Figure 1: The E-MAIL Architecture
The objective is to provide the E-MAIL user with an efficient method for obtaining in-depth information on key environmental topics and for developing environmental indicators. These include, for example, population and residency census, urbanisation and sustainable development planning, actual and potential ecological risks, surface and groundwater quality, water resources management, defence from flash-floods, habitat management/conservation, waste management, pollution and industrial risks, and other relevant site data.
E-MAIL is based upon concrete work in four different European Regions:
Each geographical region reflects a different type of area (e.g., a river basin, agricultural area, industrial, and tourist area). The public authorities involved in the environmental management of these areas have been provided with a common set of tools for data analysis, synthesis, interpretation, knowledge discovery, visualisation, and collaboration, designed to enable them to undertake more accurate monitoring of the environmental indicators relevant to their region, thereby ensuring more effective and better targeted environmental planning and policy actions.
Understanding these requirements enabled the identification of a core problem in environmental management, namely data integration, and more specifically, geodata integration. Indeed, much of the stimulus for the E-MAIL project comes from a need to share geographic information more effectively between individuals and organisations who not only store and manipulate geodata in different ways on different computer systems, but who think about, talk about and visualise geographic contexts in very different ways.
All regions targeted by E-MAIL regions are good examples of the above situation, due largely to the involvement of a conspicuous number of environmental planners/decisionmakers.
Figure 1: The E-MAIL Architecture
Indeed, environmental planning in such an area involves the systematic use of synthetic information from different disciplines, including hydraulic engineering, territories (land-use, urbanisation, roads, etc.), science (geology, biology and ecological resources; specific natural and artistic heritage, etc.), administration (existing laws and new constraints introduced by recent European, national or regional directives), and socio-economical information (water resource demand, and availability of resources, classification of current uses, etc.). Mapping activities range from geological issues to faulting, streams, wetlands, and flood ponds, vegetative cover, habitats, etc.
Within this structure, environmental planning is a multi-disciplinary activity and the decisionmaker not only is not an expert in all disciplines, but usually possesses limited basic computing expertise (word-processing, spreadsheets, Internet, etc.).
Application users need to be able to retrieve all information in a faster and simple way (to have more time to formulate ideas, call when specific questions arise, review the available data, and enter recommendations). Moreover, they can be highly involved in the creation of new information through the analysis and combination of existing primary data to develop their own derivative information, such as feature coincidence, buffer zone maps, or impact area calculations.
A sample E-MAIL session (see Figure 2 below) shows how a user can compile his/her personal mix of geographic data, bypassing the specialist command line interface of most GIS systems. The user can navigate in catalogues of metadata where he/she can pick up geographic data just by checking them. Data preview enables viewing of data prior and after selection. The personal map is built on the fly and can be viewed in full-detail. Zooming in and out in a number of ways (by selection, by scale, by extent, etc) is possible by querying map components. This might be to ascertain associated data, e.g. census data associated with industrial images and movies related to a flooded location. Map details and associated data can be used, for instance to set up a report that is sent by the user via electronic mail to colleagues for further discussion and analysis. In addition, the user can access databases of laws and directives to check, for instance, whether some areas are protected against construction. Using the same interface, the user can also look for internal documents, for instance concerning previous versions of the Arno River Master Plan.
Figure 2. A typical E-MAIL session
The E-MAIL application integrates many of these disparate datasets, and makes them available to users' desktop computers through an Intranet service. The service implements a dataset catalogue (derived from the E-MAIL Geodata Model), which allows a user to select map features via metadata queries in order to generate an interactive map which displays those layers. The interactivity of the map permits typical GIS functionalities, such as zooming, panning and the selection of features (or objects) on the map. Users are also able to report on attribute data associated with features selected from the map, and are able to save generated maps for re-use or sharing. The emphasis of the application is on simplifying access to complex datasets, and for this reason, a series of standard maps have been incorporated to service more routine enquiries, such as the determination of ownership details for land allocated in the Council's Housing Plan. The application is designed with future expansion in mind by the range of geographic and related datasets it can offer. Data content is provided from materials which inform about the development planning process.
The partners of this project are SPIRAL and the French Chamber of Commerce and Industry. SPIRAL is an organisation that exists to facilitate dialogue between state administration, the community, the society for environment preservation, and relevant persons. The first aim of this application is to support decisionmakers within public organisations in the environment sector specifically in the field of monitoring and planning, by capturing data from different sources.
The second aim of the application is to improve communication with the local population concerning technological risks and to define the technical terms often wrongly used by people. For example, the terms; danger, risk prevention, and protection are frequently confused.
The services provided by the Lyon application are divided into three categories:
The end-user uses the Internet to access the various types of information in a dynamic way, in the areas of urban and rural waste, tourism, agricultural and food processing activities, and their impacts on the environment. Additionally, the end-user has the chance to be informed about Corfu via static pages which contain information about Corfu's coastline, climate, ground morphology, and meteorological data as well as information about the flora and fauna of the island.
More specifically, the system is able to track, record and present in a meaningful way information about the activities for the storage and processing of liquid, solid and hazardous urban and rural waste types, which is of great importance concerning their impact on the environment. Another area that is of great interest, is tourist activity, hotspots and more specifically the hotel resorts and their activities which can provide information for use in future land-use planning. Complementary information monitored through the system, includes the condition of various beaches, characterised with a "blue flag" showing the appropriateness for further tourist development. From this data, decisionmakers are supported through the use of a tool which improves understanding and assists in making the proper decisions with regard to ecological issues.
Moreover, the project adopted the so-called "mock-up" approach, using a piece of software that allows a number of (or all the) actions to be fulfilled, by simulation, in a predefined order. This approach proved to be essential to the project as it encouraged early user feedback which could be incorporated into the subsequent development of applications.
The regional experience proved also that a number of organisational issues must be tackled, including:
The difficulties encountered have, on the one hand, much to do with the specific tasks addressed by the E-MAIL project, including the provision of services in the public domain. In fact, dealing with public administrations is not always an easy task, due to their slow internal decisionmaking processes and subsequent difficulties to meet expiry dates. However, the organisation of project activities tackled these difficulties by anticipating possible organisational delays, and by planning activities well in advance.
The E-MAIL toolset provides a further level of transferability by addressing different categories of users. By allowing the inter-operability of geodata (including access, retrieval, querying, storing, and displaying information throughout distributed systems), E-MAIL tools can be used to implement general map-based interface services. For example, E-MAIL is providing such tools for implementing the IA 1011 TITAN services, a project designed to deploy services to citizens and SMEs.
The transferability costs involved, apart from the product costs, involve consultancy and training fees. The major difficulties in ensuring transferability, however, lie in all these elements which are strictly related to administrative tasks (where administration rules vary according to different laws/rules existing in the EU and CEE countries).
With regard to reduced costs through usual accounting practices and measures, the project demonstrates the following savings:
