Check Set Dig. - Geospatial World...Pouria Amirian, Ali Mansurian 36 GIS AND INTERNET GIS TECHNOLOGIES IMPACT AND CHALLENGES IN LAND ADMINISTRATION El-Ayachi Moha 40 OVERLAY ANALYSIS

Check... Set... Dig.Check... Set... Dig.

NOVEMBER - DECEMBER 2006 VOL 2 ISSUE 6

www.gisdevelopment.net

24 DIGGING INFORMATION

SYSTEM

Walid Khalf Sayeed Barakat /

Mohammed Abdul Mannan

28 SOIL THEMATIC GEO

DATABASE FOR DUBAI EMIRATE

Hussein Harahsheh, Mohamed

Elias, AbdulAzim Elniweiri

Mohamed Mashroum,

Yousef Marzouqi, Eman Al Khatib

B.R.M. Rao, M.A. Fyzee

32 POTENTIAL OF USING WEB

SERVICES IN DISTRIBUTED GIS

APPLICATIONS

Pouria Amirian, Ali Mansurian

36 GIS AND INTERNET

GIS TECHNOLOGIES IMPACT

AND CHALLENGES IN LAND

ADMINISTRATION

El-Ayachi Moha

40 OVERLAY ANALYSIS OF GIS

LAYERS TO EVALUATE CHANGES

ON AL SAMMALYAH ISLAND

Salem Essa, Ronald Loughland,

Mohamed E. Khogali,

Abdulmunem Darwish

Cover.qxp 11/9/2006 2:43 PM Page 1

THEME : Geospatial Convergence: The Next Step

9 - 11 April 2007, Dubai World Trade Center, Dubai, UAE

www.mapmiddleeast.org [email protected]

SEMINARS

GEOSPATIAL EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP FORUM

OPEN SOURCEOIL & GAS

ISPRS CONFERENCE

CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE PROTECTION &EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT

CONSTRUCTION & ENGINEERING

PHOTOGRAMMETRY REMOTE SENSING

General Enquiry / Information [email protected]

Abstracts / [email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

Abstract Submission15 January 2007

Paper Acceptance20 January 2007

Full Paper Submission28 February 2007

Registration15 March 2007

IMPORTANT DEADLINES

CONTACTS

information from imagery

ORGANISED BY

CO- SPONSOR

The construction activity for urban development has seen a shift from over head and sur-face based utility lines to underground utility lines. These underground lines contributedby: telephone, power, cable TV, fibre optics, traffic signals, gas line etc are forming a kindof spider's web. This web gets further complicated in the scenario where deregulation ofthe services is leading to multiple players providing a given service. These utility lines areoften at risk of being damaged unknowingly during the process of excavation or con-struction either at the same place or in the nearby area. This lead to the urban develop-ment work, calling for coordination meet amongst the various service provider prior toany work being undertaken. This was quite evident when the reworking of urban infra-structure like city highways, telephone cable, power line was initiated.

All this only vindicates the move by the urban bodies to come up with urban SDIs. Thecity of Riyadh which has already taken a step in this direction in September 2006, will'enable public and private agencies to share mapping data and to distribute data changesand updates in near real-time.' The recent news of EU Satellite Centre [EUSC] with JointResearch Centre [JRC] providing scientific support to the international donors planningthe distribution of aid in Lebanon through provision of high resolution satellite imageriesis a step in this direction. It is said that the JRC and EUSC would establish an SDI fordetailed assessment of the damages and reconstruction planning. The Web GIS article'Digging Information System' for the city of Madinah is an initiative on similar lines withfocus on the coordination aspect for on-site construction. The availability of this systemon web increases the usability of this system. The Dubai GIS Center under the DubaiMunicipality [DM] is the one point source for spatial datasets like: base maps, landusemaps, infrastructure data and operations data. What is impressive the list of governmentand private partners which are listed as strategic partner to the DM, which would ulti-mately contribute to the updation of the spatial data sets maintained by DM. In Feb2006, a workshop was organized on SDI for UAE, the initiative which soon after wasapproved by the Emirates. The Qatar SDI has an excellent system data sharing amongstthe participating agencies, where the agencies can publish their data for sharing. Thedata sharing is regulated to be in the framework of national spatial data standards. Theseactivities are monitored by Center for GIS at Qatar.

The common denominator for all the virtues of urban SDI and the various initiatives tak-en would be the service to the stakeholders and the coordination amongst them. Theservice elements could be influenced by the amount of data which can be accessedthrough Web GIS Application. The enterprise solutions offered by leading geospatial ven-dors would continue to evolve, with a skeptical look by the general public: 'Will GoogleEarth or Microsoft Local Live, in future, to provide geospatial tools for utility service man-agement, a small domain compared to the issues they would like to address?'

7G I S D E V E L O P M E N T - M I D D L E E A S T

Managing Editor Digging for SDI

[email protected]

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8 G I S D E V E L O P M E N T - M I D D L E E A S T

BAHRAIN

Postal Dept. goeshi-tech Bahrain joined the interna-tional community in observ-ing the World Post Day(WPD) on October 9th, by fur-ther expanding its postalservices. Which includedlaunch of a new GPS naviga-tion system to monitor itsfleet of 80 vans in streamlin-ing mail delivery.

Under the new hi-tech sys-tem, the postal authoritieswill be able to track downeach van and check theassigned route, timings,speed and distance covered,said Shaikh Bader.

The new GPS system auto-matically warns the driver incase of traffic violations,locates his position andchecks whether he sticks tothe distribution zoneassigned to him.

The Bahrain Post is com-mitted to enhancing its serv-ices to international stan-dards, said TransportationMinistry Assistant Under-Secretary for Posts ShaikhBader bin Khalifa Al Khalifa.The number of post offices inBahrain were also increasedto 14 with the opening of apost office in Juffair lastmonth, he told the GDN.

"We are now upgradingthe services to make remit-tance instantly through elec-tronic channels," said ShaikhBader and added that peoplewould also receive non-pay-ment notices through thepost offices.

www.gulf-daily-news.com

GIS to be adoptedto manage powersupplyBahrain is taking steps tohandle an anticipated 65 percent surge in electricity con-sumption over the next sixyears.

Major developments suchas Bahrain Financial Harbourand Durrat Al Bahrain areexpected to drive the mas-sive increase in demand.Consumption peaked at

1,840mw this year, said Elec-tricity and Water MinistryUnder-Secretary Dr MajeedAl Awadi during a meeting ofthe Bahrain French BusinessClub (BFBC).

Dr Al Awadi said severalmajor plans are underway tohelp the country cope withthe expected increase indemand, including the cre-ation of 15 new substationsand upgrading 10 existingones.

Moreover, he also men-tioned about several majorstrategies which are under-way to help the country copewith the expected increaseddemand .He said, an upgradeof the customer service sys-tem, set to be finished nextyear, and the introduction ofa GIS by November 2008would improve the handlingof reported faults.

Dr Al Awadi admittedupgrading work needed to bedone, but said the ministrywas battling against low rev-enue margins, old parts ofthe network, rapid changesin consumption patterns andunauthorised additionalloads.

He said an upgrade of thecustomer service system, setto be finished next year, andintroduction of a GIS byNovember 2008 wouldimprove the handling ofreported faults." The cus-tomer service system will beupgraded by the first quarterof 2007 and these two willhelp us a lot and make it eas-ier to correct problems".

www.gulf-daily-news.com

LEBANON

EU helps inreconstructionThe European Commission'sJoint Research Centre (JRC),together with the EU SatelliteCentre (EUSC), is providingscientific support to interna-tional donors planning the distribution of aid inLebanon.

High resolution satelliteimages have helped the EUcompile a preliminary dam-age and needs assessmentreport for Lebanon. Thereport was presented at therecent donors' conferenceheld recently in Stockholm.

The images reveal that insouthern Lebanon 1,489buildings, 535 road sections,21 of the 29 bridges over the Litani River and 545 culti-

vated fields were eitherdestroyed or damaged.

In Beirut 326 residentialbuildings have been dam-aged or destroyed in thesouthern suburbs, alongwith all the runways ofBeirut airport and six strate-gic highway sections.

According to the report,the damage observed to theroads means access to impor-tant towns, services such ashospitals as well as cultivat-ed fields may be disrupted.The report also points outthat the satellite images onlyshow damage to buildingsthat is visible from overhead;in areas where ground bat-tles took place, considerablelateral damage to buildingsis also likely.

JRC and EUSC will continueto support the reconstructioneffort by establishing a spa-tial data infrastructure toallow for a more detailedassessment of the damages.

http://ec.europa.eu/

PAKISTAN

NDMAconstitutedThe government has consti-tuted the National DisasterManagement Authority(NDMA) to co-ordinate disas-ter management throughoutthe country.

The NDMA has come intobeing one year after the dev-astating earthquake in thecountry's north provincethatkilled more than 73,000 people. The authority will beformalised through a piece of


News: Middle East

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legislation.Speaking at afunction, Prime MinisterShaukat Aziz said the NDMAwould play its role in any dis-aster situation. He said theauthority would not only co-ordinate activities to dealwith consequences of anydisaster but also keep liaisonwith the donors.

www.gulf-times.com

Govt to takeChinese help inspace technologyChina and Pakistan will worktogether in development ofspace technology andlaunching of three earthresources prospecting satel-lites in the next five years.

The relevant institutions ofthe two countries havealready started necessaryspadework to launch thesatellites within stipulatedperiod.

The two countries havebeen playing an active role atthe regional level as well,strengthening cooperation inthe space industry. Pakistan,China and seven other coun-tries signed a treaty for theestablishment of Asia-PacificSpace Cooperation

Organization (APSCO) lastyear, and it would take effectupon ratification by fivemembers.

In Asia, China is activelyengaged in the setting upAPSCO, which would bebased in Beijing. Eight coun-tries, China, Pakistan,Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iran,Mongolia, Peru and Thailandsigned the document lastOctober. Turkey also signed

the convention June thisyear, making it the ninthmember of the organization.

The APSCO will be formallyestablished after Chinareceives approvals from atleast five participating coun-tries' parliaments. The for-mation of the APSCO will be beneficial to furtherexchanges and cooperationin space technology and itsapplication and promotingeconomic and social develop-ment, and common prosperi-ty, in the region, he added.

APSCO will be a platformto carry out space coopera-tion to make people benefitfrom space technology andits application. Pakistan andChina played a pioneeringrole in establishing theorganization, first of its kindto expand cooperation inspace activities in the region.

According to the sources,Pak-China bilateral coopera-tion in the space industrycould span a broad spectrumof topics of mutual priority.

www.adnki.com

QATAR

GIS award to QtelQtel, a Qatar based telecom-munications provider, haswon a 'Special achievementin GIS' award for the secondtime in the last three years,at the Environmental Sys-tems Research Institute's26th Annual User conferencein San Diego, California.

GIS is designed to analyseand use data related to a geo-graphical location. For exam-


The Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Mar-keting (DTCM) has launched a new interactive ElectronicMap of Dubai on its website.

The site provides the options to view online the Interac-tive street map along with it the map is also available inPDF format for those without the Java plug-in on theircomputers.

The interactive version of the map offers a convenientsearch facility of the major landmarks in the emirate inaddition to a handy directory of hotels, hotel apartments,shopping malls, hospitals, diplomatic missions, heritagesites, places of interest, and upcoming mega projectsamong a host of important points of interest. Areas ofinterest can be expanded for greater details and printedfor hard-copy use.

The DTCM Manager Information Technology, Mr.Suhail Buhelaiba, said: "The new facility provides a virtu-al tour of Dubai. It enhances the appeal of the DTCM web-site in the online community. This will come handy tomillions of Dubai visitors as well as the residents. Theusage of this map will be immense to everyone, especial-ly businesses and tourists."

The map has been exclusively designed for the DTCMwith the software provided by Belhane, a German Cartog-raphy company. The department has partnered with EasyMap Advertising which will be responsible for marketingthe advertising space on the map. The company will alsoenable a business in Dubai to locate them on the map andprovide power-links.

www.dubaicityguide.com

Interactive e-map

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10 G I S D E V E L O P M E N T - M I D D L E E A S T

ple, in the telecommunica-tions industry, GIS helps Qteldetermine a customer's resi-dent location, nearest payphone or cable network, orthe best location to set up anew customer service center.

Qtel was selected fromover 100,000 GIS usersworldwide for the award,which recognises Qtel's effec-tive use of GIS to manage itsadvanced telecommunica-tions network.

Qtel has fast developed GIStechnology to help in track-ing the location and charac-teristics of their outsideinfrastructure and improv-ing access to informationwhen engineering new proj-ects. The company has maderapid strides to improve cus-tomer satisfaction throughGIS by providing usefulapplications for managingdifferent aspects of Qtel services in residential wire-line, GSM networks, inter-exchange transmissions,Triple Play, ADSL coverageand pay phone planning andmanagement.

The company has alsodeveloped a Telecommunica-tion Access Network Man-agement System (TEAMS9.4), which successfully con-verted massive amounts ofdata and drawings and over50,000 documents into a dig-ital format.

The 'TEAMS 9.4' applica-tion is designed to managethe Qtel inside and outsideplant and to automate theentire workflow making itfaster and more efficient toaccess geographical data

linked to the construction ofroads, setting up networkcables and other under-ground work, etc and for pro-cessing building permitapplications.

www.qtel.com.qa

SAUDI ARABIA

SatelliteNavigationsystem to controlair trafficSaudi Arabia is planning tochange its civil aviation nav-igation system from groundbased to satellite based inphases.

