Environmental Software Systems. Frameworks of eEnvironment

The White Paper on eEnvironment introduced the content of eEnvironment at the Ad hoc Committee on eDemocracy of the Council of Europe in 2007. The Recommendation CM/Rec(2009)1 of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe to member states on electronic democracy (e-Democracy) specified eEnvironment in more detail. The objective is that any citizen can be informed about environmental matters and can use this information for active participation in decision making and environmental protection.

Now, eEnvironment is one of the pillars of eDemocracy and a member in the “eFamily” like eParticipation and eGovernment. The paper describes the reality and challenges for eEnvironment implementation with respect to the Digital Agenda for Europe and the European eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015. Furthermore it formulates some ideas for embedding eEnvironment in a Shared Environmental Information System and linked it to the vision of a Single Information Space in Europe for the Environment.

Integrated modelling and environmental decision support are increasingly important as society tackles some of the most complex challenges of our generation, with impacts on future generations. When integrated modelling is successful, the results can be transformational yet the core elements for generating that success are not always clear. There is an elusive element to finding the best mix of methods, models and approaches for any given problem. This raises issues for repeatability and questions regarding how the emerging metadiscipline will converge in order to consistently achieve quality results or increased understanding of the processes that lead to success. Key challenges include the need to diagnose elements that lead to successful process, training for professional and technical competencies, and increased access to stable platforms and interchangeable models and modelling tools. This paper aims to summarize some of the key process and product related challenges of integrated modelling and environmental decision support.

European Open Government Data Initiative is introduced as a free, open-source, cloud-based collection of software assets that government organizations can take advantage of. They can upload and store public data into the Microsoft Cloud, while leveraging the Windows Azure Platform and environment. Important case study of Windows Azure Platform are presented.

One of the very important aims of the Czech Statistical Office (CZSO) is to produce national statistical data on environmental development among others. During the last two decades one could trace the constantly increasing interest and attention to environmental statistics both at the international, national and regional level. Being a sustainability management tool, its content has been consequently improving and extending along with the changing political priorities and stakeholder interests. The paper describes the development path of the environmental statistics at the CZSO, makes an assessment of its historical development, current state, and presents the expected future development trends in the field.

The aim of the article is to present the role and activities of the National Secretariat GEOSS/GMES (NS). Existence of the NS was declared by the Czech Governmental Resolution No. 229/2009. This resolution requires activities of two ministries – the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports to coordinate Czech activities related to international programmes GEOSS and GMES. The goal of GEOSS and GMES is building up an integrated and sustainable system by sharing and providing information services on the environment, especially those based on Earth observation and remote sensing technologies. The article explains the Czech approach to the coordination of GEOSS/GMES. The coordination is necessary for efficient exploitation of the first-emerged services and also for expanding information to the user´s community. The NS Work Plan 2011 was introduced at the beginning of this year and some goals have already been achieved.

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.

The OGD2011 project launches the 1st Open Government Data Conference Austria and brings together international and national experts in the area of Open Government Data as well as representatives of the main four open data stakeholder groups: politicians, citizens, industry and the public administration in Austria for the first time in 2011 in Vienna. But OGD2011 is more than a conference: in the course of four workshops with representatives of the 4 mentioned stakeholder groups in Spring 2011 the expectations & requirements of these groups as well as challenges & threats and open questions & important issues of the open data process in Austria have been evaluated and analysed. As an output of this analysis as well as of the conference the OGD2011 project team publishes the OGD White Book Austria. This paper gives an overview over the outcomes of the OGD2011 project.

The development of the complete and complex Single Information Space for the Environment in the Europe (SISE) covering all interactions among environmental information and knowledge using current ICT tools is practically impossible. A common methodology of building the conceptual model of the SISE, based on ontologies and associated technologies was developed at Masaryk University. The big challenge is to find the best way how to make ontology semantics available to the user using appropriate problem solving (search) interface. The paper shows the concept of a SISE semantic interpretation, related summary of used technologies. The concept combines main advantages of ontologies and expert systems - the ontology semantics and the rule based on application are used for searching information and issuing predictions.

Paper describes the state-of-the-art of flood management both in the Czech Republic and in the broader framework of EU. Special focus is given to geoinformation and cartographic issues within consecutive parts of emergency management cycle used in European Union countries (prevention, preparation, response, and recovery phases). For each phase an adaptive mapping solution is outlined. The principles of adaptive cartography and its applications are described.

Quality of life has currently been intensively studied and assessed by using a variety of indicators. Information and communication technologies, or more precisely geographical information technologies, prove invaluable in this process. It is clearly difficult to quantify and spatially localize the quality of life. Fuzzy sets allow the capturing of uncertainty. This article deals with the integration of fuzzy sets into a geographical IS to capture, analyse and evaluate selected aspects of the quality of life.

This paper describes our work to date on knowledge-based service architecture implementations for multi-risk environmental decision-support. The work described spans two research projects, SANY and TRIDEC, and covers application domains where very large, high report frequency real-time information sources must be processed in challenging timescales to support multi-risk decision support in evolving crises. We describe how OGC and W3C standards can be used to support semantic interoperability, and how context-ware information filtering can reduce the amount of processed data to manageable levels. We separate our data mining and data fusion processing into distinct pipelines, each supporting JDL inspired semantic levels of data processing. We conclude by outlining the challenges ahead and our vision for how knowledge-based service architectures can address these challenges.

