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Contenuto archiviato il 2022-12-23

The use of geographic information systems in Climatology and Meteorology

Obiettivo

A.BACKGROUND

The general public and many authorities at various levels ask ever more questions or require more information and facts on various climatological, meteorological, hydrological and environmental issues. They generally require multifacet, cross-discipline data or knowledge so that quantitative methodologies and tools are necessary to extract, analyse, shape and assess the required information.

One of the most powerful aids in this context can be the Geographic Information System (GIS) which makes it possible to combine easily all necessary procedures for visualisation, integration, flexible combination and storage of information for different data sets. GIS is already widely accepted in the geo-sciences but their extra value for meteorological applications is still under-used. An exception can be made for climatological data that have been recognised as suitable for GIS processing and visualisation

Recently, a workshop on geographic information held during the IST 99 Conference in Helsinki (Exploring the Information Society, 22-24 Nov.) concluded that "the future is for an integration of tools and platforms accommodating the spatial and temporal features of geographic information, to provide appropriate information, multimedia, customised to the users' needs, anywhere, at any time, in any language. All disciplines using GIS have common challenges that are partly due to generic technology problems such as difficulties in accessing data, lack of common standards and interoperability. Moreover there is a lack of European dimension in GIS market and a lack of pan-European seamless reference data.

These problems also loom in climatology and meteorology and thus deserve more attention and a coordinated, cooperative approach. Research institutes, National Meteorological Services (NMSs) and academia working with environmental data are facing in their work the increasing needs and requirements of society but have the potential to address them by using technological developments such as GIS tools. The basis for a well-performing GIS system for climatological, meteorological (geo-) and other related fields is:

- Identifying accessibility and quality of geo- and environmental data;

- Assessing, customising, harmonising and developing the role played by different spatialisation techniques in data representation and quality control;

- Developing and maintaining reliable and timely procedures of dissemination and visualisation of information.

Substantial advances in deriving information of various kinds from different sources, e.g. climatological and meteorological networks, remote sensed and other data, have been achieved so far and will become even more significant in the near future by providing better spatial resolution and accuracy. Recognising that there exists a significant lack in capabilities for analysis and management of climate and related data, it is necessary to establish Digital Data Bases (DDB) at suitable levels (global, European, national, regional) having GIS capability. GIS technologies flourish but in order to apply their full possibilities, their potential has to be augmented with the help of models and algorithms to integrate imaging technologies with physical knowledge in climatology for a wide range of applications.

For instance, within the framework of EUMETNET, a network of West-European weather services, was established the European Climate Support Network (ECSN), with as objectives to organise improved cooperation of its Members in the field of climate and related activities in order to expand their capabilities to support the European user community through enhanced provision of high quality climate data and products and services and advice based on the Members climate expertise. ECSN has set up a project on "GIS in Climatological Applications" alongside an European Climate Assessment 2000 with the European Environment Agency (EEA).

From the viewpoint of climate and meteorological applications and research a GIS should be able to approach the following key topics:

-Climate impact due to climate variability and change on regional and local scales,
-Land use and change,
-Water resources and management,
-Natural resources and their use,
-Pollution sources and distribution,
-Location and extent of natural or environmental disasters,
-Human health and exposure,
-Energy use.

To address these topical areas DDB should contain the following core data sets: a versatile set of climate-relevant data, topography, land use/land cover, hydrology and soils, air and water quality, economy, demographics and infrastructure, and metadata associated with all of these. This would imply that these databases are multi-disciplinary, have access to classical data networks and have some official endorsement.

Several classes of information already exist, such as satellite and radar images, records of the distribution of lightning events, digital elevation models, land surface information, etc., which are now sporadically used for the extraction of additional information in certain weather conditions but which could be applied for a more elaborated data quality check in an operational form, or integrated with other analysed data to improve their quality and spatial resolution also.

Adding to the above mentioned facts the continuously decreasing resources in personnel and funds and the rising pressure of commercialisation, all the prerequisites are in place for: firstly, intensive use of GIS applications in analysing meteorological and climatological data and secondly, the need to establish an international and interdisciplinary consortium to achieve a synergetic effect by pooling together a wide range of expertise, experience and needs that can be found in Europe. This ambitious task can only be managed within reasonable time if the joint effort of this consortium is organised through several dedicated subgroups, using the broadness and versatility of the COST-framework.

B. OBJECTIVES AND BENEFITS

The main objective of the Action is to broaden and enhance the potential of GIS in the fields of climatology and meteorology by developing applications in those fields, with emphasis on the procedures and capabilities for integrating and adding value to data from various sources and on quality control and presentation of climate and other related data.