According to MuhammadAl-Salimi, Director of air cor-ridors at General Authorityfor Civil Aviation (GACA), thenew system will be imple-mented partially at thisstage, as the total shifting tothe new international navi-gation system requires timeand should pass through dif-ferent phases.

Al-Salimi said the King-dom would enter into seriousnegotiations with a numberof countries under theumbrella of the InternationalCivil Aviation Authority toset out laws on the use ofsatellites for air navigation.

He said the Kingdom

would participate in theactivities of the InternationalCivil Aviation Organizationto develop and modernizecivil aviation systems, setout new regulations, andmodernize the managementof air traffic. Al-Salimi made this statement whileaddressing a meeting of theworking group to implementfuture navigation systems.The meeting was organizedby the GACA.

The shift from ground-based system to satellite-based requires qualifiedmanpower. The GACA willconduct intensive trainingcourses for its air traffic con-trol staff in satellite and digi-tal communication.He saidthe authority was currentlyapplying satellite communi-cation in some airlines. Theobjective is to help airlinessave time by reducing flightduration. This will alsoincrease air traffic andattract foreign airline com-panies, he explained.

Opening the meeting,GACA President Abdullah Al-Rehaimy said he was lookingforward to setting out mech-anisms that help Arab civilaviation administrations andairline companies to set upair corridors to provide air-link to aircraft equipped withFANS1A satellite air naviga-tion systems in Arab skies.

"Arab countries will bene-fit a lot by applying thismodern air navigation sys-tem in terms of economicand operational aspects andthe benefit will reflect direct-ly on air navigation service

providers as well as airlinesand other users," Al-Rehaimysaid.

Spelling out the benefits,he said direct use of air corri-dors would help save fuel,reduce the time for flight,increase air corridor capacity,help open new air corridorsand thus help increase airtraffic and financial returnsof Arab aviation authori-ties."It will also reduce thework of aviation controlstaff; achieve more efficiencyin communication betweenair control staff and pilot asthey will use digital datainstead of sound data. Thiswill also lead to improvingaviation security and safety,"he added.

Al-Salimi said the meetingwas aimed at promotingcoordination between aircontrol offices in Arab coun-tries in preparation to applythe new satellite system. Hesaid total reliance on thesatellite air navigation system would be achieved by2015.

www.arabnews.com

Galdos to developRiyadh's SDIGaldos Systems announcedrecently that it had been con-tracted to develop an urbanspatial data infrastructure(SDI) within the city ofRiyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The urban SDI will enablepublic and private agenciesto share mapping data and todistribute data changes andupdates in near real-time.The objective of this projectis to enable users of the


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system to significantlyreduce data redundancy costand increase productivitythrough access to timelydata."The city of Riyadh istruly an innovator in urbanmanagement," said Ron Lake,Chairman & CEO of GaldosSystems Inc. "By developingan urban SDI, public and pri-vate agencies can collect andshare real-time data whiledramatically decreasing con-cerns of data redundancyand accuracy."

The urban SDI will enableagencies like, Riyadh Water& Sewage, Arriyadh Develop-ment Authority, and SaudiTelecom to share only data inreal time that is of interest to specific participants toenhance their decision-mak-ing processes.

Participants cannot modi-fy data that does not belongto them. The data does notemerge from a centralizedwarehouse; rather it is a dis-tributed system, utilizing thelatest collected data of eachparticipating organization.

www.galdosinc.com

TURKEY

u-blox expands itspresenceu-blox AG, a provider of GPSreceiver technology announ-ced recently that it hasexpanded its distributionnetwork into new growthmarket by signing agree-ment with electronics dis-tributor Kayra Elektronik ofTurkey.

Kayra Elektronik distrib-

utes GPS and GSM-relatedproducts such as antennas,connectors, LCD displays andcables. The company focuseson distributing mobile com-munications and positioningindustries products.

" u-blox' innovative posi-tioning solutions will benefitboth the GPS and GSM mar-kets immensely, both ofwhich constitute prime tar-get markets here at Kayra"said Fatih Coksak, ProductManager at Kayra Elektronik.

www.theautochannel.com

UAE

ANTRIX todistributeCARTOSAT-1imageryGlobal Scan Technologies(GST), a Dubai-based compa-ny providing Remote Sensingand GIS technologies in the Middle East, recentlyannounced that it had signeda contract with India's

ANTRIX Corporation Limited,a provider of satellite imagesworldwide and the market-ing arm of the Indian SpaceResearch Organization (ISRO)

under the Department ofSpace, Government of India.

GST's agreement withANTRIX includes distributionof Cartosat-1 imagery with2.5m resolution in both pan and stereo modes. The unique high-resolutionalong-track stereo imagingcapability of Cartosat-1, car-ried out for the first timeanywhere in the world,enables generation of DigitalElevation Models (DEM) andother value-added products.

The data from Cartosat-1 isexpected to provideenhanced inputs for largescale mapping applicationsand stimulate newer applica-tions in the urban and ruraldevelopment, land andwater resources manage-ment, disaster assessment,relief planning and manage-ment, environment impactassessment and various oth-er Geographical InformationSystem applications. Thedata can be used for genera-tion and updating of large-scale topographic maps.

"Our agreement withANTRIX allows us to distrib-ute Indian Satellite imageryin the UAE and many otherMiddle East countries", saidDr.Hussein Harahsheh ofGST.

www.ameinfo.com

DubaiMunicipality rollsout EPIMSDubai Municipality's ITdepartment has launchedthe first phase of the Engineering Projects Infor-mation Management System

(EPIMS) within the organisa-tion.

The system enables all thestaff and clients to communi-cate through an integratedelectronic channel, resultingin significant time savingsand error-free completion oftransactions. It also facili-tates easy access to informa-tion, leading to better deci-sion making.

Hussain Lootah, DirectorGeneral of Dubai Municipali-ty, said, "We are continuous-ly committed to adopting the latest in informationtechnology to enhance ourcustomer services. “The newproject allows variousdepartments in the munici-pality such as Contracts &Purchasing, General Projects,and Finance, to submit theirapplications electronically.These applications rangefrom accreditation materials,graphics, plans, programmesand reports about the imple-mentation of the engineer-ing projects, in addition tofinancial requirements.

EPIMS facilitates moreeffective internal communi-cation between all depart-ments of Dubai Municipality.The departments that willbenefit from the implemen-tation of this system includeContracts & Purchasing, Gen-eral Projects, Finance, Histor-ical Buildings and Coastal


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Management, in addition tosome of the external users.Further, it provides direct,detailed and accurate infor-mation for contractors andconsultants," Lootah added.

The first phase of theEPIMS began in August 2006and Dubai Municipality's ITdepartment is now workingon implementing the secondphase of the system to caterto the requirements of otherengineering departments inthe municipality.

www.cpilive.net

Dubai LandDepartmentimplements DMSDubai Land Department hasdigitizes all the documentsby implementing a docu-ment management solutionfrom FileNet, a provider ofEnterprise Content and Busi-ness Process Managementsolutions.

This will speed up land andproperty transactions inDubai. This system helpedDubai Land Departmentovercome several challenges,including fragmentation ofinformation as a result ofdata being scattered in vari-ous systems and forms, slowcustomer transaction pro-cessing time, and the need tomeet increasing regulations.

With 1.5 million pages rep-resenting the backlog ofpaper documentationalready migrated to a FileNetsystem and an additional 3.5million pages set to be addedfrom the on going NewDubai real-estate project.

'With more than 54,000plots registered in Dubai, itwas becoming increasinglyunsustainable to manage theassociated paperwork anddocuments. Accessing impor-tant documentation wasproving to be a time-con-suming process for internaland external users alike,which persuaded us to digi-talise all documents of thedepartment,' said KhalifaAhmed Al Zuraim, Head of ITCentre, Dubai Land Depart-ment. 'We conducted a com-prehensive technical evalua-tion of solutions from 10companies, and found thatFileNet's advanced Docu-ment and Content Manage-ment solution was easily themost reliable and flexible.'

'FileNet is pleased to asso-ciate with Dubai LandDepartment for this land-mark project,' said AlessioGallo, International SalesDirector, South Europe, Mid-dle East and Africa, FileNet.

FileNet applications areintegrated with Oracle busi-ness applications, the depart-ment's internal GIS system,and Dubai Municipality's GISsystem enabling access toland documents. The imple-mentation was carried outby Gulf Computers, a FileNetPartner in the Middle East.

www.ameinfo.com

GPS Industries Incsigns MOU forinvestmentGPS Industries, Inc., the inno-vator of Wi-Fi enabled GPSsystems for golf courses andresidential communities,announced on recently thatit has signed a Memorandumof Understanding (MOU)with an affiliate of a largeinvestment group located inthe UAE for a US$10M privateplacement for the Company'spreferred stock.

Management believes thatthe investment from theDubai group will lead toadditional investments fromother investors.

http://press.xtvworld.com

YEMEN

Managing waterresourcesAs many water basins inYemen are facing watershortages due to changingclimatic conditions and over-use of ground waters, a needto develop and properlymanage available waterresources is being felt.

Considerable investmentsare allocated for constructingand rehabilitating waterstorage structures, toenhance ground water dis-charge, for expand irrigatedareas, and providing waterfor other uses.

To understand the effect ofdams on water status in giv-en water basin, various inves-tigations are required fordetermining surface waterand groundwater hydrology,

and subsequently advisingproper water resource man-agement strategies.

In a study of Sawan water-shed, which is located inSana'a basin, the effect ofthree small dams on shallowgroundwater discharge wasobserved. To study the effectof dams on groundwater dis-charge, static water levels ina number of open wells wasobserved in 2000 and 2001.

Static water level (SWL) ofwells near Mukhtan, Konaz-er, Beryan dams were signifi-cantly affected by the dis-tance from the dams. TheSWL of wells closer toMukhtan dam was 9 m whileSWL of well at distances ofabout 5.7 Km from the damwas 22.6 m. In the case ofBeryan dam, SWL were 7.9 mand 11.7m for wells at dis-tances 0.3 km and 6.1 kmfrom the dam, respectively,while SWL was found at 9 min wells near Konazer damand 22.3m in wells at 4.5 Kmfrom the dam. This indicatesthe presence of groundwaterdischarge, especially in theareas near the dams.

This study recommendsdocumenting hydroclimaticdata in order to establish aninformation database formajor watersheds, and tocarry out comprehensivestudies and investigations onthe effects of dams. Anemphasis is required to uti-lize mathematical models,GIS and other programs inthe Rapid Risk Assessmentprogram of watershed anddams.

http://yementimes.com

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ROLTA● ● ● ● ● ●USA : 1 - 678 - 942 5000 Canada : 905 - 361 - 2878 Benelux : 31 - 23 - 557 1916 Germany : 49 - 6102 - 299 985 UK : 44 - 1189 - 45 0011 Dubai : 971 - 4 - 391 5212 Saudi Arabia : 966 - 1 - 242 1212

CertificationQ M S

C E R T I F I E DISO 9001 : 2000

GLOBAL PHOTOGRAMMETRY, GIS AND UTILITIES & COMMUNICATION SERVICES

14

BUSINESS

Leica Geosystemsreceives Frost &Sullivan MarketLeadership Award Frost & Sullivan, a New York-based consultancy firm, con-ferred London Market Lead-ership Award in the LaserTracker Segment on LeicaGeosystems in Londonrecently.

Already the recipient of the2004 Frost & Sullivan "Indus-trial Automation ProductInnovation of the Year"award for its Portable CMMline of products, LeicaGeosystems was selected in2006 for its sales growth andits stress on emerging tech-nologies.

www.leica-geosystems.com

Rolta gets ISO/IEC20000-1:2005ITSM certificationIndia based Rolta is the 21stcompany in the world certi-fied by BSI with "ISO/IEC20000-1:2005 IT Service Man-agement standard". BSI, thelargest and most respectedmanagement systems regis-trar in the world is supportedby BSI Group offices, con-ducted the assessment forthe certification.

Rolta had been certified for

BS 15000 for its IT ServiceManagement operations.This new certification is anupgrade of BS 15000 stan-dard, and describes an inte-grated set of managementprocesses for effective delivery of services.ISO 20000 is aligned withand complementary to theprocess approach definedwithin the IT InfrastructureLibrary (ITIL) from The Officeof Government Commerce(OGC), UK.

Vinay Sawarkar, Sr. Execu-tive Director - Rolta, speakingon the occasion of certifica-tion said, "ISO 20000 isincreasingly seen as thequality standard for IT Ser-vice Management and manycompanies are striving toadopt ISO 20000, not only fortheir own benefit, but also tohelp qualify and choose sup-pliers and partner organiza-tions.

This certification reaffirmsRolta's endeavor to adhere tothe Best IT Service Manage-ment Practices in the world,for its customers, partnersand stakeholders".

www.rolta.com

OSI Geospatialgets contract fromUS Dept. ofDefenseOSI Geospatial Inc. recentlyannounced on September 27that its U.S. systems opera-tions had been awarded athree-year contract totalingapproximately US$3.8 mil-lion by the US Defense ThreatReduction Agency (DTRA). Under the contract terms, OSI

will develop a GPS DeniedNavigation and MappingSystem for the DTRA.

"OSI is into developmentand production of Naviga-tion and Mapping systemsfor international militaryand commercial applica-tions. This contract willenable OSI to evolve our lead-ing edge technology into theHand-Held/Wearable Per-sonal Navigation Systemsmarket," said Ken Kirk-patrick, President and CEO ofOSI Geospatial.

www.osil.com

ISRO gets contractto launch 16 nanosatellitesAround September 2007,India's rocket Polar SatelliteLaunch Vehicle (PSLV) willcarry a 100 kg capsule as anadditional passenger intospace. The capsule willunfurl a series of 16 nanosatellites that weighbetween one kg and five kg.

The University of Toronto,Canada, leads a team of aca-demic institutions thatwould build these satellites,designed to conduct researchon outer space, includingmicro-gravity experiments.It has contracted out thelaunch to the Indian SpaceResearch Organisation(ISRO). Nano satellites weighless than 10 kg and multiplesatellites work together as anetwork in space. In somecases, these formations ofnano satellites are connectedto a bigger satellite, calledthe mother, for communica-tion purposes.

The PSLV rocket has piggy-backed micro satellites thatweigh up to 100 kg to space,but this would be India's firstexperience in launchingnano satellites. "We haveseveral small satellites fromuniversities in India andabroad that will be launchedover the next few years," anofficial said.

ISRO will loft a 50 kgIndonesian remote sensingsatellite with Cartosat-2, thehome-grown one-metre reso-lution remote sensing satel-lite, when the PSLV islaunched next month. In thepast, India's rockets have car-ried several micro satellitesweighing less than 60 kg,including the Korean KIT-SAT-3, German DLR-TUBSAT,BIRD of Germany and PROBAof Belgium, into their intend-ed orbits.

www.dnaindia.com

Hirayama to headTPS-AustraliaTony Hirayama, Topcon Posi-tioning Systems' (TPS) Execu-tive Vice President, hasassumed the role of Presidentand CEO of TPS-Australia. He will also have the title ofPresident and CEO with KEETechnologies, which joinedTPS on October 3 this year.Les Mann, former KEE Presi-dent and CEO, will be thenew Chief Operating Officerat KEE.

The announcement wasmade by Ray O'Connor, TPSPresident and CEO, who willbe Chairman of the TPSAboard.

www.topconpositioning.com

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News: World

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ESRI Presidentawarded HenryShaw MedalESRI President Jack Danger-mond was awarded the Hen-ry Shaw Medal in a ceremo-ny on September 13, 2006, atthe Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, Missouri.

ESRI's ArcInfo and ArcViewsoftware allow the garden tointegrate its vast resources ofexpert knowledge andherbarium data with climate,soil, and elevation data toanalyze plant geographicranges and patterns of diversity.

Using ESRI's ArcIMS tech-nology, the garden created aWeb interface for sharing itsplant data with the world.Not only does this allow it toprovide global mappingcapabilities for all the speci-mens in its database, but itcan also customize interac-tive maps with various envi-ronmental data layers, giving the garden's col-leagues invaluable resourcesfor prioritizing their collec-tion strategies.

Presented since 1883, themedal recognizes those whohave made significant contri-

butions to the MissouriBotanical Garden, botanicalresearch, or conservation. Itis named in honor of HenryShaw, a successful St. Louisbusinessman who foundedthe Missouri Botanical Gar-den in 1859.

www.esri.com

Tele Atlasexpandsoperations Tele Atlas officially inaugu-rated Tele Atlas Polska, thecompany's East Europeanheadquarters, with officeopenings in Warsaw andLodz on September 20.

Tele Atlas Polska's opera-tions were initially formedthrough Tele Atlas' acquisi-tion of Warsaw-based PPWKGeoInvent in October 2005.PPWK GeoInvent developeda mobile mapping system,which speeds the data cap-ture and map update processand helps Tele Atlas quicklydeliver high quality mapsthat incorporate data,images and other valuablelocal content to customersand partners around theworld.

Tele Atlas Polska is respon-sible for developing mobilemapping and image process-ing technology. The compa-ny's worldwide Mobile Map-ping and Image TechnologyCentre in Lodz manages theresearch and development ofmobile mapping technology,the production of mobilemapping units and overseesimage processing. The War-saw office is responsible fordatabase operations in

Poland and the Baltic states,serving as the developmentplatform for Central andEastern Europe. Tele AtlasPolska currently has morethan 150 employees and con-tract operators and plans toexpand its operations withemployees specialised ininformation technology and GIS.

www.teleatlas.com

Trimble reports3rd Q '06 growthof 25 %Trimble has announced theresults for its third quarter2006, ended September 29,2006. Revenue for the thirdquarter of 2006 was $234.9million, up 25 percent fromrevenue of $188.5 million inthe third quarter of 2005.

Operating income for thethird quarter of 2006 was$36.3 million, up 10 percentfrom the third quarter of2005. Net income for thethird quarter of 2006 was$25.3 million, up 25 percentwhen compared to netincome of $20.2 million in thethird quarter of 2005.

Earnings per share for thethird quarter of 2006 were$0.43, up approximately 23percent compared to earn-ings per share of $0.35 in thethird quarter of 2005. Earn-ings per share in the thirdquarter of 2006 were nega-tively impacted by approxi-mately $0.03 due to theadoption of FAS 123R and byapproximately $0.03 due tohigher amortization of intan-gibles.

http://trmb.client.shareholder.com

Intergraphtakeover getsantitrustclearanceIntergraph Corporation, aprovider of spatial informa-tion management (SIM) soft-ware, announced recentlythat the US antitrust agen-cies had granted early termi-nation of the waiting periodunder the Hart-Scott-RodinoAntitrust Improvements Actof 1976, as amended, effec-tive September 26, 2006, inconnection with the Compa-ny's pending acquisition by aprivate investor group led byHellman & Friedman LLC andTexas Pacific Group in atransaction valued atapproximately $1.3 billion.

Intergraph had announcedon August 31 that it hassigned a definitive agree-ment to be acquired by theinvestor group. Intergraph'sBoard of Directors hadapproved the merger agree-ment and had resolved torecommend that Inter-graph's stockholders adoptthe agreement.

The transaction remainssubject to the receipt ofshareholder approval as wellas the satisfaction of otherpreviously disclosed closingconditions. The transaction isexpected to close in thefourth quarter of 2006.

Terms of the transactioncall for stockholders toreceive $44 cash per share. Ifapproved, the move willmake private one ofHuntsville's longtime pub-licly traded companies.

www.intergraph.com


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eSpatial andTerraNor to deliver iSMARTproducts eSpatial, a geospatial soft-ware and technology compa-ny and TerraNor, a companyproviding software for GIS,remote sensing and digitalmapping, signed a ResellerAgreement.

Under the agreement Terra-Nor will act as a reseller for iSMART5, in the Nordiccountries (Denmark, Finland,Iceland, Norway, Sweden,Greenland). eSpatial'siSMART product supports anumber of deployment mod-els, which include Pure Weband Customized Client with-in a scalable, role-based andsecure environment.

The architectural featuresdelivered with iSMARTaddress standard IT require-ments for the deployment ofenterprise business applica-tions.

iSMART provides an idealenterprise grade hosted serv-ices delivery platform forgeospatial applications.Delivered applications andservices can also be providedto conform with the OpenGeo Spatial Consortium(OGC) Web Services stan-dards.

www.espatial.com

3001 Inc. toacquire LandAir 3001, Inc., announced recent-ly that after working togeth-er for many years, includingan eighteen month periodwhere LandAir Mapping, Inc.(LandAir) acted as the fourthbusiness unit of 3001 provid-ing all flight operations andrelated services, 3001 hasfinalized the agreement towholly acquire LandAir.

LandAir, a small geospatialbusiness successfully run byPresident Tom Olive since1988, is a contract holderunder US Department ofAgriculture's National Agri-cultural Information Pro-gram (NAIP) and as such, wasawarded the largest numberof states for high-resolutionaerial photo acquisition.LandAir also successfullymanaged dozens of otherprojects in the last years, elic-iting praise from clients allaround.

LandAir teaming with 3001began in 2003, when the twofirms joined forces to supportthe U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the acquisitionand processing of natural col-or imagery at 1 meter resolu-tion imagery for the entireisland of Puerto Rico. The twocompanies' production staffand management developedtrust in a shared vision for high quality imagery products.

Mr. Olive will stay on torun 3001's LandAir Mappingbusiness unit. "I am lookingforward to a little extra timethat this acquisition affordsme to consider future sensor

investments. The economieswe enjoy by joining forceswill allow us to spend moretime listening and learningof new ways to save timeand money for our clients",says Tom Olive.

www.3001inc.com

Global studyshows benefits oflocationintelligenceAccording to a survey con-ducted by MapInfo Corpora-tion, a provider of locationintelligence solutions, andBusinessWeek Research Services, 64 percent of business executives believethat location intelligence canimprove business processes,and 21 percent are planningto investigate it in the next year.

1,700 business executivesparticipated in this interna-tional study to gauge the rolethat technology can play indelivering powerful, busi-ness-relevant location intelli-gence to leading organiza-tions.

80 percent of data that anorganization uses to makekey decisions to improve itsefficiency, effectiveness andprofitability has a location-based component.

Optimizing informationsuch as a ZIP code, telephonenumber or address enablescompanies to answer criticalquestions such as: Where canI find more of my best cus-tomers? Where are competi-tors impacting my business?Where is my newest productor service most valuable?

For instance, MasterCardWorldwide relies on theMapInfo Envinsa locationintelligence platform to pow-er its worldwide ATM Locatorservice. Envinsa replacedMasterCard's previous onlineand phone ATM Locator serv-ices with a more integratedplatform for deploying loca-tion technology across theentire organization. As aresult, MasterCard was ableto reduce costs and provideenhanced customer serviceto millions of customers.

www.mapinfo.com

Trimble acquiresVisual Statement Trimble announced recentlythat they had acquired pri-vately-held Visual StatementInc. of Kamloops, BritishColumbia, Canada in an all-cash transaction.

Visual Statement providesstate-of-the-art desktop soft-ware tools for crime and col-lision incident investigation,analysis and reconstruction,as well as statewide enter-prise solutions for reportingand analysis used by publicsafety agencies.

The company is an addi-tional investment in theMobile Solutions businesssegment that supports Trim-ble's strategy of providingproductivity solutions formobile workers.

Financial terms were notdisclosed. The Visual State-ment acquisition comple-ments Trimble's subsidiary,Advanced Public Safety(APS).

www.trimble.com

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APPLICATION

Satellite pics helpclaiming highercompensationRoughly 140 kilometre fromMumbai, the capital city ofIndian state of Maharashtra,farmers are turning to tech-nology to fight for theirrights.

Four months ago, the farm-ers of Pen taluka in Raigaddistrict were told the stategovernment was acquiringtheir land to help build the25,000 acre Maha MumbaiSpecial Economic Zone (SEZ).

That's when an activist ofthe SEZ Hatao Virodh Samiti,Arun Shivkar, logged on toGoogle Earth. "We usedGoogle technology to proveto the authorities that theland is fertile," said Shivkar.

Shivkar says initially stateauthorities claimed that onlya small portion of the ear-marked land is fertile andthat some parts of it is sub-merged by salty creek water,meaning lower compensa-tion for the farmers.

But Google Earth has cometo the rescue and its satellitepictures clearly indicate cropareas. This has helped farm-ers back their claims for high-er compensation. The tech-nology has also brought

together farmers from 45 vil-lages to put up a commonfront and protest the acquisi-tion of their land.

The ingenious ways inwhich farmers in Maharash-tra are using Google Earth tofight for their rights is per-haps a testament to howtechnology is truly flatteningthe world.

www.ibnlive.com

Satelliteimageries reveal,green means rain Scientists from Natural Envi-ronment Research Council(NERC)-funded Climate andLand Surface InteractionsCentre (CLASSIC) have foundthat the presence of greenvegetation has a major influ-ence on the amount of rainthat falls in the Sahel regionof Africa, south of the Saharadesert.

Rains at the start of thegrowing season cause vege-tation growth. This encour-ages a feedback loop as the greener the vegetationbecomes, the greater theamount of rain that falls.

This important newresearch could help us to pre-dict future droughts inAfrica. The research can beused to aid regional andinternational forecasts forrain-starved regions.

Using satellite technology,Dr Sietse Los and colleaguesat CLASSIC worked withNASA to develop a datasetcovering 18 years of vegeta-tion greenness records. Theycombined these records withrainfall data in the region

over the same period -- from1982 to1999.

The resulting analysesshow, for the first time, thatrainfall amounts varybetween 10% and 30% morewhen the land is green, anddecreases by a similaramount when conditions aredry and there is little greenvegetation growing. Theresearch was published inGeophysical Research Letters(USA), August 2006.

www.nerc.ac.uk

New cropinsurance toolsmade availableThe US Department of Agri-culture has made availabletwo new risk managementtools for pasture, rangelandand forage in a select groupof states for a pilot program,beginning with the 2007crop year.

The rainfall index insur-ance program and the vege-tation index insurance pro-gram, offered by USDA's RiskManagement Agency, willallow livestock producers topurchase insurance protec-tion for losses of forage.

"These new insurancestools will help farmers andranchers, especially withoperations located indrought-impacted areas, toimprove their risk manage-ment capabilities," said U.S.Agriculture Secretary MikeJohanns.

The rainfall index programwill be tested in 220 countiesin Colorado, Idaho, Pennsyl-vania, South Carolina, NorthDakota and Texas. The vege-

tation index insurance pro-gram will be tested in 110counties. And is based onsatellite imagery as a meansto measure expected produc-tion losses.

www.vafb.com

Website showsdamage inflictedareasIf a picture is worth a thou-sand words, digital satelliteimagery could inspire tomes'worth of new environmentalpolicies. At least that's thehope of the designers behindthe 'Atlas of Our ChangingEnvironment'

A unique new Web site thatuses a digital map frame-work to catalog damageinflicted on the Earth over the last few decades,(http://na.unep.net/digital_atlas2/google.php).

"It is as simple as seeing isbelieving," said PatrickJoseph, an environmentaljournalist who writes a blogfor the nonprofit Sierra Club."You can read a million timesover that the Amazon isbeing deforested, but satel-lite imagery really helps giveyou an idea of the scale onwhich it is happening."

The atlas's visual evidenceof destruction is alreadyhelping some environmental

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groups get the word outabout their issues. SierraClub, for instance, has usedimages from the atlas in itsmember magazine, Sierra.

The new site is based onGoogle Earth. The U.S. branchof the United Nations Envi-ronment Programme (UNEP)partnered with Google to cre-ate a "layer" of data thatusers can navigate usingGoogle Earth or view in aWeb browser.

news.nationalgeographic.com

NASA probesorigin ofhurricanesThe NASA- backed missionhas set up three radars one inlandlocked Niger's capitalNiamey, the one in Kawsaraon the Senegalese coast, andone on the Cape VerdeIslands and is also flying

planes into the centre of thedepressions. The objective isto understand how hurri-canes that slam into thesoutheastern United Statesand the Caribbean areformed in West Africa beforethey go bowling across theAtlantic.

The data provided by theseradars will enable scientistsfor the first time to mapmore fully the atmosphericconditions as Atlantic hurri-

canes are born and throughtheir life cycle. Previousattempts to understand thephenomenon have relied onsatellite data, which canshow what is happening ontop of clouds but not insidethem.

The study could help forecasters better predictdevastating hurricanes likeKatrina.

"This is the first time withaircraft, with radars on theground, that we can lookinside these disturbances.And once you understandwhat's happening inside youhave a better chance of pre-dicting," said Greg Jenkins, aspecialist in tropical meteor-ology from Howard Universi-ty, Washington.

Paul Kucera from the Uni-versity of North Dakota, whohas studied weather patternsin Papua New Guinea, theSouth China Sea and aroundthe Amazon, said, "If we cancapture the atmospheric con-ditions of the storm, thestorm structure, how theyevolve over the African conti-nent and just off the coast,our objective is to distinguishbetween those that staytogether and those that dissi-pate."

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Satellites tomonitor land usein BeijingBeijing will use three satel-lites to monitor land use aspart of a crackdown on illegalreal estate developmentactivities, a local land officialhas said.

Starting November, Beijingwill investigate and prose-cute major cases of illegal useof land, especially those thatviolate government plans ornational industrial policiesand those that infringe onfarmers' legitimate rights astold by An Jiasheng, Directorof the Beijing MunicipalBureau of Land andResources.

Authorities can now availthemselves of satelliteremote sensing technologiesto discover and prevent theillegal use of land, An told aconference.

The Chinese central gov-ernment tightened controlover land after the economygrew 10.9 percent in the firsthalf, promising to penalizelocal officials who fail to stopor investigate land use trans-gressions.

The Ministry of Land andResources laid down in arecent circular that local gov-ernments must not approvemore land for construction in2007 than they did in 2006.

"The principle is tostrengthen macro-economiccontrol and use landresources economically," itsaid, adding that localitiesmust make use of land "sci-entifically and rationally" to protect farm land and land for other agricultural purposes.

It urged localities to "actconjointly" with the StateCouncil in implementingmacro-economic control poli-cies and prevent runawayfixed-asset investment.

www.chinadaily.com.cn

CRISP detects hotspots in wildlifereserveSingapore`s Satellite Centrefor Remote Imaging Sensingand Processing (CRISP) onSeptember 6 detected six hotspots in a wildlife reserve inKendawangan, KetapangDistrict, West KalimantanProvince.The SingaporeanCRISP also detected some ahot spot at a national park inAur Kuning, Ketapang Dis-trict, in the province, accord-ing to information from theWest Kalimantan forestryservice`s forest fire controlunit here on Thursday.

There were a total 58 hotspots in West Kalimantan,and 42 of them were in Keta-pang District.

Some six hot spots inBengkayang District, five hotspots in Pontianak Districtand another five hot spots inSanggau district.

Head of the West Kaliman-tan Natural Resource Conser-vation Agency (BKSDA)Awen Supranata said thatcloud seeding would contin-ue be conducted to triggerrain in the forest fire areas.Awen Supranata said thecloud seeding process hasbeen carried out from Sep-tember 1-7, 2006, to put outforest fires among otherthings in Bengkayang, Sin-tang, Pontianak, Pontianakand Ketapang.

"About 20 tons of artificialsalt are dropped every day totrigger cloud seeding. Thesuccess rate is around 80 per-cent," he said.

www.antara.co.id

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PRODUCT

Telogis launchesOnTrack4Telogis, a provider of ondemand web-based GPStracking systems, hasreleased the advanced ver-sion of OnTrack, its fleettracking, productivity, andmanagement solution, now

integrated with GeoStreammapping technology.

Added key features ofOnTrack4 include: NAVTEQultra fast premium mapswith free quarterly updates;"SEARCH!" Instantly findvehicles, drivers, and keylocations; Unlimited userdefined map sizing for wallmounted dispatch monitors;and user defined reportswith automated alerts andreporting tools.

www.telogis.com

MapInfo releasesMapMarker Plusv12.0 MapInfo Corporation intro-duced on August 24 Map-Marker Plus v12.0, a geocod-ing tool. MapMarker Plusv12.0 outperforms currentgeocoding technology,adding a new patent-pend-ing algorithm that more pre-cisely identifies locations.

MapMarker Plus v12.0

delivers data-building toolsand interpolation method-ologies that bring companiesas close as 75 feet on averageto a given address, closer toits actual location on theground. In addition, this ver-sion includes the optionalMapMarker ParcelPrecisiondata set, the ground-leveldata available containingforty-four million addresspoints

www.mapinfo.com

Western Europemap fromTele AtlasTele Atlas announced recent-ly that it had reached a majorEuropean milestone by deliv-ering complete digital mapcoverage of Western Europe.

With the addition ofdetailed Ireland and North-ern Ireland maps to the exist-ing database of countries,Tele Atlas European mapsnow cover more than 7.8 mil-lion total kilometers, theequivalent of travelingaround the Equator 195 timesor a return trip to the moon10 times.

Within Western Europe, thedatabase now reaches morethan 386 million inhabitants,includes 1.7 million 'standard'points-of-interest (POIs) andnearly 90 percent of allhouse numbers across theregion.www.teleatlas.com

Autodesk unveilsTopobase 2007Autodesk, Inc. announced onSeptember 12 the release ofAutodesk Topobase 2007

infrastructure design andmanagement solution. Built on Autodesk Map 3D and Autodesk MapGuideEnterprise software,Autodesk Topobase 2007addresses the challengesfaced by organizations thatcollaborate on infrastructureprojects, such as water orwastewater networks, byenabling teams to share spa-tial information acrossdepartments.

Topobase customers cansee the big picture with amore integrated view of allof their enterprise data, andimprove productivity andbottom line results by com-pleting projects faster andmaintaining assets moreefficiently.

www.ibnlive.com

NetVIEW forGoogle EarthlaunchedMWH Soft, a provider ofenvironmental and waterresources applications soft-ware, announced the releaseof NetVIEW, a geospatialinformation viewing, distri-bution, and management

software that facilitatesdeployment and analysis ofGIS data and modelingresults in Google Earth.

Initially introduced for

InfoWater, the industry'sArcGIS-centric water distri-bution modeling and opti-mization software, NetVIEWdelivers the ability to seam-lessly combine mapping, GISand modeling data withGoogle Earth in an integratedenvironment via an intuitiveinterface.

The information displayedcan then be interactivelyqueried online. Built usingComponent and XML tech-nologies, NetVIEW giveswater utilities fast access tomission-critical GIS and mod-eling information as well asextensive data reportingcapabilities critical to sup-porting water distributionmanagement activities.

www.mwhsoft.com

'Mobile Earth'mapping servicefrom LocatioNet'Mobile Earth', a mappingand information service hasbeen launched on September6 for Vodafone Germany'smobile subscribers.

The service, available onJava-enabled devices, hasbeen created by LocatioNetSystems Ltd., a provider ofmobile mapping and locationapplications, and is usingcontent from TeleAtlas.

The Mobile Earth serviceenables mobile users to viewany address in Germany overfull colour maps or high reso-lution aerial photos, calcu-late the best routes betweenaddresses and view theresults on a map, in additionto searching and viewingover four hundred thousand

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points of interest in Ger-many. Mobile subscriberscan now access all the map-ping information that waspreviously only availablefrom their PC, using an opti-mised user interface on theirmobile phones.

The Mobile Earth applica-tion requires a single over-the-air download from theVodafone Live! mobile portal,just like a mobile game. Theapplication has an advancedJava-based user interfacewith maps rapidly deliveredto the user's handset fromthe central server over thewireless network, giving themobile user the feeling thatthe entire mapping and aeri-al photo content is stored onhis handset.

www.locationet.com

Topcon unveilsall-new totalstation seriesThe all-new total stationseries from Topcon offers theultimate solution fordemanding tasks on the jobsite. Designed as completerobotic systems, the GTS-900A and GPT-9000A seriesinclude Topcon's new FC-200field controller and RC-3tracking system.

The GPT-9000A robotictotal station provides precisereflectorless measurementup to 2,000 meters - morethan 6,500 feet (1 miles) -and can easily focus on smallobjects like power lines. Theonboard computer, with abright, full-color touch-screen display, and faster ser-vo motor technology

improve field productivity.The GTS-900A series reflec-tor-only instruments areavailable with the same sys-tem components.

www.topconpositioning.com

GeoPerspectivesfrom Infoterraand BlueSky Infoterra Ltd and BlueSky Ltdhave launched GeoPerspec-tives, a suite of airborneacquired geospatial data. The suite is delivering thenext generation of data forEngland & Wales using the latest digital imagingtechnology.

This enables the simultane-ous capture of RGB andcolour infra-red imagery and,via automated processing,the rapid creation of digitalterrain and surface models.

"We have already updatedover 30% of the original base-line survey, which puts uswell ahead of our five yearupdate schedule," said DaveFox, CEO of Infoterra Ltd.s

GeoPerspectives offers arange of image resolutions tomeet diverse user require-ments; from National Per-spectives datasets at 25cmresolution to ultra high-reso-lution Urban Perspectivesdetailed enough to view roadmarkings and street furni-ture. Furthermore, thenational coverage is the onlyorthorectified aerial photog-raphy collection with a guar-anteed five year update pro-gramme. GeoPerspectivesdata is already in use withingovernment, commerce andacademia, including the

Department for the Environ-ment Farming and RuralAffairs (Defra), HighwaysAgency, Yorkshire Water andover 240 Local Authorities.

www.prnewswire.co.uk

Karttakone’s mapseries for NordiccountriesKarttakone has producedmap series covering allNordic countries includingDenmark, Finland, Norwayand Sweden that can be usedas background maps in GIS-applications, in www-servic-es, through Online Services,or as Media Maps.

The cartographically highquality datasets are based onNavteq data and include allroads with their names for allof the Nordic Countries. Theseries are produced in 1:35000 and 1:250 000 scales. Thedata products are deliveredin tiff-raster format, as pdf-vector files or through Onlineservices directly from theKarttakone server.

www.karttakone.fi

Japan launchesspy satelliteJapan launched its thirdintelligence-gathering satel-lite on September 11, enhanc-ing its ability to monitorneighbouring North Koreatwo months after Pyongyang

shocked the region with abarrage of missile tests.

Japan's space agency,JAXA, launched the opticalsatellite from the southernisland of Tanegashima,adding to a pair of satellitesthat were fired into orbit inMarch 2003. Two other satel-lites were lost when a rocketfailed in November that year.

A further radar satellite isset to be launched later thisyear, completing the set offour. The optical satellite willbe able to differentiateobjects a meter (yard) ormore in diameter, althoughthis level of resolution is faroutclassed by U.S. militarysatellites.

A ban on defense use ofspace dating from the 1960shas hampered Japan's abilityto develop high-tech hard-ware.

With two similar satellitesin orbit, the Japanese govern-ment will be able to monitorany point on Earth once aday, an official at Japan'sCabinet Satellite IntelligenceCenter said.

Japan planned its spysatellite program followingNorth Korea's 1998 launch ofa ballistic missile that flewover Japan and landed in thePacific Ocean.

On July 5, Pyongyanglaunched another volley ofmissiles, sparking uneaseacross the region. NorthKorea reacted angrily toSouth Korea's July launch ofthe Arirang-2 surveillancesatellite capable of monitor-ing military movements.

http://today.reuters.co.uk

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ArcGIS®: Standards-Based GIS

ESRI is committed to creating standards-based technology that is open and

interoperable with other IT solutions, enterprise applications, and geospatial

technologies. In fact, ESRI® ArcGIS® 9 supports all the leading IT development

and application environments, as well as ISO and OGC GIS standards.

Examples include support for

Operating Systems including Windows®, UNIX®, and Linux®

DBMSs, such as IBM® DB2® Universal Database and

Informix® Dynamic Server™, Oracle®, and Microsoft® SQL

Server™, including support for all spatial types

Spatial Data Formats including translators; direct read and data access via SQL, OLE COM, and XML (e.g., GML); Web services; published APIs; OGC Simple Features; CAD data; and other GIS formats.