The paper describes evolution, recent development and structure of the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme, which is a European tool how to bring data produced within Earth Observation capacities closer to daily use for numerous international, national and even regional users. GMES will help to ensure sustainable flow of accurate and timely data to monitor changes of our environment and will be a helpful tool to manage and coordinate fast emergency response.

We investigate the potential role Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) can play in eEvironment and various Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) on a local, regional, and national level. eEnvironment is the use and promotion of ICT for the purposes of environmental assessment and protection, spatial planning, and the sustainable use of natural resources. An SDI provides an institutionally sanctioned, automated means for posting, discovering, evaluating, and exchanging geospatial information by participating information producers and users. A key common theme shared by both definitions is public participation and user-centric services. We pose the research question: is VGI (an example of public participation and collaboration) is ready to participate in eEnvironment and SDI?

The region of North-west Bohemia has been influenced by the open cast mining for more than the last hundred years. During this period has the coal mining activity become very intense leaving huge change on the landscape. We may require the original landscape for many purposes (historical, landscape renewal). One of the ways how to reconstruct the original shape of the landscape is the usage of historical maps and old aerial photographs made in the period before the dramatic georelief changes. As the data sources, we use the maps of the 3

rd

Military survey 1:25 000 after reambulation, aerial photographs taken in years 1938, 1952, 1995 and maps of stabile cadaster. The reambulated maps contain clearly readable elevation data (contour lines), which were used for reconstructing the original landscape. From processed aerial photographs we get the Digital Surface Model of the coal mines in different time periods.

GINA is a comprehensive software system for field workers allowing effective mapping of environment and situation. The GINA makes easier by its design the mapping works in the terrain and protects the collected data. It runs on hardware of Motorola Company which has sturdy design for work in the field and is perfectly adjusted to needs of field workers. By means of GINA System can be realized mapping projects in extravilans that wouldn’t be even possible to do by traditional methods.

The cost effective delivery of scientific and policy requirements is a key driver for the realization of global sustainability research, integrated assessment and supporting innovative systems. The next generation of geospatial information infrastructures is proposed as a possible solution. Still, questions such as ‘what does all this mean to environmental information systems’ and ‘what is expected to change’, have only partially been answered. In this paper, we describe the recent challenges for eEnvironment services in Europe, specify desired capabilities and derive according requirements. We identify affected stakeholder communities and depict their involvement in the overall value chain of environmental knowledge generation. Specific examples illustrate individual needs, while a derived description of the value chain indicates more general outcomes. Developmental requirements of future information systems are discussed. The presented work answers the questions above by bridging the gab between stakeholder needs, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) development and higher level concepts, such as Digital Earth and Future Internet.

The hype on the Cloud is based on promising cost savings if, considering the new service platform concepts (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) the term comes with, IT resources will be used effectively. Therefore, the trend is moving away from physical systems to more instant and short-term environments and virtualization is increasingly taking on a key role in various system architectures. This is already well accepted by a few business units such as customer relationship management or marketing, operated from

Salesforce.com

for instance [1]. However, earth scientific offers featuring specialized functions and services on demand are still rare but of great benefit in order to overcome the global changes in environmental conditions. Only one task from the field of model preprocessing at the DGHM was picked out for virtualization purposes and the results will be introduced in the following.

Environmental Information Systems (EIS) allow the user to store, query and process environmental information and visualize it in thematic maps, diagrams and reports. Although service-orientation is the predominant architectural style of EIS there is no design methodology that brings together the requirements and the expert knowledge of EIS users with the services and information offerings of existing EIS, and, in addition, explicitly obeys the guidelines and constraints of geospatial standards of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) as side-conditions. This paper focuses on the analysis phase as a prelude to service-oriented design. It proposes a way of gathering, describing and documenting user requirements in terms of extended use cases which may then be used to perform the abstract design step following SERVUS which denotes a Design Methodology for Information Systems based upon Geospatial Service-oriented Architectures and the Modelling of Use Cases and Capabilities as Resources.

Citizens are increasingly aware of the influence of environmental and meteorological conditions on the quality of their life. This results in an increasing demand for personalized environmental information, i.e., information that is tailored to citizens’ specific context and background. In this work we describe the development of an environmental information system that addresses this demand in its full complexity. Specifically, we aim at developing a system that supports submission of user generated queries related to environmental conditions. From the technical point of view, the system is tuned to discover reliable data in the web and to process these data in order to convert them into knowledge, which is stored in a dedicated repository. At run time, this information is transferred into an ontology-structured knowledge base, from which then information relevant to the specific user is deduced and communicated in the language of their preference.

This paper discusses an efficient solution to contemporary situation assessment problems found in environmental management applications. The targeted problems are inherently complex and require processing of large quantities of heterogeneous information by using rich domain knowledge dispersed through multiple organizations. We assume a collaborative solution based on the Dynamic Process Integration Framework, which supports systematic encapsulation of heterogeneous processing services, including human experts. The encapsulation allows dynamic composition of heterogeneous processing services using advanced self-configuration mechanisms for optimal selection of service providers. Self-configuration is based on a framework for development of cooperative multi-issue one-to-many service negotiations. The framework allows the definition of: negotiation protocols, negotiation subjects composed of multiple negotiation issues, properties of negotiation issues, deal spaces, and utility functions of participant stakeholders. We show how this framework can be used for dynamic composition of workflows spanning multiple organizations in a disaster management information system.

