RICERCA ITALIANA     

Research program

The geomatics in support of the actions of Government of the territory

University Co-ordinator

Università IUAV di VENEZIA - PIANIFICAZIONE - ()

Research Unit Leader

Alberta Bianchin

Description

The objective of the research is the realization of procedures for collecting and making available a series of data coming from sensors, lodged on different bases, of different quality and space/time resolution, but intended for the same territorial applications.
The aim is to plan and develop a prototype of procedures for consulting and managing data, obtainable products and the procedures themselves, for different systems of distribution, data integration and their utilizations.
The interest is directed towards themes of monitoring and management of the territory on a local scale.
Rthe research will therefore start with actual cases on which to plan and to experiment the phases and the operational formalities for the use of data and derived products, destined to different actors that are involved in the activities of planning and management of the territory for various reasons, not necessarily experts in new technologies.
The formalities of data access / diffusion / distribution will be determined (keeping in mind the paradigms of the “Nuovo Codice dell’Amministrazione Digitale 2006” and the Inspire Directive). Finally, in the light of the different planned procedures, a prototype of consulting system will be developed.
The research is organised in the following phases.

1st year of activity
First phase: PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS AND DEFINITION OF A CASE OF APPLICATION
In the first phase we analyze some meaningful fields of application on a local scale, to which a system of sensors interconnected to different level (technical and semantic) for the improvement of the activities of monitoring or planning is destined. The application fields concern: the urban traffic and traffic problems on a over-municipal or provincial scale; the evaluation of the “social” safety and quality of the cities, the monitoring of the different pollutions (noise/ air / light) in urban environment, etc.
For any listed application we will point out the different interest bearers and subjects involved, taking into consideration the projects in progress or already realized, or other good cases to be considered. Every work group will be assigned the definition of a basis of analysis for every application including:
- sensors / data/ measures
- technical characteristics and resolutions;
- further fields of application, classified through the use of Thesauri.
Concerning the subject of classification, the group of research has already developed a framework of analysis of the data derived from sensors and a database collecting these data and their attributes.
Now the problem of connecting data with the fields of application in a standard environment of definitions must be faced.
We intend to check and in case to follow two tracks: 1) the use of the GEMET dictionary (General European Multilingual Environmental Thesaurus), 2) the possibilities of applying the elaborations developed by some groups of research on the ontologies.
After the analysis, one or more application fields and a specific area on which to operate a simulation are defined. Since our aim is to develop a prototype, we will tend to prefer a case for which there are already set of data and/or instruments available (satellite pictures / recent photogrammetric flights / networks of control boxes / cameras etc.).
The work group in this phase proceeds to check:
- the demands (of planning or of monitoring) requested by the different actors and by the urbanistic tools in force;
- the available data and files, their quality, their state of updating and their "usability";
- the data and the sensors available on the market that can be integrated.

Second phase: DATA AND INSTRUMENTS DETERMINATION. DEFINITION OF INTEGRATION AND COOPERATION TYPES AND WAYS
The reference for our prototype is a distributed Web-based system, in a heterogeneous environment, based on the dynamic integration of the various components. In such an approach the key problem to be faced is the one of interoperability.
The issues of interoperability among data and between data and the management prototype system we intend to realize will bear in mind the activities and the documentation realized by the Open Geospatial Consortium on the subject of standard for the geographical information. Particularly, we will monitor the progress of works and we will adopt the following standards: Sensor Model Language (SensorML), Sensor Planning Service (SPS), Open GIS Web Map Service (WMS) Implementation Specification and, in case, the Geospatial Semantic Web (GSW) in course of development.
The use of these standards will start the realization of the specific procedures and the development of the prototype
In the meanwhile, having defined the application case, we will proceed with an investigation of the available data, of those acquirable and of the possible sensors to integrate, taking into consideration:
- the aspects of time / space coherence;
- the economic moderateness;
- the formalities of passage from raw data to processed data.
The development of the webgis application will be therefore founded on the standards and it will be realized using Open Source components. In fact, specific software FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) are available, permitting the realization of a complete, strong and standard compliant platform for the development of GIS web based applications in a Service Oriented architecture.

2° year of activity
Third phase: PLANNING THE PROCEDURES
The central phase of the project consists of the definition and realization of the procedures:
- of acquisition of data (and of meta-data) into necessary time / space scales;
- of integration between data and their passage to different time / space scales, depending on the condition of the application (alert / frequent monitoring / discontinuous monitoring etc.);
-of elaboration of data, maps and reports (in automatic, semiautomatic, manual modality);
- of data validation;
-of data updating.
We will continue, then, with the definition of the formalities and of the procedures for the publication of the information.
The aim of the research is to make data and services available to subjects with different assignments and different functions in the field of the territory management, who may not have specific technological abilities. The approach is therefore measurement - based and not instrument based (SESDI-Nasa)

Fourth phase: PLANNING OF THE SYSTEM OF MANAGEMENT /ACCESS
The preceding phase deals with planning elaborations that integrate, make compatible, elaborate data and value their results.
The problem of the accessibility to these results requires a planning of interfaces, interrogation paths, research and navigation, and finally of visualization of the results of the research.
It is an extremely difficult aspect, which often represents an obstacle to a real fruition of the system of information.
We will therefore start also the phase of planning the system of management and access to the information themselves, together with the definition of the procedures of publication of the different information destined to the application field. The different modalities of accessing the system, with the relative interfaces and controls, need to be analysed and defined according to the different types of end users.

Fifth phase: DEVELOPMENT OF A PROTOTYPE
The conclusive phase of the project is devoted to the realisation of a prototype, in a FOSS environment, of the system of access and data management. The Open Source choice guarantees the level of compliance with the standards and is in line with the politics of the European union and the national authorities.
The system will furthermore allow us to check and validate the procedures in an actual context of application on the previously defined data.