Network Protocols such as TCP/IP, HTTP, and HTTPS

Developer Environments including VB, C++, Visual

Studio® .NET, and Java™ (J2ME, J2SE, J2EE, ASP/JSP)

Handheld Devices, including Windows CE and Pocket PC,

within the 802.11 standard

Solutions from organizations such as Autodesk, Bentley,

Intergraph, Leica, MapInfo, and Trimble

Enterprise Applications such as SAS, IBM DB2, Oracle,

SAP™, IBI, and FileNET

Web Services such as XML, SOAP, UDDI, and WSDL;

OGC specifi cations such as WFS, WMS, and GML;

and application servers such as Oracle and WebSphere®

More than 160,000 organizations and 1,000,000 users

demonstrate ESRI’s commitment to interoperability. To learn

more, visit www.esri.com/interoperability.

Copyright © 2005 ESRI. All rights reserved. The ESRI globe logo, ESRI, ArcGIS, the ArcGIS logo, ArcMap, ArcInfo, ArcGlobe, www.esri.com, and @esri.com are trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of ESRI in the United States, the European Community, or certain other jurisdic-tions. Other companies and products mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective trademark owners.

Engineered for Interoperability

In the United States: 1-888-621-2845.

Outside the United States: 909-793-2853, ext. 1-1235.

Or visit www.esri.com/international to find your local distributor.

Use CAD data and more than 70 other file types without conversion.

Use standards-based services to add GIS capabilities to your Web site.

Integrate your GIS with other information systems such as SAP.

Manage your vector and raster data in a single, open, and integrated spatial data warehouse.

G21707_GIS-Dev-INDIA_Sept06.indd1 1 7/31/06 10:20:48 AM

22 G I S D E V E L O P M E N T - M I D D L E E A S T N O V E M B E R - D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 6

Decreasing Water Levelsin Egypt's Toshka LakesWhen: March 2001 - December 2005

Where: Egypt

What: This pair of images documentsrecent drops in water levels in the ToshkaLakes region of Egypt. The Toshka Lakesand the New Valley surrounding the lakesconstitute a major Egyptian project toclaim a huge area of desert for agricultureand industry by diverting Nile River waterfrom Lake Nasser. The initial floodingoccurred in the late 1990s, when Lake Nass-er water levels were at an all-time high.The flooded regions of the Toshka Lakeswest of Lake Nasser have decreased greatlyover the years, exposing the former dunefields (dunes appear as islands in the lakeand along the shoreline of the top image),and leaving a "bath-tub ring" of wetlands(dark region) surrounding the lake shore-lines. As both the drought and develop-ment continue, this region of Egypt is sureto change.

Tarbela Dam, Indus River Basin, PakistanWhen: September 6, 2002

Where: Tarbela Dam, North-West of Islamabad

What: The Indus River basin extends from theHimalaya Mountains that form the northeasternboundary of Pakistan to the alluvial plains of Sindhnear the Arabian Sea coastline. With a volume of142,000,000 cubic meters, the Tarbela Dam is thelargest earth and rock fill dam in the world and stands147 meters above the Indus riverbed.

Tarbela Dam is part of the Indus Basin Project,designed primarily for water storage rather than pow-er generation, the dam was completed in 1977.Whilethe dam has fulfilled its purpose in storing water foragricultural use in Pakistan, there have been environ-mental consequences to the Indus river delta. Reduc-tion of seasonal flooding and reduced water flows tothe delta has decreased mangrove stands and theabundance of some fish species.

IMAGE WATCH

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GeographicalInformation

System (GIS) and GlobalPositioning System (GPS)technologies are expandingtheir traditional applicationsto embrace a stream of con-sumer-focused, location-based applications..

A fantastic challenge for science is tounderstand the human entailments ofgloba

23G I S D E V E L O P M E N T - M I D D L E E A S TN O V E M B E R - D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 6

Beirut, Lebanon byDigital GlobeWhen: July 22, 2006

Why: Digital Globe has released a60-centimeter (2-foot) high-resolu-tion QuickBird satellite image featuring damage to the southernneighborhood of Harat Hurayk,Lebanon. The imagery has beenselected from the DigitalGlobeImageLibrary. It has been resampled from 11-bit to 8-bit, and compressed into JPEG formatfor on-screen viewing.

Lebanon - PopulationsituationWhen: 01 August, 2006

Where: Lebanon

Why: Population situation in thewar affected areas due to LebanonCrisis, is provided by United NationsOffice for the Coordination ofHumanitarian Affairs - Relief Web.It is estimated that 20-25% of thepopulation in UNIFIL's (UnitedNation Interim Forces) Area of Oper-ation continues to remain, with therest having fled. UNDP (UnitedNations Development Program)reported that an estimated 30,000people started to independentlyvacate the conflict area in southernLebanon and about 10,000 reachedSidon (raising the total to about120,000) and 300 to Tyre (raising thetotal to 31,000) over the past twodays, while others proceeded toBeirut and Rashaya.

Middle East from International Space StationWhen: 21 July 2001

Where: International Space station passing over Mid-dle East

What: Images from the International Space Station(ISS).Back dropped over a wide scene of topography inthe Middle East, when ISS passes over the PersianGulf. The photograph was taken with a 70mm handheldcamera during a fly-around inspection by the SpaceShuttle Atlantis not long after the two spacecraft sepa-rated. Prominent on the starboard side of the outpostis the Quest airlock and Canadarm2.

Kassala airport,SudanWhen: April 28, 2006

Where: Southern Sudan

What: This image from the Israeli spysatellite Eros B, and made available by theIsraeli company ImageSat InternationalNV, on Sunday April 30, 2006, one of thefirst high-quality images reported to showthe Kassala airport in southern Sudan. TheEros B was launched from Russia and willremain in orbit for up to 6-years.

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24

Acity is usually the centre ofeducation, trade, industry, cul-

tural life, government, etc. It offers a varietyof opportunities, which always has attractedpeople.

The increase in population or public needs inevitably leads toincrease in both complexity of tasks that have to be plannedand the information that has to be processed. One of such com-plex task is digging the ground safely, without any disruptionsto utility services. This application is primarily developed,according to the needs of city Madinah. Al Madinah AlMunawarah also known as "City of Light" is second holiest cityin the history of Islam attracting in numerous people as tourists& pilgrimage from the world throughout the year.

Due to increase in demand the city is continuously expandingresults in designing of new utility elements.

The study area in planning affairs requires Georeferencedinformation while digging any site. In order to look after the

safety of utility elements already passing under the digging siteand to ensure the future planning of network. It is necessary tocommunicate with all utility departments before digging the site.

In the earlier days, any digging site had to be mapped on paperand get approval from each utility department. This procedurewas not only time consuming but also insecure. It has lot of dis-advantages as compared to current online digging system.

Developments in both communications and computer haveopened up new horizons to deal with such complex issues. Visu-alizations on web electronic market is considered as a newinformation revolution and tremendous amount of money andmanpower have been invested in web based commerce sys-tems. Integration of such technologies with GIS has resulted inthe development new applications, the current developed sys-tem called Digging Information System can be held as an exam-ple.

The application has two major divisions based on access toapplication i.e. access by Internet and access by Intranet. Thereare about six utility departments (can be called external depart-ments) that access this application through Internet. The Inter-net system works on Client/Server concept that involves split-ting the application into tasks between server and client. Thisapplication has three components a Client, a Server and a Net-

WEB GIS

G I S D E V E L O P M E N T - M I D D L E E A S T N O V E M B E R - D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 6

WALID KHALF SAYEED BARAKAT / MOHAMMED ABDUL MANNAN

DIGGING INFORMATION SYSTEM

The paper describes a web based GIS application used to share crucial infoemation amongdifferent utility departments required for carrying out their digging operations.

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work (Hall 1994). This application holds acolumn for seventh department called asAmana. Amana department is the repre-sentative of other six departments (sayinternal departments), which works onIntranet.

The above system starts with login pageand to authenticate users and their roles.Basically there are two types of rolesplayed in action. One is contractor whoinitiates the new dig- order for a utilitypurpose and the other is Departmentwhich approves or rejects the order.

Initially every new dig-order will be indormant stage, wherein all departmentscannot see the order in the list of theirpending orders except the representativedepartment or owner department. Dor-mant orders are made active by the repre-sentative utility department after check-ing some validity conditions like contrac-tor doesn't hold any old penalties, diggingpath is rightly coordinated on ground, etc.Dormant orders are made active with afunction called 'ShowToAll' available onapplication, Once the order is madeactive, it will be populated to all screens.All departments are subject to give theirdecision within 3 working days for thisactive order, which they can see in theirlist of pending orders.

Departments entitled to give their deci-sion can use the supportive functions onapplication like viewing the digging pathon Map with applicable spatial layers andquickbird image as background, orderattributes and its coordinates on newdynamic pages, printable format of orderwith its location on map and importantdetails etc.

The details of the order are hyperlinkedon dynamic pages. Moreover the decisionon each order by each department canalso be viewed.

All the external six departments givetheir decisions through Internet but thedecision from seventh department(Amana) is result of second part of appli-cation called "Internal Application",

which is accessedthrough Intranet,and is developedwith Oracle formand MapBasic pro-gramming. Sixinternal depart-ments use this partand dependingupon their deci-sions Amana giveits decision. If anyof six internaldepartments rejectthe order thenAmana concludesits decision asrejection on exter-nal application(accessible thoughInternet). Thedepartment'snames and reasonsfor their rejectioncan be viewed byexternal depart-ments on hyperlinked page in column listof Amana department.

TOOLSDigging Information System has two divisions working on common Oracle database, they are external andinternal.

The External part (Internet application)can be divided into two parts they areMapping and Transaction part. MappingPart has been programmed using MapXcomponents of MapXtreme 3.0. The Spa-tial layers are available as Tab (*.Tab) orWorkspace (*.wor), which are then con-verted into Geoset (*.gst).

Transaction part holds complete busi-ness logic written in Visual Basic 6.0 andconverted into dll (as Com object). Theobject performs communication withdatabase in Oracle for data manipulationlike creating, editing, adding, deletingrecords etc.

DEPARTMENTS AND THEIRDECISIONSDecision to any digging project is givenby 14 active departments. Seven of themare called Internal departments as theyare located inside the Madinah Muncipal-ity. They are Study & Supervision, Opera-tion & Maintenance, Gardening, Valley &flowage, Execution & Development, andBaladiyat Subsidiary. The above six inter-nal departments have been divided onthe based of their relation and theirdependency on Madinah municipality.

The other seven are called ExternalDepartments, which require internet toaccess the Digging System, they areWater, Electricity, Telecom, Traffic, Trans-port and Civil Defence. Since the internaldepartment are local to Madinah Munici-pality, an Intranet based application isdeveloped to carry out the process, whichis called as Internal System. For externaldepartments an Internet based applica-


Fig. 1 Regulations of each department

Fig. 2 New order form

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tion is developed called as External Sys-tem.

Both the systems have one commondatabase. If any one of the 14 depart-ments rejects the dig order then order ismeant to be rejected.

The combined decision from internaldepartments is stored in a single depart-ment file called Amana and is represent-ed in External website.

Therefore, the external department willbe able to view the decision from internalsystem as well as from the other externaldepartments on the Digging InformationSystem with internet access. This makesthe license issuing authority to view thedecisions from all departments and theirstatus at the same time for each andevery order.

NEW ORDER This is a secured application as users withonly valid login identities can access it.Applications hold different privileges forcontractors and for users from eachdepartment. There are different func-tionalities which a user is privileged toaccess like creating new dig order, view-

ing own orders,viewing otherdepartmentorders, approvingor rejecting anorder etc.

For every newdigging project tobe carried out forany utility pur-pose, a contractorshall supply thedetails on fields inNew-Order formto concerned utili-ty departmentthrough theonline system.The details of theorder are saved inOracle database

and can be accessed by both the external(internet) and internal (intranet) parts ofdigging application, as they both sharethe database.

A new dig-order contains fields like con-tractor name, order number, depth,width, date, stage, coordinates of the dig-ging path etc. Coordinates shall be sub-mitted (simply paste in the text area ofNew-Order form) in a unique format asshown below. X and Y are the projectedcoordinates on ground and explanationfor section is followed.

Section and Stages

Coordinates which are submitted onlinehas x, y and section Here, change of sec-tion represents the change in the conti-nuity of line. Points of the same sectionnumber are connected to each other butnext point having different section num-ber is considered as new first point and

will connect all those points having thesame section number. Hence any discon-tinuity or turning in the digging path canbe mapped easily. Another important fac-tor to be considered is that any single dig-ging project can have multiple stages.Each stage could differ with its location ofdigging path, geometry and start date,which means same order number canhave multiple digging stages. So, everynew order is created using three primarykeys they are order number, date andstage.

SUPPORTING FUNCTIONALI-TIES OF ONLINE SYSTEM:

Dig order check by owner departmentUtility department will then fill the orderdetails from the Online Digging system.Once the order is submitted, it can beviewed in the list of orders called fromfunction 'ViewMyOrders'. But this neworder will not be shown to other depart-ments since it will be in test status. Under'test' status, the order is private to ownerdepartment and also represented with atest symbol. Test status is meant for thedepartment to check the validity of orderdetails, whether contractor owes anypenalty or examine it on map with func-tion 'ShowOrderOnMap' and get con-firmed to send it into the cycle where allother departments will give their deci-sion to approve or reject. The ownerdepartment then clicks on function 'ShowTo All Depts', which then changes its sta-tus as well as symbol from Test to Pend-ing. Pending symbol is shown in the col-umn for other departments and in row ofthat particular order number.