The paper discuss the information gateway

data.reegle.info

, which is at the forefront of this development, is consuming and publishing energy related data in a machine-readable format so as to allow the flexible sharing and re-use of information in new and innovative ways. It filters and enriches content by sorting and adding pertinent information from various reliable sources. It enables data providers to easily link and publish datasets in a standardised, machine-readable format. In this way it can be easily accessible, and shared with 3

rd

parties. This is a real benefit for the users of reegle which targets policy- and decision makers, developers and the general public with an interest in renewable energy and energy efficiency, with a focus on developing countries.

The GENESIS project, partially funded by the European Commission (DG INFSO in the FP7 framework) provides an efficient Web-based software solution that can be used by all kind of actors involved in environment management and health services in Europe. The solution takes aboard various leading-edge technologies like multi-linguality and ontologies, sensor networks, near-real-time data fusion, dynamic work flows, portlet-based customizable portal and many more. A set of multi-thematic pilots is developed based on the GENESIS solution as a proof of concept.

Many decision makers are hindered in their daily work by “un-integrated” systems which can force them to move data around between tools which are only more or less compatible. Because environmental models play an important role in environmental decision support systems, the integration of models into user-friendly integrated decision support systems is essential to the support of such users. This paper presents a decision support system supporting users involved in the protection of the Coatzacoalcos River in Mexico near the largest agglomeration of petrochemical installations in Mexico, which are operated by the Mexican oil company Petroleos Mexicanos. At the same time, the area is densely populated and important for agriculture.

The system was built in a collaboration of the Mexican Petroleum Institute, the Environmental Informatics Group, and cismet GmbH and is based on cismet’s geospatial application suite called

cids

. It integrates several tools and models into a holistic, user-centered application.

We present our ideas of an open Information and Communication Technology (ICT) platform for monitoring, mapping and managing our environment. The envisioned solution bridges the gap between the Internet of Things, Content and Services, and highly specific applications, such as oil spill detection or marine monitoring. On the one hand, this environmental platform should be open to new technologies; on the other hand, it has to provide open standard interfaces to various application domains. We identify core components, standards, and needs for new standard development in ICT for environment. We briefly outline how our past and present activities contribute to the development of the desired open environmental platform. Future implementations shall contribute to sustainable developments in the environmental domain.

INSPIRE provides the framework for the establishment of a European Spatial Data Infrastructure. The cross-border use and applicability of data requires that specific standards and rules are fulfilled by data providers. Such rules are currently being developed as data specifications. Soil as a theme in the INSPIRE annex III is included in this process, and was selected as the target theme for the EU best practice network GS SOIL ”Assessment and strategic development of INSPIRE compliant Geodata-Services for European soil data”. The project contributes to the harmonization and provision of interoperable soil geodata in Europe. The main deliverable of the project is the web portal http://gssoil-portal.eu/, which provides information, data management tools and links to data sources. Examples are the soil specific multilingual thesaurus, a metadata editor and catalogue service, provision of WMS and prototype WFS.

The management of data and data resources created by different research activities are heavily influenced by various research philosophies and sampling strategies. Within long-term environmental research (LTER) projects data on flows of individuals, chemical substances and other biotic and abiotic materials are collected by different project partners and institutions. This leads not only to different data bases, but also to incomparable data sets. Therefore, a virtual research environment (VRE) for research projects concerning environmental management should be worked out. The facilities of data sharing, interactive data collaboration and data storage as well as the communication within a project team by metadata are in the focus of a VRE which have to be optimised by WEB 2.0 and other collaboration tools. From this background the FOSS application “GeoNetwork – Opensource” (GNOS) is aimed to be used as a central component for data management in a VRE.

Corporate sustainability reporting and the measurement of environmental, social, economic and governance performance are discussed in the paper. These are necessary tools of top management for the company strategy choice of sustainable success. In doing so, the relationship between company performance and these factors is important, therefore, the need to develop the modern and advanced methods and metrics to identify them mainly based on the quantification with the possibility of utilization of information and communication technology. This is discussed in the paper.

Environmental modeling is increasingly more integrative and collabo rative work. The Internet and Web hold a promise of a shared environ mental infor mation infrastructure, which supports modeling. While the tradi tional (enterprise) information system architectures have not been much em ployed in the environmen tal domain, new standards-based Web technologies create an opportunity. At the same time the modeling workflows are being in vestigated, and this work may provide a fruitful starting point for new kind of top-down services that support modeling within environmental information in frastructures.

At our University we developed a course for further training and professional education in landscape and environmental planning, commenced in 2001 [1]. The main content are Geographical Information Systems (GIS), Data Management Systems, and Visualisation. We introduce relevant software, but apply and teach them from a landscape planning point of view. The course has three weeks of joint training, with partly online-guided self-study phases of four weeks in between. Our clients are mainly professionals from governmental organizations, as well as freelancers. Interestingly, the course helps us to improve our curriculum for Bachelor and Master nowadays [2]. Hence, we believe, the course contains as well as continuously updates somehow the most important digital methods and tools in Landscape Planning, strongly related to current and on-going changes of professional needs. One of those needs is certainly the increasing use of Environmental Information Systems and Services.

