WEB GIS by Ajax for Analysis and Control of Environmental Data

Abstract

The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has becoming very important in fields where detailed and precise study of earth surface features is required. Environmental protection is such an example that requires the use of GIS tools for analysis and decision by managers and enrolled community of protected areas. In this specific field, a challenge that remains is to build a GIS that can be dynamically fed with data, allowing researchers and other agents to recover actual and up to date information. In some cases, data is acquired in several ways and come from different sources. To solve this problem, we propose a tool that includes a model for spatial data treatment on the Web, that we named System for Integrated Monitoring - SIM. The research issues involved in this tool start with the dealing of satellite images of protected areas. It is followed by acquisition and processing of different types of video and images as Small Format Aerial Images, or simply SFAI, acquired by a radio controlled helicopter, used for construction of mosaics to be fed in the GIS, and underwater geo-referenced pictures, acquired in-loco by researchers for better analyzing a given area. The SIM continues with the feeding and processing of environmental control data collected in-loco as biotic and geological variables and finishes with the presentation of all information on the Web. For this dynamic processing, we have developed tools that make MapServer more flexible and dynamic, allowing data uploading by the proper users. As example, on the top of SIM, we have developed a module that uses interpolation to aiming spatial data analysis. A very complex application that has validated our research is to feed the system with data coming from coral reef regions located in northeast of Brazil.