This Function plays an important role indecision-making as it involves map. Nosooner than a new dig-order is submittedonline, other department would be ableto view the details of that order in textformat and on map as shown in the figure 3 and 4.


Fig. 3 Dig order check by owner department

Fig. 4 Display order on map

Section X Y

1 x1 y1

1 x2 y2

2 x3 y3

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Co-ordinates of the order are read fromthe table in order database and usingMapx, a line of red color and thick widthis created on temp layer and overlayed onother spatial layers.

Symbolic representation for statusof the order

Test Status- This Symbol for test sta-tus or when the order is in dormant stageand this order not yet Approved or sendinto the cycle system by the OwnerDepartment who is Login.

Pending- For every order waiting fordecision from other departments are inpending status represented by the abovesymbol

Approved- This Symbols representfor approval from the Concerned Depart-ment who gave the decision.

Reject- When a Department rejectson order owned by the department, heshall then necessarily specify the reasonfor rejection. This Symbol is hyperlinkedto ASP page, which display or show thespecified rejection from oracle database.

Approved (Red)- Every new Order inthe cycle has a Limited life time of 3Working days within this duration anydepartment fails to give his decision toorder belonging to other Departments, itwill be then implicity accepted represent-ed by Red Symbol above.

Owner- This symbol in the row ofeach particular order no. stands for ownerdepartment.

This function basically shows all theorders, which are owned by other depart-ments. And all the orders of the ownerdepartment will be displayed in'showmyorders' window. The windowconsists of columns for departments andorder number and each row displays theorder number and status from each

department underthe column. Eachdisplay of ordershow who is own-er, and then deci-sion from otherdepartments insymbolic represen-tation

Show otherordersThis Function will open the dynamicpage, displaying all dig orders belongingto other utility departments. The ordersin this page are waiting or pending forthe decision (Approval or Reject) from thedepartment who is logged in. This Win-dow also contains commands to approveor reject any dig-Order. The user shallselect the dig order from the list and clickson reject command there after a newdecision will open as shown in Fig.5 con-taining fields for details of rejection oracception. Coordinates of each order aresaved in oracle database with its ordernumber. These coordinates are drawn ona Temp layer created using MapXtremeand overlay on other spatial layers withred and thick line width. Followed byzoom to order where user can zoom in orzoom out or pan or zoom to full extent.

CONCLUSIONSDigging Information Systems has beenimplemented successfully and found tobe very instrumental in solving problemsfaced due to a lot of paper work. It savestime, and provides security and assur-ance. Improvements can be made infuture like:

Report creation for each department todisplay graph containing informationsuch as number of accepted orders, num-bers of pending orders.

Automatic SMS or email facility to pro-vide communication among all thedepartments.

Improvements in the mapping part

with commands to spatial queries andthematic query on digging orders.

Introducing VRML (Virtual Reality Mod-elling Language) for 3D Modelling of digorder path in order to understand thedepth information more precisely.

References from websites:http://extranet.mapinfo.com/support/documentation/manuals.cfm#mapx

http://extranet.mapinfo.com/sup-port/documentation/manuals.cfm#mapxtrement

References from Other Literature:

Bodum, L., I. Afman and J. Smith, 1998.Spatial planning moves out of the flat-lands, in: Proceedings of AGILE, Enschede,The Netherlands.

Tempfli, K., 1998. Urban 3D topologicdata and texture by digital photogram-metry, in:Proceeding of ISPRS, March-April, Tempa, Florida, USA, CD-ROM.

Hall, Carl - L. 1994 Technical Foundationof Client/Server Systems. Newyork : JohnWiley and Sons, inc.

27N O V E M B E R - D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 6 G I S @ D E V E L O P M E N T - M I D D L E E A S T

Walid Khalf Sayeed BarakatDept of Information Technology, Medina Municipality, Al Medina AlMunawara

[email protected]

Mohammed Abdul MannanDept of Information Technology,Medina Municipality, Al MedinaAl [email protected]

Fig. 5 Display other orders

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28

The socio-economic developmentof any country is based on land

and water resources. Due to increase in pop-ulation, these resources are over stretchedoften leading to resource depletion.

There is evidence to show that a majority of world over landresources is under 0 and is undergoing degradation at an unac-ceptable rate (Kharin et al 1999, Harahsheh 2001) A recentresearch study on Middle East desertification shows the gravityof land degradation problems in all levels. It concluded that thewhole of Middle East is subject to degradation, mainly by vege-tation degradation process, where 40% of study area is severelyaffected by vegetation degradation, followed by soil degrada-tion process (27% severe wind erosion). Without doubt theseresults show the gravity of land degradation problem in thestudy area (Harahsheh, 2001). There is therefore need to pru-

dently manage these delicate resources. The situation in DubaiEmirates (UAE) is no different. Moreover, Dubai being located inan arid desert belt, it is highly sensitive to a number of criticalenvironmental issues. Soil is one such important issue, as it is anon-renewable natural resource.

Soil is in-fact at the heart of terrestrial ecology and is vital toour existence. Information on soils with regard to their nature,extent and spatial distribution along with their potential andlimitations is required for a variety of uses, namely agriculturaldevelopment, engineering, sanitary, recreation, aesthetic, etc. Inaddition, such information is also required for modeling andenvironmental impact analysis. Therefore, it is imperative thatwe manage and conserve soils to meet the growing need forfood, fodder, fiber and fuel. For this purpose, we must have anin-depth knowledge about different soils, their morphology,characterization, behaviour, kind and degree of problem andtheir extent and distribution on the landscape.

Dubai municipality has taken the initiative to use the remotesensing technology for thematic mapping of UAE area usingsatellite imagery including soil mapping. Integration of themat-ic maps, soil and others are used for better and optimal utiliza-tion of various land and water resources and can be used formany applications like demarcation of potential ground waterzone and for site selection processes etc.

NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT


HUSSEIN HARAHSHEH, MOHAMED ELIAS, ABDULAZIM ELNIWEIRI,MOHAMED MASHROUM, YOUSEF MARZOUQI, EMAN AL KHATIB,B.R.M. RAO, M.A. FYZEE

SOIL THEMATIC GEO DATABASEfor Dubai Emirate

The paper discusses a soil mapping project of Dubai Emirat using R.S and GIS,and themethodology followed.

28-31.qxp 11/9/2006 3:52 PM Page 28

OBJECTIVEThe objective of this study is to generatethematic geodatabase information onsoil resources of UAE.

The soil map of Dubai and Hatta wasprepared at 1: 25,000 scale using the Indi-an Remote sensing Satellite (IRS-ID) Lin-ear Imaging Self Scanning Sensor (LISS IV)data. The soils of the study area were clas-sified as per USDA (2003) up to soil seriesand their association level.

STUDY AREAThe project area covers the UAE, an areaof 4000 sq km (Figure1).

The overall climate of the Emirates issubtropical, warm and arid. Air tempera-tures range between 350 to 500 C fromMay to October during the middle of theday and between 200 to 350 at mid-dayduring the winter months.

The average annual rainfall of the Emi-rate which falls mostly during wintermonths is about 100 mm. The rainfall,however, is very erratic and variesextremely both from year to year andplace to place.

Some moisture also condenses in theform of fog and dew, especially in thecoastal belts. Strong winds and sandstorms are also of common occurrencethroughout the Emirate. They are espe-cially more frequent and severe duringsummer months. Sand dunes are thedominant feature of the landscape overmost of the Emirate.

INPUT DATAIn the presentstudy for generat-ing base lineinformation onsoil resources ofDubai and Hattaarea the IndianRemote sensingSatellite (IRS-ID)Linear ImagingSelf Scanning Sen-sor (LISS-III & LISSIV) data havebeen used. Ortho-rectified IKONOSdata is providedby Dubai Munici-pality for Geo-ref-erencing of IRS -P6, LISS IV dataBesides the satel-lite data the basemaps prepared by the project team, pub-lished soil maps, topographic maps, cli-matic data etc. are also collected and usedas collateral data.

METHODOLOGYEssentially soil survey is a study andmapping of soils in the field. It is the sys-tematic examination, description, classi-fication and mapping of soils of an areaand it comprises of a group of interlinkedoperations involving

• Preliminary visual interpretation of satel-lite data

• Fieldwork to study important character-istics of soils and associated land charac-teristics such as landform, natural vegeta-tion, slope etc.

• Laboratory analysis to support and sup-plement the field observations.

• Correlation and classification of soilsinto defined taxonomic units.

• Mapping of soils - that is establishingand drawing soil boundaries of differentkinds of soils on standard geographicalbase map.The over all methodology for mapping

the soils is shown in Figure 3.

PRELIMINARY VISUAL INTERPRETATIONThe steps involved in pre-field interpreta-tion is monoscopic visual interpretationof Indian Remote Sensing Satellite (IRS)ID LISS-III and IRS P6 LISS IV data at 1:25,000 scale based on the standardremote sensing techniques using imagecharacteristics such as tone, texture, pat-tern, shape, size, association etc. in con-junction with the collateral informationavailable in the form of published mapsand reports. A tentative interpretationkey in terms of lithology, physiography,land use/land cover, erosion/salinity/alkalinity hazards and image elementswas developed.

FIELD WORKA field visit was undertaken in Dubai andHatta study areas, to study importantcharacteristics of soils and associatedland features for mapping soils.

The first step in soil survey begins withgeneral fact finding exercise through areconnaissance of the area, so a prelimi-


Fig. 1 Study Area

The soil map of Dubaiand Hatta was preparedat 1: 25,000scale

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nary study on the landform, geology, cli-mate and vegetation of the study areawas undertaken. For carrying out thefieldwork the scientists traversed thestudy area with a base map, satelliteimagery for the first three days. Duringthe traverse, the scientists noted the vari-ations in landforms and associated soils.The ground features were also correlatedwith the image features.

Soil profile studies and sample collectionThe detailed soil-site study was undertak-en in each soil-mapping unit by generaltraversing and by collecting surface soil,minipit and soil profile observations atintervals depending on soil variability.The soil profiles/pedons (A vertical cutfrom the surface down to the hard rockfrom which the soil is formed gives thesoil profile and in the profile several suc-cessive characteristic layers can be identi-fied. A profile pit with exposed verticalface of approximately 1 meter across toan appropriate depth (nearly 1 m) was

satisfactory for most soils. Each layer(horizons) was studied for various mor-phological features such as colour, tex-ture, structure, consistency etc. The fre-quent profile sampling enabled to deter-mine the depth of various horizons andalso the horizons of gains (alluvial) andlosses (eluvial). Sometimes, by merelylooking at the surface soil and at othertimes, by rubbing the surface soilbetween thumb and fingers (to deter-mine soil texture) reflects soil properties.

A detailed description of each profilewas noted down on the pro-forma. Thepro-forma includes many parameters,which were collected. This includes, Loca-tion of the soil profile in terms of latitudeand longitude, Physiographic unit, Parentmaterial / Geology, Slope (%),Soil charac-teristics, Soil depth, Soil texture, Consis-tency and much more. Also Efferves-cence test was performed by squirting10% HCl on the soil to determine the freecarbonates.

In Dubai and Hatta area 129 soil profileswere excavated and large number of

observations were also taken.In total 333 soil samples werecollected.

LABORATORY ANALYSIS

Physical & Chemical PropertiesParticle Size Analysis - was car-ried out by the InternationalPipette Method (Piper, 1966)using Sodium Hexametaphos-phate as a dispersing agent.The textural class was deter-mined using the USDA textur-al triangle. Chemical analysisincluding, Soil Reaction (pH),Electrical conductivity (EC),Organic Carbon (OC), CalciumCarbonate (CaCO3) and CationExchange Capacity (CEC).

POST FIELD INTERPRETATIONPreliminary interpreted soil boundariesfrom IRS-P6 were modified using fieldinformation and final thematic detailswere transferred on to the base map.Finally the soils were classified in thelight of soil morphology features, soilphysical and chemical properties asdescribed in soil survey procedure (USDA,2003). Thus, the landscape map was con-verted into soil escape map in terms ofsoil series and / associations thereof.Based on the variations in the soil andsite characteristics 26 soil series havebeen identified in Dubai area and 13 seriesin Hatta area.

DESCRIPTION OF SOILS OF DUBAIThe soils are generally coarse, sandy,highly calcareous and undeveloped. Theyare deficient in organic matter. Soils inthe coastal belt and low-lying areas anddepressions are highly saline. The soils inthe interior of the desert are either salineor sodic. The major Landscapes identified


Fig. 2 Soil Map - Dubai (Satellite Imagery and Thematic Mapping Project)

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in the study area are coastal plain, loweraeolian plain and upper aeolian plain.These major landscape units were furthersubdivided into different physiographicunits such as beach, tidal flats/ mudflats,salt flats ( young and old) and dunes overthe coastal plain The lower aelion plainhas low sand dunes, longitudinal dunes,interdunal flat areas ( sandy , saline &sodic ) ,dunal complex areas and residualhills and linear ridge.

The upper aelion plain has dunal com-plex, interdunal flats (Sandy and sodic)low sand dunes. The soil map of Dubai isshown in Figure 2.