Envimat.cz is a new online catalogue of environmental profiles of building materials and structures localized for the Czech Republic. It allows users to compare, model and edit chosen elements. One of the main objectives is to help architects and designers to choose appropriate materials for their building and provide information on its environmental impacts. Information from the catalogue can also play a significant role for developers and their customers. Initial data are derived from the Swiss database Ecoinvent but the goal is to replace them continuously with more accurate, localized data coming from Environmental Product Declarations provided by Czech building industry producers. Envimat.cz brings multiple benefits, especially for the following stakeholders: it gives better information to the building owners; architects can easily choose solutions that are environmentally friendly; efficient producers can make profit from their advantage and Czech construction industry as whole is shifted to higher environmental friendly standard.

The ENVISION Portal is a Web-enabled infrastructure for the discovery, annotation, and composition of environmental services. It is a tool to create Web sites dedicated to particular domain-specific scenarios such as oil spill drift modeling or landslide risk assessment. The underlying architecture based on pluggable user interface components is briefly discussed, followed by a presentation of the components resulting from the first iteration of the implementation. A walkthrough explains how to create a scenario website and populate it with the user interface components required for one specific scenario. The paper concludes with a discussion of open challenges identified during the implementation.

Typical use cases of the crop simulation models consist of such operations as parametric identification, yield forecast and optimization, analysis of different technologies etc. All these tasks relate to multiple running of the model with several variants of input parameters and can be automated by means of polyvariant crop simulation framework which allows performing the multiple running in the batch mode. Such framework has been developed in our laboratory. It makes it possible to register any crop simulation model in the database and to perform several typical operations with it. As a result we present the wide-functional computer system for planning and automation of multi-factor computer experiment with arbitrary dynamic crop models.

Emergency management is represented by managerial functions which aim to reduce vulnerability to hazards and to cope with disasters. Emergencies often have direct impact on the environment. This paper focuses on identification and subsequent software support processes in the emergency management. The paper aims to describe a process methodology for emergency management in details. The methodology describes how to manage an information system development suitable for emergency management, which is built on business processes. The methodology consists of five main phases. Each phase is described in terms of individual activities, work products, and user roles. The next part of the paper recommends the use of particular technologies, tools and resources that have been successfully proved in the analysis of emergency situations in the Czech Republic. The straightforward outcome of the novel process methodology is more effective solution of emergency situations and therefore the reduction of negative environmental impacts.

Soil erosion implications on future food security are gaining global attention because in many areas worldwide there is an imbalance between soil loss and its subsequent deposition. Soil erosion is a complex phenomenon af fected by many factors such as climate, topography and land cover (in particular forest resources, natural vegetation and agriculture) while directly influencing water sediment transport, the quality of water resources and water storage loss. A modeling architecture, based on the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation, is proposed and applied to evaluate and validate at regional scale potential and actual soil water erosion, enabling it to be linked to other involved natural resources. The methodology benefits from the array programming paradigm with semantic constraints (lightweight array behavioural contracts provided by the Mastrave library) to concisely implement models as composition of interoperable modules and to process heterogeneous data.

Full-text search functions in environmental portals make a large amount of environmental data accessible. Many data sources, however, are not suited for indexing by search machines or the data themselves are not suited for access by full-text search. A possibility to make such data of the “dark web” accessible consists in addressing the data sources in the environmental portal directly. The procedure presented here starts with a formal description of data sources (e.g. from the point of view of the portal, these are the target systems). Based on this description, a special component of full-text search, the so-called search broker, can extend and detail a search query, such that all necessary parameters (if possible) are compiled to address these systems and to guide the user directly to the data desired. The presentation component of the environmental portal is responsible for the adequate compilation and display of these data, the so-called result mash-up.

This paper deals with an efficiency of current municipal expenditure on environmental protection and suggests a methodology for assessing this efficiency. A proposal of methodological procedure for evaluating efficiency of municipal environmental protection expenditure uses multi-criteria evaluation, where a dominant criterion of performance is modified method of Cost-effectiveness analysis. It was implemented in open source software. The efficiency in the methodology is intended in terms of 3E methodology – Economy, Efficiency and Effectiveness, together with the methodology of sustainable development – social, environmental and economic part of sustainable development. This procedure is applied to a set of environmental protection expenditure data that come from the representative sample of municipalities in areas of waste management which were used in a project of the Ministry of Environment of the Czech Republic SP/4i1/54/08 “Analysis of municipal budgets efficiency in relation to the environmental protection”.

The CryoLand project implements and validates a standardized and sustainable service on snow and land ice monitoring as a Downstream Service of GMES. It will provide geospatial product coverages of seasonal snow (snow extent, snow mass, melt state), glaciers (area, snow / ice extent, ice velocities, glacier dammed lakes), and lake / river ice (extent, temporal variations, snow burden) derived from Earth observation (EO) satellite data. Processing lines and a service infrastructure will be developed on top of existing Web service environments supporting the publication, provision and chaining of involved geospatial data services. The CryoLand service architecture commits INSPIRE, OGC, and OASIS standards specifically respecting HMA and GENESIS frameworks. User information services offering discovery, view and download functions will be provided.

In this paper we present the web-based River Basin Information System (RBIS) for data management, analysis and exchange as an integral standalone part of the Integrated Landscape Management System (ILMS). Its architectural layout will be outlined together with the underlying software platform. Selected RBIS modules will be characterized in more detail to emphasize the benefits of integrated data management as a basis of the holistic environmental planning workflow covered by ILMS.

