Geospatial Information Relevant to the Flood Protection Available on The Mainstream Web

Abstract

Flood protection is one of several disciplines where geospatial data is very important and is a crucial component. Its management, processing and sharing form the foundation for their efficient use; therefore, special attention is required in the development of effective, precise, standardized, and interoperable models for the discovery and publishing of data on the Web. This paper describes the design of a methodology to discover Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) services on the Web and collect descriptive information, i.e., metadata in a geocatalogue. A pilot implementation of the proposed methodology -Geocatalogue of geospatial information provided by OGC services discovered on Google (hereinafter "Geocatalogue") -was used to search for available resources relevant to the area of flood protection. The result is an analysis of the availability of resources discovered through their metadata collected from the OGC services (WMS, WFS, etc.) and the resources they provide (WMS layers, WFS objects, etc.) within the domain of flood protection.

Land Consolidations in Slovakia, Step Forward, Two Steps Back?

“…Gigantic agricultural units dominate the image of Slovakia. This condition involves a large number of environmental problems, such as the washing off of topsoil, degradation of fertile land (Čičová, Streďanská, 2008), sudden local floods (Minár et al, 2005;Kliment et al, 2014), pollution and alluviation of watercourses (Halaj et al, 2012), damage to public buildings, low ecological stability (Hrnčiarová, 2001;Havlíček et al, 2012;Skokanová et al, 2012;Špulerová et al, 2011).…”

Assessing the Governance Context Support for Creating a Pluvial Flood Risk Map with Climate Change Scenarios: The Flemish Subnational Case

“…Geospatial Data (GD) can play a key role to support this transition, as it facilitates urban planning, land administration, and risk management [24]. Availability of GD related to flood risk management can play a crucial role for flood protection [25], can support the development of effective strategies to address key global challenges such as climate change [26], and can be key to optimize interventions by comparing "flood susceptibility" through the comparison of different scenarios [27]. However, GD establishment, sustainable usage, and maintenance face numerous governance challenges.…”

“…GD has a complex structure and is characterized by a high level of heterogeneity in data formats and models. Therefore, GD processes still require improvement including GD access, harmonization, and analysis [25]. Under these governance challenges, GD is becoming very relevant.…”

“…Under these governance challenges, GD is becoming very relevant. For example, the Infrastructure for Spatial Data Information in Europe (INSPIRE) initiative aims to establish GD to support community environmental policies to impact on the environment [25].…”

“…Digital flood risk maps are GD and they integrate hydrological, environmental, topographical, and cadastral data; their availability can help to improve protection measures against floods [25]. Modeling maps faces not only technical issues; it also requires a high level of expertise, cultural, and historical understanding of modeling, as well as knowledge of the legislation, including intellectual property rights [30].…”