In order to fulfil this overall objective, the project will have as practical objectives, to:

- assess regularly the state-of-the-art of GIS tools (software/hardware) and developments in progress;

- assess the availability, contents and accessibility of meteorological, climatological and other relevant data sets;

- assess the potential and limitations of GIS (interpolation) tools for spatialisation of meteorological and climate data;

- foster European cooperation in the development of operational applications of GIS in meteorology and climate research. The Action should strengthen the links between NMS's, the research community and GIS industry;

- disseminate existing expertise and the results of this Action to a wide range of users, scientists, technologies suppliers and data providers.

Achieving the above objectives will lead to the following benefits, through more synergistic cooperation between European countries in the application of GIS in the fields of meteorology, climatology and other environmental sciences:

- Better and more cost-effective production of state-of-the-art climatological, meteorological and related environmental information;

- Harmonisation and standardisation of the application of GIS to climatological, meteorological and related environmental fields of interest;

- A better basis for the development of products and services with more added-value in Europe;

- Increased level of skills and better trained personnel within the operational and scientific staff of involved institutions.

These benefits could be applied to areas such as the impact of climate change, disaster management and monitoring of international treaties.

The dissemination of the result will be based firstly on the participants in this COST Action that will aim at involving key institutions in many COST countries. Throughout its existence the Action will organise workshops open to the broader community of scientists, users, data providers and GIS-developers, in order to be beneficial to all the stakeholders.

C. SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMME

The scientific programme consistent with these objectives falls into the following 3 areas (which will be elaborated in greater detail by the Management Committee), as follows:

Data access and data availability

In this area, the focus of activities will be on putting pointers to existing and potential GIS data sets and on the conversion and standardisation of climatological, meteorological and other relevant environmental data in view of data exchange. In particular, the Action will:

- keep pace with the advancing state-of-the-art of applicable GIS tools (software/hardware) and developments in progress;

- document the availability, contents and accessibility of climatological, meteorological and environmental data sets, including meta-data, and relevant future developments therein;

- establish standardised interfaces between GIS systems and climatological and meteorological data bases, when possible in close cooperation with GIS system providers; define and/or develop filter tools as appropriate in order to improve the exchange of data between research institutes, NMSs and the rest of the user community.

Spatial interpolation

In this area the focus will be on establishing an inventory of interpolation functionality already present in GIS and statistical software and the recognition of gaps. In particular to:

- study the potential and limitations of existing GIS (interpolation) functionality for spatialisation of meteorological and climate data;

- compare with other spatialisation algorithms;

- set up recommendations/specifications for future GIS tools for spatialisation, suitable for meteorological and climate applications, and take these up with industry.

GIS Applications:

In this area the focus will be on the development of standardised GIS applications aimed at climatological and meteorological and relevant environmental usage. In particular the Action will aim at:

- establishing an inventory of the present use of GIS applications in meteorology and climate research, and the perceived potential / limitations for future development, taking into account the requirements of the interested community;

- identifying a set of useful applications of GIS in the fields of meteorology and climate research, e.g. with respect to visualisation and mapping;

- setting up specifications for such applications; encourage joint development, for example with ECSN, of such applications in the form of prototypes or specifications;

- studying the possibilities for exchanging existing applications and developing some prototypes, to be shared between the participants of the Action.

The principal deliverables of the Action will be:

- inventories as defined in the scientific plan;

- specifications for a standardised interface between GIS and climatological, meteorological and relevant environmental data;

- conversion filters to improve the exchange of data between research institutes;

- prototypes of cost-efficient new procedures for analysing and presenting such data using GIS techniques;

- recommendations for spatialisation techniques;

- dissemination of results according to the dissemination plan.

This COST Action is distinct from the ECSN project "GIS in Climatological Application" in the following aspects:

- its scope is not restricted to NMSs but will also include scientific community and the GIS industry;

- it takes a more generic approach for application development;

- it represents a more holistic approach covering meteorological and environmental applications in synergy with climatological ones.

D. ORGANISATION AND TIMETABLE

The Management Committee (MC) will implement the technical annex of this MOU by developing a work programme that will take into account the expertise and interests of the participating institutions. According to the scientific programme above, it is provisionally envisaged that the work programme will be carried out within 3 Working Groups (WG), in the areas of data base interoperability (WG1), spatialisation techniques (WG2) and GIS applications (WG3), whose detailed remits, activities and timetables will be specified after the first MC meeting. The MC may establish further WGs as appropriate.

Each working group will appoint a chairman. The WG chairmen and the management committee will constitute the leading structure of the action. They will be responsible for defining, implementing, monitoring and reviewing the work undertaken by this Action. The COST Technical Committee for meteorology will appoint among its membership an observer to this Action to advise the MC where necessary. Each WG will meet two times per year and their work will be reported to the MC. Short-term Scientific Missions (STSM) will be used as much as possible to maximise the exchange of experiences among the participants.