We sketch the HIPPOLYTOS and the KOIOS system prototypes for simple, keyword-based search in structured environmental data. Built on top of a commercial Spatial Data Warehouse software, the prototypes apply lightweight Semantic Web techniques to facilitate search in complex environmental information systems.

The provision of accurate, comprehensive and condensed information contained in distributed environmental information systems via public search interfaces raises several technological challenges. Our approach to tackle these challenges is based on a consequent use of ontologies. Starting with an analysis of requirements resulting from semantic search scenarios, we explain the advantages of using ontologies based on standards and aim to reuse and transform terminological systems available in the environmental domain into ontologies. We develop an architecture guided by the premise of exerting a minimum of influence on existing search infrastructures. As a consequence of using a (possibly large) number of ontologies, tools for ontology management are needed. A key argument for using ontologies is that nowadays – as an outcome of the Semantic Web initiative - very powerful processing tools are available. We elaborate ontology mapping as an example and outline how a comprehensive ontology management can be achieved.

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.

Efforts required for publishing information as Linked Data often appears too high compared to obvious and immediate benefits. Consequently, only a tiny fraction of the web can be easily used as a semantic ”database” today. Drupal 7 changes the rules of the game by integrating the functionality required for structuring and semantically annotating arbitrary content types in the Drupal “core”, as well as encouraging the module authors to use this functionality in their Drupal extensions. This paper presents the authors recent experiences with strengths and shortcomings of the Drupal 6 and Drupal 7 semantic web extensions, and discusses feasibility of the future semantic web environmental applications based on a Drupal platform. The intention of the paper is (1) to analyse the state of the art in semantic web support, as well as the potentials for further development in Drupal today; (2) to prove the feasibility of Drupal based semantic web applications for environmental usage area; and (3) to introduce the idea of Drupal as a rapid prototyping development environment.

The synthesis of existing Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) pollution monitoring databases with epidemiological data is considered for identifying some impacts of POPs on human health. This task requires new, rich, data, services and models discovery capabilities from a multitude of monitoring networks and web resources. The FP7 project TaToo (Tagging Tool based on a Semantic Discovery Framework) is setting up a semantic web solution to close the discovery gap that prevents a full and easy access to web resources. The use of TaToo tools together with software GENASIS and SVOD is discussed as TaToo validation scenario for anthropogenic impact and global climate change influence on POPs trajectory. This paper contains the first propose of POPs and cancer domain ontology intended for TaToo framework.

In recent years we have witnessed a proliferation of environmental information on the Web thanks to advances in automated data acquisition and to the widespread use of computer based models and decision support systems processing environmental data. The number of environmental data providers has been also increasing. However, each provider manages its own data sets encoded into specific data formats and unaware of related and relevant data managed by other providers. Also, most of the environmental data providers store their data into huge, centralized repositories, which makes the access and discovery of desired data difficult. The Linked Data principles along with the Semantic Web technologies have been recognized as a promising solution to both environmental data integration and discovery. Unique identification of environmental data by HTTP dereferencable URIs, semantic annotation of environmental data by shared domain conceptualizations (ontologies), and interlinking of related environmental data by typed (semantic) links will enable the integration of disconnected environmental data sets into the semantically unified environmental information space. Semantic annotations and semantic links will then enable semantic discovery of environmental data over such unified information space. In this paper, we try to identify a number of requirements that environmental data providers should satisfy in order to make their data fully contribute to this vision. In particular, we are focused on requirements regarding environmental data identification, representation, annotation and linking.

During the past years huge amounts of resources in the environmental domain have been published on the internet. To facilitate search and discovery of relevant data among an ever increasing mass, the use of tags has been suggested. Yet, the use of non-formal tags for annotating resources allows simple categorization and search capabilities, but it does not provide the means to create cross-domain annotations. On the other hand, ontologies are a shared and formal conceptualization of a given domain and they can be used to formalise tags. The use of formal semantics for tagging allows taking advantage of the reasoning and inference power of the ontologies to create richer resource annotations enhancing the discovery process. In the environmental domain there is a clear need of frameworks and tools allowing formal tagging and discovery. In this paper we discuss about the definition of a Semantic Framework helping the tagging and discovery process of environmental resources. Moreover, we also report on the definition of a model to describe environmental resources allowing cross-domain annotation and search.

As climate change appears, strategies and actions will be necessary to cope with its effects on environment and society in the coming decades. Current climate conditions can be observed everywhere in the world but future climate conditions can only be estimated through climate simulations which produce huge amounts of quantitative data. This data leads to statements like “temperature increase is expected to exceed 2.6°C” or similar and remain fuzzy to non-experts in climate research. The Climate Twins application is designed to communicate climate changes in an intuitive and understandable way by showing regions which have now similar climate conditions according to a given Point of Interest (POI) in the future. This paper explains how the application seeks for locations with similar climatological patterns according to the POI. To achieve this goal a method has been developed to quantify similarity between two locations’ climate data.

Advanced management of environmental data requires appropriate metadata and tooling. Moreover, contemporary environmental data is heterogenous, encompassing also data about people, environmentaly-related projects, and documents. Also geographical- and time-related information are vital for any environmental data and should be supported. To satisfy these requirements, “semantic wikis” represent suitable tools but usually requiring knowledge management skills. In this paper, we present a semantic extension to project-management tool Trac, enabling advanced but user-friendly querying in semantic data stored in the system and its visualization. As it builds upon the general concept of RDF-based semantic data, it can be freely extended into other contexts and deployed in various environmental management applications. We also discuss automatic formal visualization of semantic data. Such process significantly lowers the requirements on users in preparing the visualization in domains like environmental studies – and also helps to build

Linked Data

-aware and better human-readable interfaces of semantic data repositories.

