Design and Implementation of a Distributed GIS Portal for Oil Spill and Harmful Algal Bloom Monitoring in the Marine Environment

Abstract

A web-based distributed system for monitoring and forecasting of the marine environment has been developed in line with INfrastructure for SPatial InfoRmation in Europe (INSPIRE) and Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) recommendations for a European Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). This system, called DISPRO, enables integration and distribution of multi-source data from satellites, aircraft, and in situ instruments, as well as results from numerical models. Geographic data and metadata are stored on a set of distributed computer nodes and retrieved and integrated by a web GIS client by means of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Server (WMS) technologies. A profile of ISO 19115 was developed for metadata handling, using eXtensible Markup Language (XML) as a platform independent encoding mechanism. DISPRO has been demonstrated in six European coastal zone and ocean regions in the spring and summer of 2005. The overall positive experiences of both service providers and end users indicate that the system should be further developed into an operational GMES service.

Keywords:

• web GIS
• Open Geospatial Consortium
• data harmonization
• metadata
• web map service
• spatial data infrastructure
• harmful algal bloom
• oil spill
• INSPIRE
• GMES

Acknowledgements

The DISMAR project (DISMAR 2006) was co-funded by the European Union Information Society Technology (EU IST) program under contract IST-2001-37657, and the support is gratefully acknowledged. The authors would also like to thank the other project partners for their contribution to DISPRO development and for preparation of products shown in this paper.