In Hatta area the major Physiographyunits identified are structural valleyregion, piedmont area, residual hills,denudational hills ( Periodite/ dunite/gabbro),denudational hills ( limestone/dolomite/marble) and structural hills(periodite/ dunite / gabbrointerbedded),

The soil temperature regime of Dubaiand Hatta is hyperthermic, which can beinferred from the climatic data of Dubai.The soil moisture regime is aridic / Torric.In general all the soils of Dubai are cal-careous. As the study area falls under aridregion the soils occurring in these areaswill normally have an aridic (torric) mois-ture regime. On analysis of all the soilsamples collected during the groundtruth, it can be inferred that all the soils ofDubai and Hatta area are calcareous. Theother features of the soils occurring in thestudy area are also discussed separately.

LAND CAPABILITYSoil resources maps, as mentioned earlier,provide information on location, spatialextent and physico- chemical characteris-tics of soils.

Land capability classification is an inter-pretive grouping of soils mainly based on1) the inherent soil characteristics ii)external land features and iii) environ-mental factors that limit the uses of land.Scientific soil surveys provide informa-tion on the first two aspects. Effective soil

depth, soil texture, permeability of subsoil and sub-stratum, available moisturecapacity, reaction, inherent fertility,organic matter content, salinity and/ sod-icity are some of the important inherentsoil characteristics. Amongst importantland features are natural surfacedrainage, slope, erosion, wetness, andgravelliness. Besides, the aforesaid fac-tors, climate does play a very significantrole in deciding the potential of a givenpiece of land for sustainable develop-ment. In the land capability classificationthere are eight classes. Classes I, II and IIIinclude the land suited for regular culti-vation. Class IV land is fairly good for cul-tivation but its safe use for cropping isvery limited by natural features such asslope, erosion, unfavourable soil charac-teristics and adverse climate. Classes V,

VI, VII are not suited for any cultivationbut may be used for grazing or forestry,according to adaptability. Class VIII landis suited only for wildlife or recreation.


Hussein HarahshehGlobal Scan Technollogies,Dubai, UAE

[email protected]

Mohamed EliasGlobal Scan Technollogies,Dubai, UAE

*AbdulAzim Elniweiri,Mohamed Mashroum,Yousef Marzouqi, Eman AlKhatib*Dubai Municipality, Dubai,UAE

**B.R.M. Rao, M.A. Fyzee

**National Remote SensingAgency (Dept. of Space, Govt. of India), Hyderabad, India

PRELIMINARY VISUAL SATELLITE DATA

PRELIMINARY VISUAL INTERPRETATION

SOIL PROFILE STUDY

SOIL SAMPLE COLLECTION

GROUND TRUTH COLLECTION

SOIL CHARACTERISATION & CLASSIFICATION

FINALIZATION OF THEMATIC MAP

SOIL MAP

SOIL SAMPLE ANALYSIS

Methodology for mapping soils

DIGITAL DATA BASE GENERATION

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32

Nowadays, individuals, universities,organizations and companies use

the Web as a main infrastructure to publishspatial information, offer or consume GISservices and in some rare cases to conduct acomplicated GIS processing.

Due to the high potential of Internet and Web, many differentWeb mapping software packages have been provided by differ-ent GIS vendors. But each Web mapping software, utilize differ-ent technologies, which are not able to interact and interoperatewith each other directly. For this reason, service on a particularGIS server can only be accessed by its own clients and otherclients (clients of other GIS servers) cannot access services ofthat server.

On the other hand, application-integration is not supportedwith current Web mapping software. Today, GIS developerscan't combine specific services from different Web mappingsoftware, and use them as building block of an integrated GISapplication. These problems arise because of this fact that, Inter-

net-based applications need to be able to interact with otherInternet-based applications as easily as interactions betweenWeb browsers and Web servers. But the essentially text-basedWeb does not support software interaction very well.

A more efficient method is needed to allow applications, inter-act directly with other applications to automatically and with-out human intervention, executing instructions that would oth-erwise have to be entered manually through Web browser(Cerami 2002). But the main barrier in front of application-to-application interactions is the interoperability. The followingsection will describe spatial interoperability and differentaspects and resources of this problem.

SPATIAL INTEROPERABILITYThe most important problem associated with GIS systems isnon-Interoperability of these systems. Based on OGC's referencemodel (OGC 2003) interoperability refers to "capability to com-municate, execute programs, or transfer data among variousfunctional units in a manner that requires the user to have littleor no knowledge of the unique characteristics of those units".

According to OGC 2004 and the mentioned definition, fivesources for spatial non-interoperability could be identified:

• Different types of geoprocessing systems (Vector, Raster, CAD,etc. ) produce very different types of data.

• Different vendors' geoprocessing systems use internal data for-

WEB GIS


POURIA AMIRIAN, ALI MANSURIAN

Potential of Using Web Services in Distributed GIS Applications

This paper intends to evaluate the key problems associated with present GIS services i.enon interoperability, and discusses how web services can overcome the same.

32-35.qxp 11/9/2006 3:54 PM Page 32

mats and produce data in formats that aredifferent and in most cases proprietary.

• Different vendors' systems use propri-etary software access methods with pro-prietary interfaces that restrict opportuni-ties for network inter-process communi-cation between systems.

• Different data producers, even if usingthe same type of system from the samevendor, do not, name spatial features inthe same way.

• Different data producers, if they providemetadata, do not, structure their metadatain standard schemas that enable effectivemetadata searches.

In this list the items one, two and threeare the causes of technical non-interoper-ability and items number four and fiveare the causes of semantic non-interoper-ability. As GIS community believes, solu-tion for semantic non-interoperability isconsensus development of interoperablestandards and specifications.

In this context, OGC plays a major roleby setting the Industry standards for GISservices. Generally the main goal of OGCis to promote the widespread use of inter-operable GIS services throughout theinformation infrastructure.

In GIS community solutions for over-coming technical non-interoperabilityhave changed with the development ofnew technologies in IT world. In IT world,the best solution for providing interoper-ability among heterogeneous systems indistributed, decentralized environmentsare Web services technologies (Volter etal 2005).

Following sections will briefly introducethe concepts of Web services and GIS Webservice as well as how Web services canovercome the mentioned problem.

Service Oriented Architecture and Webservices Technologies

The Web as it exists today is intendedfor human consumption. Consequently,data is presented in a form that ishuman-readable, but this form of repre-sentation is error prone and difficult forapplications to examine, extract and useboth, automatically and programmatical-ly. So there is a need for application-to-

application com-munication andthis is the idea ofapplication-centricWeb rather thanhuman-centricWeb (The Web as itworks today).

An application-centric Web is notnew concept(Newcomer 2002).For many years,developers andprogrammers havecreated and used Common gate Interface(CGI) and CGI extension programs (suchas Java servlets modules, Active ServerPage (ASP), Jave Server Page (JSP) andCold Fusion Web applications and so on)for communicating between differentapplications. But most of these systemswere used as a part of tightly coupledplatform and as a result they can't offerservice to other business solutions.

Promising technology for providingcross platform application-to-applicationcommunication is Web services technolo-gies. In fact, Web services are implemen-tation of a conceptual architecture, whichis called Service Oriented Architecture(SOA). SOA is a conceptual architecturefor implementing

• Loosely Coupled

• Self-Describing

• Standard-based

• Dynamic discoverable

Services (Newcomer and Lomow, 2005).Also some IT experts state that SOA is

the next generation of Software imple-mentation which is emerged after dis-tributed technologies paradigm (Marksand Werrell, 2003).

In SOA, the central elements are servic-es. Service is a location on the networkthat has a machine-readable descriptionof the messages it receives and returns.

As illustrated in Figure 1, a SOA consists

of three primary roles and three primarytasks. Service provider, service requesterand service broker are distributed compu-tational Nodes on the network. Serviceprovider publishes its own service withservice broker. Service requester uses theservice broker to find desirable servicesand then binds to a service provider toinvoke the service.

The actual implementation of SOAusing open, standard and widely usedprotocols and technologies is called Webservices (Newcomer and Lomow 2005).

Web services are about delivering dis-tributed applications via programmableURLs (Amirian and Mansurian 2006).Web services are eXtensibe Markup Lan-guage (XML) applications mapped to pro-grams, objects, or databases or to compre-hensive business functions (Newcomer2002). Using an XML document in theform of a message, a program sends arequest to a Web service across the net-work, and optionally receives a reply alsoin the form of an XML document.

Web services are based on open stan-dards, so they can provide technical inter-operability in network environmentssuch as Web. These brand new technolo-gies can be created by using any softwareplatform, operating system, program-ming language and object model. Moreprecisely, Web Services are loosely cou-pled, self-describing services that are


Fig. 1 Major components of Service Oriented Architecture

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accessed programmatically across a dis-tributed network, and exchange datausing vendor, platform, and languageneutral protocols (Marks and Werrell,2003).

Web services are implemented by usinga collection of standards. These stan-dards, when considered together, formwhat is widely referred to as the "Webservices stack.

According to Marks and Werrell (2003),Figure 2 illustrates the seven distinct lay-ers of the Web services stack, whichshould be read from bottom to top.

As illustrated, these 7 layers are groupedinto three distinct levels - each level indi-cates a level of maturity for the layers itcontains.

The enabling standards level containstwo layers: the network transport proto-cols and meta-language. The layers with-in the enabling standards level containwell-defined and accepted standards andprotocols that are widely used in Internetand Web such as HTTP and XML.

The evolving standards level containslayers for SOAP , WSDL , and UDDI . Collec-tively, these layers form the standards forimplementation of Web services.

SOAP is a lightweight, XML-based pro-tocol for exchanging information indecentralized, distributed environments.SOAP is used for messaging among vari-ous SOA's components in a Web servicesplatform. SOAP is platform independent

and also it can beused with variousNetwork Trans-port protocolssuch as FTP , HTTP,HTTPS, HTTP-R,and BEEP. WSDL isxml-based specifi-cation for describethe capabilities ofa service in a stan-dard and extensi-ble manner. UDDIis a set of specifi-

cations and APIs for registering, findingand discovering services.

As illustrated in Figure 3, these layersestablish an explicit mapping betweenelements of SOA as a conceptual andTechnology independent architectureand Web services as specific collection ofstandards, protocols and technologies.

In this case, service provider publish itsown service description using WSDL,then Requester take advantage of searchAPI's of UDDI to find appropriate servicesand finally, service requester bind to theservice provider using SOAP.

The last level of standards or emergingstandards level has the least well-definedcapabilities. This level represents pro-posed standards for QOS and businessprocess flow which are promoted by indi-vidual vendors such as Microsoft, IBM.

In the context of Web services eachservice has three main parts: Servicedescription, Executable agent, and themapping layer between two (Figure 4).

The machine-readable description- thatis a WSDL document- contains networkaddress for the service, the operation itsupports and other needed informationfor consume the service.

The executable agent is responsible for implementing the functionality ofservices.

The description is separated from theexecution environment using a mappinglayer.

The mapping layer is often implement-ed using proxies and skeleton (Newcomerand Lomow, 2005). This layer is responsi-ble for accepting the message, transform-ing the XML data to and from the nativeformat of executable agent and finallydispatching the data to the executableagent.

On account of separation between exe-cutable environment and description ofservice or separation between semanticand functionality of services in the Webservice world, Web services can be creat-ed by using any software platform, oper-ating system, programming languageand object model. So it is not a difficulttask for a developer to bridge heteroge-neous computing platforms such as J2EE,CORBA and .NET.

Following section will describe how WScan resolve the problem of non-interoper-ability in GIS world.

Potential of Using Web Service Tech-nologies in Distributed GIS Applications

Web services are fundamentally newplatform. This platform provides looselycoupled, standard based, self describableand dynamic discoverable services. Webservices considered as the best long rangesolution for non-interoperability prob-lem. They provide unprecedented flexi-bility and extensibility when comparedwith other distributed architectures suchas Distributed Component Object Model(DCOM) and Common Object RequestBroker Architecture (CORBA). Precisely


Fig. 2 Web service Stack

Fig. 3 Mapping between SOA and Webservices technologies

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Web services technologies provide twomajor advantages over previous distrib-uted computing architectures (Newcom-er and Lomow 2005)

• Most existing distributed computingarchitectures include the communicationprotocol as part of their scope. In the oth-er words, they provide vendor specificaccess methods. With Web services thecommunication protocol is an open proto-col which is widely used over the Web(HTTP).

• In existing distributed computing archi-tectures, data types were specific to plat-forms, programming languages, middle-ware systems and DBMSs. Web servicesnicely resolve this problem by using uni-versal data type which is provided by XMLplatform.

Consequently this loosely coupledarchitecture provides a new and promis-ing solution for implementation of com-plex collaborative applications such as adistributed GIS services. In some ways,the integration of GIS and Web servicessimply means that GIS can be moreextensively implemented, and peoplewill be able to take mapping, data, andgeoprocessing services from manyservers and integrate them into a com-mon environment (ESRI 2003).

GIS Web services can be categorized asprocessing service and geodata service.The GIS processing services provide dif-ferent GIS functions and operators. TheGIS geodata services provide access to GISdata. On account of Peng and Tsou (2003),to increase data interoperability, a com-mon format of geospatial data could beprovided. GML (Geography Markup Lan-guage) could be such a common format.

GIS community can use SOAP as syn-chronous and asynchronous messagingprotocol for utilize processing services aswell as geodata services.