Ontology has become increasingly important to software systems. The aim of ontology learning is to ease one of the major problems in ontology engineering, i.e. the cost of ontology construction. Much of the effort within the ontology learning community has focused on learning from text collections. However, environmental domains often deal with numerical measurement data and, therefore, rely on methods and tools for learning beyond text. We discuss this characteristic using two relations of an ontology for lakes. Specifically, we learn a threshold value from numerical measurement data for ontological rules that classify lakes according to nutrient status. We describe our methodology, highlight the cyclical interaction between data mining and ontologies, and note that the numerical value for lake nutrient status is specific to a spatial and temporal context. The use case suggests that learning from numerical measurement data is a research area relevant to environmental software systems.

The present contribution deals with analyzing the issue of semantic searching and the possibilities of its integration as a part of the portal for scientific projects support. The difficulties of integration of the semantic principles into the solution itself, the software support of the portal creation, i.e., solutions that are accessible, and possibilities of further development are discussed here. A part of the solution is the integration and support of XBRL documents being a fundamental part of inter-company communication and information exchange. Last but not least, the contribution discusses the possibilities of employing the principles of semantic searching in portal discussions which are treated on the levels of social networks, and the integration of these discussions as supporting the management of team projects.

This paper proposes conceptual model which can be used to facilitate the discovery, integration and analysis of environmental data in cancer-related risk studies. Persistent organic pollutants were chosen as a model because of their persistence, bioaccumulation potential and genotoxicity. Part dealing with cancer risk is primarily focused on population-based observations encompassing a wide range of epidemiologic studies, from local investigations to national cancer registries. The proposed model adopted multilayer hierarchy working with characteristics of given entities (POPs, cancer diseases as

nomenclature classes

) and couples “

observation – measurement”

as content defining classes. The proposal extends formally used taxonomy applying multidimensional set of descriptors including scores of measurement validity and precision. This solution has the potential to aid multidisciplinary data discovery and knowledge mining. The same structure of descriptors used for environmental and cancer part enables the users to integrate different data sources recognizing their methodical origin, time & space coordinates and validity.

Global ENvironmental ASsessment and Information System (GENASIS) is a tool developed by expert teams of the Research Centre for Toxic Compounds in the Environment (RECETOX) and the Institute for Biostatistics and Analyses (IBA) of the Masaryk University in Brno. The aim of GENASIS is to compile validated data on persistent organic pollutants, including their properties, sources, long-term levels, life times, transport mechanisms, effects and risks, scattered throughout various institutions and ministries, and to provide tools for their visualization, analyses, interpretation, assessment of environmental and human risks or modelling of fate. Such a tool should significantly enhance comprehensive understanding of the fate of POPs in the environment, their impacts on ecosystem and the human population.

The current situation in environmental monitoring is characterized by increasing amount of data from monitoring networks together with increasing requirements on joining of these data from various sources in comprehensive databases and their usage for decision support in environmental protection and management. The automated analysis of such a heterogeneous datasets is a complicated process, rich in statistical pitfalls. There is a number of methods for multivariate classification of objects, e.g. logistic regression, discriminant analysis or neural networks; however, most of commonly used classification techniques have prerequisites about distribution of data, are computationally demanding or their model can be considered as “black box”. Keeping these facts in mind, we attempted to develop a robust multivariate method suitable for classification of unknown cases with minimum sensitivity to data distribution problems; and thus, suitable for routine use in practice.

Growing demand for data on the environmental impacts of persistent organic pollutants coming from legal and regional authorities as well as from private subjects, professionals and public resulted in initiation of the CETOCOEN project. This project is coordinated by the Research centre for toxic compounds in the environment of the Masaryk University in Brno and provides complex information supporting decision making and development of strategies related to protection of natural environment and human health.

The goal of this study was to use the modeling tools for prediction of environmental concentrations and pools of pesticides (HCB and DDT) in soil. The characterization and quantification of secondary background sources of HCB, were computed using fugacity based deterministic model. Areas with a high potential for deposition and volatilization of HCB were identified. Results of modeling were maps showing spatial distribution of HCB and DDT in the Czech Republic which have been visualized on the web portal GENASIS (Global Environmental Assessment Information System) to provide information on environment contamination.

The synthesis of existing Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) pollution monitoring databases with epidemiological data is considered for identifying some impacts of POPs on human health. This task requires new, rich, data, services and models discovery capabilities from a multitude of monitoring networks and web resources. The FP7 project TaToo (Tagging Tool based on a Semantic Discovery Framework) is setting up a semantic web solution to close the discovery gap that prevents a full and easy access to web resources. The use of TaToo tools together with software GENASIS and SVOD is discussed as TaToo validation scenario for anthropogenic impact and global climate change influence on POPs trajectory.

Temporal changes in the structure of biological communities are one of the factors affecting water quality assessment systems. The aim of our work was to analyze the temporal variability of benthic macroinvertebrates and its consequences for the established streams typology. The data analyzed come from a biomonitoring of streams of the Czech Republic during 2002-2005. Changes of the structure of macroinvertebrates communities were observed using diversity indices (Shannon index) and biotic indices (saprobic index) and using actual changes in community structure. The time related shift in indices and the community composition was found, but the correlation of the locality typologies and the change was not found.

Using the probably approximately correct (PAC) learning hypothesis, we have conducted experiments using clustered computers, high-performance workstations and ad-hoc grids of personal computers, to develop an analytical model for, and demonstrate asymptotic convergence of simple parallel search in the parameter space of complex environmental models such as the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). SWAT calibration for hydrological flow, N and P is, for our test cases, superior to current genetic algorithms, as well as to SWAT-CUP, a multi-paradigm calibration solver and to its components. With more complex models, there is no current alternative to our approach in a realizable wall-clock time.

Currently, there is an increasing demand for more efficient and practical environmental impact assessment (EIA) tools due to the emerging climate change challenges and need to better evaluate and control impacts of industrial technologies and activities. However, due to the inherent uncertainties, vagueness’s of assessment data, traditional EIA methods are unable to handle efficiently and properly such decision making process, and consequently more efficient method resorts to the opinions of group of relevant experts in order to enhance the reliability of the assessment decision. However, experts’ assessments are usually in heterogeneous forms, multi-metric or multi-criterion and usually conflicting. This article presents a fuzzy decision making systems (FDMS) that enables heterogeneous experts’ preference ratings assessment and provides for aggregation of those opinions over multi-metric scales. Experts can provide their opinion in form of crisp, linguistic or fuzzy values.

In June/July 2009 the weather in the Czech Republic was influenced by a 12 days lasting baric low located over Mediterranean, which resulted in a sequence of many flash foods. The total damage was estimated to be about 200 mil. EUR and 15 people died. Although the flash flood is considered as hardly predictable phenomena, first efforts in flash floods forecasting have been already done [1]. Some flash floods can be predicted several tens of minutes in advance. Nowadays, new methods of nowcasting are being developed and they promise a new progress in predicting of these events. The paper shows a detail case study of a flash flood - from the point of view of flash flood forecasting. Based on the results, the prediction system consisting of several nowcasting tools (COTREC, CELLTRACK, etc.) combined with the HYDROG rainfall-runoff model will be set up for testing in operation.

Planning for sustainable cities requires the inclusion of environmental aspects like air quality. Within a planning perspective of 20-30 years, there are various factors influencing future air quality:

Worldwide: Climate change may change global background pollution levels and it will affect the atmospheric chemistry.

Europe: Many efforts are taken to reduce emissions of air pollutants and climate forcing agents. These efforts will contribute to changes in the levels of air pollution reaching European cities.

Locally: City populations will grow. The population growth, together with the design of transportation and energy production systems, influence the city’s own contribution to air pollution.

The web-service presented allows end-users in an arbitrary European city to consider these factors impact on air quality. It also includes tools for visualization and standards for easy connection to existing local model systems in the cities.

A primitive economic model with classical population theory is constructed in order to examine the greenhouse effect on the sustainability of human population as well as the environmental tax when the sustainability is in danger. The conclusion of this paper is that when the negative effect is small, the tax can guarantee the sustainability, where the effective tax rate interval for the sustainability shrinks as the negative effect rises. When the negative effect exceeds the critical level, however, the environmental tax cannot guarantee the sustainability of human population. Thus, the remedial measure to reduce the greenhouse effect other than the environmental tax is needed for the sustainability.

Web technology provides public access to advanced simulation models and efficiently distributes vast volumes of data in an unprecedented way. The traditional boundary between the producers and the users of data has become less distinct. Users now download data generated by themselves or by others. The role of the hydrologist has therefore shifted towards the management of systems and tools that are publicly available. A recent example of this development is the SMHI VattenWeb, a web application that makes available different databases and modelling tools managed by the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute. Since VattenWeb was primarily developed to meet the demands of the EU Water Framework Directive, one of the key elements is a database of simulated discharge and nutrient transport generated by the SMHI HYPE model. These data consist of daily, monthly and annual hydrologic simulations for all Swedish water bodies reported within the WFD. We show the present status of SMHI VattenWeb and highlight the strategies that have made this application successful among users seeking to characterize the quantity and quality of water at high spatial resolution across Sweden.

The target of the open source hydrodata.cz web application and web services is to bridge the gap between modelers and field hydrologists by providing free, publicly accessible precipitation, snow, temperature, and discharge data series from multiple organizations in the Czech Republic using the standardized the CUAHSI WaterML data format and search services. Data providers contributing to this effort include the CUAHSI, NOAA, Charles University experimental watershed network, Czech watershed authorities, and networks of volunteer observers. Time period covered includes the floods of 2006, 2009, 2010 and 2011 as well as the 2007 drought. Adopting the WaterML standard also allows the use of other free third party client side web based and desktop data discovery software tools – which has the added benefit of making the Czech Republic hydrological data more readily accessible to the international community.

SUDPLAN is currently developing a technical solution for Model Web/Observation Web in the Climate Change usage area. Proposed solution is based on the Open Geospatial Consortium standards, and follows the ideas expressed in SANY Sensor Service Architecture (SensorSA). SUDPLAN also continued the development of the SANY software, resulting in native SOS, SPS and 2D coverage support in ”Time Series Toolbox” framework for building sensor web applications. SUDPLAN re-uses much of the OGC SWE and SANY SensorSA functionality to: (1) configure and run the models; (2) provide the data (observations) required for model execution; (3) inform the user on model run progress and (4) access the model results. In this paper, we shall describe the SUDPLAN’s experiences with implementing of the interoperable Model Web using OGC standards, and discuss the advantages of various services from the OGC SWE suite as compared to non-SWE alternatives in the Climate Change context.

