig Ltd. designed and developed the Sub-systems of Nature Conservation and Register, and completed the integration of the three sub-systems. Except for EPTIC its tasks included also implementation and training.
- Analysis: July - September 1995
- System design: October - November 1995
- System development and preliminary test: December 1995 - March 1996
- Implementation, preparation of user documentation and training: April - May 1996
Considering the wide scope of the project it had a rather strict schedule mobilising vast human resources. Each phase was closed by a report submitted to the Contracting Party for approval.
The first phase included the analysis of hardware/software resources available at Central and Regional Authorities as well as their requirements concerning the functionality of the system to be developed. Each authority has been personally visited and the results of consultations were recorded in minutes. According to the guiding principle of the project priority was given to the requirements issued by TICs.
The second and third phases were devoted to setting up the design of each of the three sub-systems with the integrated application and to their development, respectively, followed by preliminary tests.
The project was completed by the implementation, further testing, training the users and preparing the user documentation.
- It has to satisfy the requirements of EPTIC being the centre for data processing of the Lake Balaton Environment Management Project with two other Regional Authorities.
- The functionalities of the application developed upon those requirements must also be accessible in the system of other Regional Authorities for Environment Protection.
Taking into account these two requirements the Sub-system for Environment Protection supports the following activities of Regional Authorities:
- improvement of environmental data capture
- advanced handling of environmental data
- complex interpretation and statistical analysis of environmental data
- ensuring the handling of georeferenced data
- supporting decisions on environmental rehabilitation by improving the accessibility of data needed
- taking official measures based on reliable assessments
- improving public awareness concerning the environment through more efficient dissemination of environmental information
To develop a system ensuring the integration and integrated analysis of the professional systems three major tasks had to be tackled:
- The systems though all in digital form have been developed by different softwares and have thus different data structure. There is an immense amount of tables and data columns to be handled (300 and 1500, respectively).
They had to be integrated into one system.
- Objects representing legal entities (companies, firms, enterprises etc.) had different identifiers in different sub-systems. In order to ensure simultaneous query of different kinds of pollution discharged by the same object a uniform identifier system of those objects was needed.
- In order to represent the results of queries and statistical analysis of data on map the related objects have to be georeferenced.
- Full integration of data from different source tables has been realised through importing from dBASE into ORACLE tables using FoxPro applications. A full integration of all the data handling functions of the sub- systems into ORACLE was impracticable given the legal background, the schedule and resources of the project. Inventory data will thus further be captured using the original interface and structure of sub-systems. When needed for integrated analysis they will be imported into ORACLE environment for tabular and spatial evaluation and representation.
- The problem of integrating object identifiers was handled through elaborating several interrelated register tables with the fundamental register table of objects. It provides every object with a unique identifier and registers their X,Y,Z coordinates needed for spatial representation.
- Georeferencing of the objects can be made by typing the coordinates directly into the register table of objects or registered indirectly through the georeferencing tool of the application, using a special on-screen georeferencing technique.
Loading the register table of objects and other related tables is a task demanding meticulous and precise work from Regional Authorities (30.000 records for EPTIC). But once completed and duly maintained it brings the fruits of enabling the simultaneous analysis of different kinds of pollution discharged by the same source or selected groups of sources and its representation on map.
Also the system provides for the first time the possibility of complex environmental impact assessment of user- defined regions, like watersheds, river-corridors, metropolitan areas etc. This capability has a special importance at the Lake Balaton watershed, where the high touristic value of the environmentally sensitive lake is threatened by diverse types of pollution.
- Specifying an area on map or from table
- Specifying factors
- Specifying a time interval
- Specifying a function
A new VIEW can be created upon the results of the query that can be transferred to ARCVIEW via DDE for spatial representation or further selection. Quite naturally, the "Navigation module" does not allow to analyse data omitted in the related VIEW. The "Navigation module" creates the SQL queries on screen, according to these selections. These queries can be saved then in a "Query library".
The user interface of the Sub-system for Environment Protection is composed of two modules: the ARCVIEW and the ORACLE module. They have to be activated independently. Map initialisation representing the establishment of connection between them through DDE protocol is realised by activating a button in the ORACLE interface. The following passage gives a short description of the main functionalities of the mapping module.
- Providing support for Nature Conservation Authorities to their day-to-day official work
- Supporting the collection, processing and analysis of biological data serving as the basis for issuing decisions and permissions
- GIS support for the above activities, representation of the results of queries and analyses on map
In contrast to the Sub-system for Environment Protection there were only a few digital databases used at Nature Conservation Authorities. Their majority was developed in NCTIC (Directorate of the Hortobágy National Park). It served for the Rudas & Karig Ltd. as a firm basis for software development. Related databases supporting official work of Nature Conservation Authorities (Land and Forest Management) were available in digital format.
Synonym names can be given to each species. Code tables pertaining to this module include the types of geographic environment of occurrence, degree of protection, frequency of occurrence and the eventual belonging to international conventions for protection. Apart from species sub-species are also registered.
The following two modules support the official work of Nature Conservation Authorities. They constitute the legal basis of inventorying and maintaining nature conservation areas.
1:10.000 cadastral paper maps are used for identifying parcels. Some of them are digitised including a pilot area of NCTIC in Hortobágy. The full functionality provided by the Integrated GIS can be accessed following the digital capture of all related maps.
Coverages available include the 1:25.000 topographic maps processed by Geometria Ltd. They serve as a background for identifying locations of biological observations. The latter are registered in shape files. Concerning land and forestry management maps of pilot areas they are available in ArcInfo format. Efforts will be made in the near future in NCTIC to complete their digital processing on the area of the Hortobágy National Park.
The mapping module supports a number of operations in ARCVIEW. Their detailed specification is provided in the user documentation.