The MC will meet twice per year. One of its main responsibilities should be to link and integrate the activities of the WG's in such a way that the information, the needs and results of each WG, will serve as inputs to other WGs and the overall objectives will be met. The MC members will use personal networking in order to integrate as much as possible the scientific community, data providers, users and service providers.

The project will have a total length of 5 years. It is split into 4 phases, with the following milestones:

Phase I: Inventory (years 0 - 1)

- MC: Establish initial WGs and define provisional work programme.

- MC: Organise 1st workshop (presentation of all inventories and findings so far; refinement of working plan and coordination of all future work).

- WG1: Prepare inventory of existing environmental data besides climate and meteorological databases; define a list of climatological and meteorological variables and their time resolution for further use.

- WG2: Prepare inventory of existing methods.

- WG1: Report to MC on state of the art of applicable GIS tools and developments in progress.

- WG3: Identify GIS applications of interest, prepare a first inventory and survey of the requirements of those applications.

Phase II: Development / improvement of methodology (years 0,5 to 2,5)

- WG1: Further report to MC on state of the art of applicable GIS tools and developments in progress.

- WG2: deliver inventory of spatial statistical software.

- WG1: deliver import/export filter tools to support a particular data exchange.

- WG2: deliver preliminary analysis of relationships between spatial distribution of certain climatological and meteorological variables and topography and land cover data.

- WG2 and 3: identify the optimal terrain parameters for the spatial representation of given climatological and meteorological variables by using the findings of WGs 1 and 2 together with a thorough validation of the algorithms in selected case studies.

- WG3: further develop the inventory and survey of the requirements of identified applications.

- MC: organise 2nd workshop (Overview about the status of work, adaptation of the methods in order to coordinate the finalisation of the work within the entire project).

Phase III: Development of Applications (years 1,5 to 4,5)

- WG1: further report to MC on state of the art of applicable GIS tools and developments in progress.

- WG2 and 3: recommendation of appropriate mapping algorithms and spatial interpolation schemes.

- WG3: delivery of tested prototypes of cost-efficient new procedures for analysing and presenting meteorological and climatological data according to the applications identified in Phase I.

- MC: establish a pool of application and training material for general use.

- MC: organise 3rd workshop.

Phase IV: Dissemination (years 4 to 5)

- MC and WGs: Finalisation of the end report and preparation of the final seminar.

- MC and WGs: Dissemination of application and training material.

- MC: End of the project by the final seminar.

Dissemination plan

The results of the Action will be disseminated in the following ways:

- A web site that acts as a meeting point for informing the participants, to be constructed as soon as possible after the start of the Action. The selected institution to run the web-site will have also the responsibility of keeping it up to date using materials provided by and following instructions of the MC;

- Workshops and workshop reports;

- Publications in the form of COST documents, workshop reports, technical reports and articles in refereed scientific journals and conference proceedings;

- A data volume (e.g. CD-ROM) with sample data sets, demonstrators, tutorial and documentation;

- Joint meetings with WGs from other relevant COST Actions;

- The results of this Action will be put in a final report, supported by a final Conference. The sample data sets and developed applications will be made available to all participants whenever possible and to other involved institutes. In this context, however, the rights and responsibilities to use these data sets and developed applications have to be agreed upon separately.

Cooperation with other fora

The following key fora are the most likely to benefit and/or provide interactions for mutual interest:

- COST 718, by cooperating in the development of new spatialisation methodologies;

- ECSN, by a continuous exchange of information about applications and offering new results of the Action for implementation in the frame of ECSN;

- The SAI of the JRC; by exchange of project information and data;

- European Environmental Agency (EEA), by exchange of information;

- Relevant EEA Topic centres, in particular those on Land Cover, Soil, and Catalogue of Data Sources, by exchange of data and methods;

- GIS industry, by participation in conferences, letting study contracts, short term staff exchanges and personal networking.

Risk management

The risks to the project are identified as (a) rapid technological progress outside the Action (b) poor cooperation within the above fora. However, the first risk is addressed as an action of WG1 to keep pace with the state of the art. The MC will organise the work to pursue the most valuable cooperations and will make use of personal networking to encourage cooperation where possible.

E. ECONOMIC DIMENSIONS OF THE PROJECT

The following countries have participated in the preparation of the Action: Austria, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovenia and the United Kingdom, and at least 3 additional countries have indicated a provisional interest to participate in the Action. The overall cost of the activities to be carried out under the Action has been estimated at 1999 prices at EUR 3,7 million.

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Austria

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