Climate sensitive urban planning and building design require detailed information on effects of a changing climate. To simulate thermal building performance appropriate data are required as “standardized weather files”. But as historic weather records cannot be used to model building performance for future climate, synthetic “future weather” data are necessary. Here we present the steps to derive such data for the urban development project “Seestadt Aspern” in Vienna. We start with regional climate simulations with 10x10 km grid spacing, where hourly data for years of current and future climate have been extracted for the Aspern area. Micro-scale simulations at 5m-resolution have been carried out to consider local influences on urban micro-climate, taking regional simulation results as framework condition. As micro-simulation results are delivered only for single days, transfer functions have been developed to generate synthetic weather records, turning hourly regional climate simulation results into local climate characteristics.

Simulation models are well-known informatic tools to manage environmental knowledge. Current approaches to ecosystems modelling are theoretically based on information theory, thermodynamics, topology, or systems theory. Water quality models are used for managing eutrophication problems. In the past, the Cottbus Eutrophication Simulator (

CEUS

) has been designed on the base of

MATLAB

and

SIMULINK

, which enables an user to couple the simulator with different software tools. To quantify these relations differential equations, some site constants and model specific parameters have to be specified. The fine tuning of parameters of an ecological model can be considered from the perspective of a suitable optimization procedure. Especially the commercial optimization software

ISSOP

realised different optimization algorithms which are traced back to one standard form of discrete optimization. In the paper, results of parameter optimisation will be presented for important water quality indicators. The results of parameter fine tuning and possibilities of parameter optimisation are discussed.

A future increase of short-term precipitation intensities may lead to problems in sewer systems, such as increased overflow volumes and flood risks. To quantify the consequences, downscaling of climate model precipitation is required to the scales relevant in urban hydrology. In the SUDPLAN project, a system where users may upload historical time series to be used as a basis for such downscaling is being developed. In this paper, the method (Delta Change) is outlined along with brief descriptions of the technical solution and result visualization.

The ongoing European collaborative project SUDPLAN is targeted on the development of a software framework that allows the integration of climate change aspects in urban planning processes. Besides the implementation of the generic modules SUDPLAN comprises the implementation of four tangible pilot applications of the framework, one of them in the German City of Wuppertal. This “Wuppertal pilot” deals with urban storm water management and the prevention of infrastructure damages under present and future climate conditions. It can be considered as a case study for the integration of climate change in an actual, long-term urban planning process. This article describes the basic conditions of the case study and the building blocks of the intended decision support environment for urban planners, including the local models used for the simulation of storm water runoff, both in the sewers and on the surface.

Climate change is expected to influence urban living conditions and challenge the ability of cities to adapt to and mitigate climate change. Urban climates will be faced with elevated temperatures and future climate conditions are expected to cause higher ozone concentrations, increased biogenic emissions from vegetation, changes in the chemistry of the atmosphere and changes in deposition of particulate air pollution. This paper describes a conceptual outline of a decision-support system for assessment of the impacts of climate change on urban climate and air quality, and for assessment of integrated climate change and air pollution adaptation and mitigation strategies.

The Integrated Rhine Programme (IRP) is a strategic integrated measurement programme of the German federal state of Baden-Württemberg that aims at an improvement of flood control as well as the preservation and/or the restoration of the Upper Rhine plains. The implementation of the IRP shall be supported by an integrated and sustainable Information System for the IRP (IS-IRP) as an extension of the Environmental Information System of Baden-Württemberg. This paper describes how the analysis and design methodology SERVUS is applied to gather and document the functional and informational user requirements for the IS-IRP. SERVUS denotes a Design Methodology for Information Systems based upon Geospatial Service-oriented Architectures and the Modelling of Use Cases and Capabilities as Resources.

The hydrological scientific and operational communities are faced with new challenges. There is a demand for detailed water information for large regions and new environmental issues to deal with, which request advanced technical infrastructure merged with up-dated hydrological knowledge. Traditionally, the hydrological community is disaggregated. In this paper we suggest a collaborative approach and invite both researchers and operational agencies to participate in the development of a common European core service providing free access to water information. We present the idea of starting from the new E-HYPE model and its advanced technological infrastructure and open source cod, using a bottom-up approach.

The Lake Winnipeg Basin Initiative was created as part of Canada’s Action Plan on clean water. Its focus is to deal with excessive lake inputs of nutrients from surface runoff and municipal wastewater. Understanding the dynamics of nutrient loading, the associated algal blooms and resulting changes in fish populations, beach closures, and ecosystem imbalance requires access to various sources of data, information, knowledge, expertise and tools. Such critical components are delivered through the Lake Winnipeg Basin Initiative Information Portal, which integrates multiple geospatial and non-geospatial datasets of information pertaining to the basin and serves as a data, information and modelling portal. With data coming from many disparate sources, the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure standards are applied to ensure interoperability. The “Community of Models” allows the modellers to post their model and results, and also allows the portal users to comment on the results to ensure a healthy dialogue.

The name of the second author is “Franklin Torres-Bejarano” and not, as stated by mistake, “Fernando Torres-Bejarano”.