Geospatial Web Services for Responding to Ecological Risks Posed by Oil Spills

The increased maritime oil transportation raises the risk of marine oil spill accidents. An oil spill accident can cause severe harm to the ecosystem. Adequate contingency planning for oil spill and efficient combating operations require ecological data and knowledge to be integrated in tools that facilitate the decision making. A great deal of the decisions required during these operations is of spatial nature, such as defining areas with high priority for safeguarding. Also, real time decision making is required in the operations. All of this calls for spatial and on-sit accessible tools. The authors analyze and discuss geospatial Web services and an application develop[ed for responding to the ecological risk posed by oil spills. The case study presented in this paper concerns the Gulf of Finland and the Finnish Archipelago Sea. The results indicate that geospatial services are an efficient method to deliver ecological knowledge and information for oil spill combating.

[1]  Ari Jolma,et al.  Combining Conservation Value, Vulnerability, and Effectiveness of Mitigation Actions in Spatial Conservation Decisions: An Application to Coastal Oil Spill Combating , 2011, Environmental management.

[2]  Liping Di,et al.  Semantic Web Services‐based process planning for earth science applications , 2009, Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci..

[3]  Philip Tortell,et al.  Coastal zone sensitivity mapping and its role in marine environmental management , 1992 .

[4]  Tapani Sarjakoski,et al.  Usability methods' familiarity among map application developers , 2007, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[5]  Cecilia Ambjorn.  Seatrack Web, forecasts of oil spills, a new version , 2006, 2006 IEEE US/EU Baltic International Symposium.

[6]  Ralf Denzer,et al.  Generic integration of environmental decision support systems - state-of-the-art , 2005, Environ. Model. Softw..

[7]  Werner Kuhn,et al.  Ontology-based discovery of geographic information services - An application in disaster management , 2006, Comput. Environ. Urban Syst..

[8]  Jessica Wardlaw,et al.  Principles of Interaction , 2010 .

[9]  Mordechai Haklay,et al.  Single user Environments: Desktop to Mobile , 2010 .

[10]  Artemis Skarlatidou.  Web-mapping applications and HCI considerations for their design , 2010 .

[11]  John R. Jensen,et al.  Environmental sensitivity index (ESI) mapping for oil spills using remote sensing and geographic information system technology , 1990, Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci..

[12]  Ari Jolma,et al.  Dynamic mapping of nature values to support prioritization of coastal oil combating , 2010, Environ. Model. Softw..

[13]  S. Kuikka,et al.  Modeling the effectiveness of oil combating from an ecological perspective--a Bayesian network for the Gulf of Finland; the Baltic Sea. , 2011, Journal of hazardous materials.

[14]  Michelle Rucker,et al.  Encyclopedia of Life , 2014 .

[15]  David M. Booth,et al.  Web Services Architecture , 2004 .

[16]  M. Hayes,et al.  VULNERABILITY OF COASTAL ENVIRONMENTS TO OIL SPILL IMPACTS , 1978 .

[17]  Helena Mitasova,et al.  Chapter Ten Free and Open Source Geospatial Tools for Environmental Modelling and Management , 2008 .

[18]  Markus Neteler,et al.  Free and Open Source Geospatial Tools for Environmental Modeling and Management , 2006 .