In GIS world for fully take advantage ofWeb service architecture, different GISservice providers must publish their serv-ices on the Internet and advertise itthrough public UDDI or a dedicated GISservice registry (which might be providedby collaboration of members of GIS com-

munity). At the other hand, GIS develop-ers can find and use one or more availableGIS Web Services to use as building blocksfor creating integrated GIS applicationsbased on user requirements. By integrat-ing various GIS Web services from differ-ent GIS servers and using them as build-ing blocks, GIS applications would becapable of access to user resources as wellas different GIS server resources.

In all paces of these interactions, XMLplays a major role. It can be used efficient-ly to exchange spatial data and invokingvarious GIS methods remotely throughSOAP. In addition according to Amirianand Mansurian (2006), other XML tech-nologies can be used to improve the qual-ity of GIS Web services:

• Using different namespaces and XMLschemas to support diverse object models,

• Applying XSL and related technologiesfor mapping different object models andalso graphical rendering of spatial data,

• Utilizing different technologies such asVML , SVG and X3D for 2D or 3D visu-alization of spatial data

As described in the previous section,Web services technologies provide theability to separate semantic and func-tionality of a service. As a result GIS Webservices would be implemented by usingany software platform, middleware sys-tem, programming language, thus het-erogeneous GIS Web services can be inte-grated seamlessly and dynamically.

All in all, Web services Technologies arethe main candidate for GIS application

integration and resolve the technicalnon-interoperability problem associatedwith current GIS software.

CONCLUSIONSince Web services are the foundation ofnew type of interaction- interoperableand open application to application com-munication- they provide an unprece-dented opportunity to overcome thetechnical non-interoperability problem inGIS world.

Meanwhile, there are lots of issues dueto immature nature of Web services to beresolved. In addition, considering thenature of spatial data and GIS, some morespecific issues are faced by GIS Web serv-ices such as authentication and authori-zation of GIS Web service users, high vol-ume of spatial data, methods of compres-sion and supporting the complicated GISworkflows that should be dealt with.

Finally design and development of adistributed GIS service based on serviceoriented architecture and Web servicesplatform is ongoing.


*Pouria [email protected]

*Ali [email protected]

*Faculty of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering, K. N. Toosi University ofTechnology, Vali-e-asr St., Mirdamad Cross,Tehran, Iran

Fig. 4 Major parts of a Service in Web services context

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36

Land and its resources have been thebasis of wealth. Humankind has gen-

erated much interest over several years todevelop suitable forms and rational methodsof administrating and managing land.

A multitude of emerging technologies has been created toenhance describing and valuating all land related resources. Thegeographical information systems denoted GIS aided to modernmanagement approaches contribute in setting up a core strate-gy that meets decision maker as well as user requirements. Thecurrent paper addresses the impact of implementing GIS appli-cations serving the society and leading to a homogeneous LandInformation System. It also discusses many challenges facingtheir use and their role in ensuring many potential benefits.

A wonder change towards Internet GIS The information technology is affecting our behaviour and pro-moting an astonishing change in the society. New technologiesare emerging such as Internet, which connects thousands of

LAND ADMINISTRATION/WEB GIS


EL-AYACHI MOHA

GIS AND INTERNET GIS TECHNOLOGIESImpact and challenges inLand administration

G I S D E V E L O P M E N T - M I D D L E E A S T

Among the various tools available for land uses and their evaluation, GIS ia a technology,which adds new dimention for its precise administration.

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telecommunication networks. In thescope of GIS, Internet is a powerful meansfacilitating the access, processing, anddissemination of geographical informa-tion and geographic knowledge. Theprogress of information technology hasdramatically influenced the developmentof GIS technology. A series of faster com-puters and storing devices are continu-ously appearing and changing the waywe deal with our complex problems. Therecent development of wired and wire-less data communication has made possi-ble GIS technologies to evolve from main-frame and stand alone desktop GIS to dis-tributed GIS [5]. Presently, users canaccess and operate GIS applications fromany location supporting web browsers.While the mainframe and stand alonedesktop GIS are centralized systemsbased on platforms incorporating soft-ware packages and data, Distributed GISare developed around an advanced net-working technology, which can enableconnecting a series of different systemsand platforms. Distributed GIS refers toGIS programmes running on the Internetcalled Internet GIS or on wireless net-working technologies called Mobile GIS.Recently, many organizations are experi-encing more distributed services throughgeographically dispersed networks andweb-based GIS to meet their specificrequirements. Then, Internet GIS is thebasic tool that permits developing anEnterprise GIS, which focuses on buildinga comprehensive infrastructure enablingto make a best way to take benefits ofmultiple companies' resources [4].

IMPACT OF GIS AND INTER-NET GIS ON DELIVERY OFKEY LAND ADMINISTRATION

Information Technology and geo-graphic knowledgeThe World Bank's 1998 report on worlddevelopment stated:" knowledge hasbecome perhaps the most important fac-

tor determining the standard of living ……Today's most technologically advancedeconomies are truly knowledge based".Knowledge is generally built upon infor-mation extracted from data and has thecharacteristics to add values to this infor-mation. Geographic information as a spe-cific information is obviously leading tobuild a knowledge dealing with spatialphenomena. The GIS technology has theability to gather general and specificinformation about the real world and todeliver useful solutions for society prob-lems. GIS involves various kinds ofknowledge based on scientific rules,sophisticated materials, and specific val-ues of land information to present appro-priate solutions with respect to severalobjectives. This permits to decision mak-ers to conceive new approaches of gov-erning effectively land resources regard-ing the existing legislature and laws.New services are developed and newinformation and business activities arefacilitated and improved.

GIS and Land Information Systems The GIS has been positively influenced bythe information technology progress andthe geographic knowledge development.Several GIS applications have been devel-oped dealing with many different data toenable spatial searching, overlay opera-tions, spatial analysis and modeling. Akind of GIS based applications is LandInformation Systems, which indicateevery system producing spatially refer-enced information on land referring toproperties and natural resources. LIS arecombining human and technicalresources, with a set of organizing proce-dures, to provide information in supportof management activities [1]. They areconcerned with detailed informationrecorded at the local level so they may bemapped at large scales. They serve thedecision-maker to develop and to up-grade the national trends for land man-agement. They have the benefits to serve

society on a long-term basis and on along-term return on investment. Theirultimate objective is to become a key ofland administration by considering bothstatic and dynamic aspects of land [2].Land administration has in its down-stream reliable mapping infrastructures,which come from cadastre and surveymapping, and in its upstream good man-agement, which is an operational processof implementing land policies in compre-hensive and sustainable ways [3].

Social and economical impacts ofInternet GIS technologiesWhile GIS technologies have the aim toenhance processing, analysis, and diffu-sion of geographic information, InternetGIS focuses on sharing geographic knowl-edge built up of a potential networkingtelecommunications.

The Internet GIS solution creates aninter-departmental cooperation and aninter-local coordination and ensures aninteroperable land information system.The availability of distributed land infor-mation permits to treat additional formsof social and cultural information. Themore relevant information we process fora particular environment, the more relia-bility and social confidence we obtain.The reliable land administration data willimprove land management, land owner-ship administration, land resourcesassessment, network infrastructure stud-ies, and transportation activities. Howev-


The InternetGIS solutionensures aninteroperableland informa-tion system.

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er, it is required to introduce the technol-ogy across different levels.

CHALLENGES OF GIS AND INTERNET

Capacity buildingRecently, the GIS technology evolves rap-idly to encompass different domains ofthe real world from the simplest applica-tions to manage a series of data for deter-mining some statistic results, to the hugeand complex systems serving to analyzeand make decisions. Critical efforts havebeen made to support and improve GISengineering goals and principles in termsof suitability, accessibility, reusability,and reliability of the adopted pragmaticsolutions.

Many researchers have discussed vari-ous solutions and concluded that to everyproblem are associated specific GIS solu-tions. Crucial works should be done tofurnish a suitable framework enabling todevelop land administration based GISand Internet GIS technologies. Thisframework incorporates various institu-tions dealing with positioning tech-niques such as geography, cartography,and geodesy, and development methodssuch as data modeling, design tech-niques, and software programming.Another challenge is the familiarizationwith the new solution, which encom-passes the development of a scheduleplan for advanced staff training in theweb, Internet knowledge, and network-ing security. Countries, especially devel-oping ones, face difficulties in developingskills and competences of the involvedstaff in land administration.

Institutional barriers The institutional barriers mean the issuesthat refer to organizations involved in alarge distributed Internet GIS solutionand the legal aspects that regulate andcarry out land administration. The insti-tutional arrangements concerning laws

and regulations should be handled andenhanced to provide a proof of success inmanaging land in an integrated system.The development of Internet GIS solutioninvolves many organizational entities;regions, municipalities, public agencies,private companies, academic institu-tions, and commercial groups. Theunique denominator of these organiza-tions is their common interests in landinformation.

They can share costs, motivate enoughpeople, and generate enough resources tosuccessfully implement land administra-tion system. Another important barriercomes up; it is the internal considerationof each organization. The members of cer-tain organizations can have a lack offamiliarity with new concepts of themodern technology.

In other organizations, we can find alack of training and management sup-ports. To overcome these barriers, severaltechnical supports during should be pro-vided such as:

• Furnishing comprehensive geographicknowledge and clear ideas about landadministration paradigm,

• Providing training session of involvedstaff from organizations that contribute tothe implementation,

• Removing smoothly the traditional prac-tices in handling lands to introduce theGIS/LIS and Internet GIS technology,

• Proposing a motivating system toenhance the statutory conditions of theinvolved staff.

CONCLUSIONIt is inevitable that the integration of GISand Internet GIS technologies in our soci-ety will require new and expensive oper-ational tasks. The institutional commit-ment and involvement around a newsystem needs more time to be opera-tional. The development as well as theenhancement of the staff skills requiresmore financial supports to promote theintroduction of the new technology. Con-sidering these requirements, it is indis-pensable to focus on a successful

approach to deal with the multiple tasksof the land administration. First, weshould conceive incremental phasesinstead of creating the whole solution.Second, it is necessary to encourage theprinciple of data sharing among all con-tributors to ensure the potential benefitsof land information.

Third, the standards and guidelines forthe use and sharing of land data shouldbe developed. Fourth, it is recommendedto define a reference of quality control toimprove the positional accuracy, theattribute accuracy, and the dataexchange and production quality. Fifth,an appropriate scheme of automationshould be designed by choosing betweencentralized or distributed configurations.

REFERENCES1. Dale, F. P. and McLaughlin, J.D(1988).Dale, (1988). Land Information Manage-ment. An introduction with special refer-ence to cadastral problems in third worldcountries. Oxford University Press Inc.New York.

2. El-ayachi, M(2006). Design of a newapproach for developing a multipurposecadastral system of Morocco: organiza-tional and technical aspects. PhD. Thesis.Institute of Agronomy and VeterinaryMedicine. Rabat. Morocco.

3. Enemark, S(2003). The land manage-ment paradigm for institutional develop-ment. EXPERT group meeting on incor-porating sustainable development objec-tives into ICT enabled land administration.Center for Spatial Data Infrastructuresand Land Administration. University ofMelbourne. Australia.

4. Ionita, A(2006). Developing an Entre-prise GIS. GIS development-Middle Eastmagazine. Vol.2, Issue 2. March-April2006. New Delhi, India.

5. Peng, Zong R. and Tsou,Ming H(2003).Internet GIS: distributed geographic infor-mation services for the Internet and wire-less networks. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.USA.


El-Ayachi MohaDr. Ing. Ass.Prof. and Head ofDepartment of Geodesy andSurveying, IAV Hassan 2, Rabat,Morocc

[email protected]

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WWW.BENTLEY.COM

© 2006 Bentley Systems, Incorporated. Bentley, the "B" logo, BE and Bentley Map and Geospatial Server are either registered or unregistered trademarks or service marks of Bentley Systems,Incorporated or one of its direct or indirect wholly-owned subsidiaries. Other brands and product names are trademarks of their respective owners. Images courtesy of the BE Awards of Excellence.

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Data for New Orleans disaster recovery plan managed through spatially-enabled ProjectWiseUSACE (US Army Corps of Engineers) IPET (Interagency Performance EvaluationTaskforce) project

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Bentley, the world’s number 2 provider of software solutions in theGIS/Geospatial market according to Daratech*, provides world-classgeospatial solutions for infrastructure projects. Bentley’s Geospatialvision is all about advancing GIS for infrastructure. In addition to Bentley’s geospatial platform products (Bentley Map and the GeospatialServer), Bentley provides infrastructure engineering solutions for local governments, federal governments, water utilities, multi-utilities, communications companies and electricity and gas distribution companies.*Daratech’s ‘GIS/Geospatial Markets and Opportunities 2006’

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40

Building a GIS database for AL Sammalyah Island will assist in

planning the conservation and managementof the natural resources and the develop-ment of ecotourism activities on the island.

The island has witnessed high rates of change in land use inthe past few years; environmental management approacheshave been implemented since the mid 1990s with a vision forimproving the decision making process and providing quick andaccurate services to researchers and the ecotourism communityin general. The building of an integrated spatial database, dur-ing the current phase, is an important step towards the achieve-ment of the actual research objectives. A spatial database con-taining 15 GIS layers was built; both raster and vector layerswere integrated; the data is projected in the UTM zone 40N. Theoutcome of the change detection analysis task, conducted dur-ing the first phase of the project, was also added to the database.The integration of multi-scale aerial photographs in a GIS data-base is of great importance and has a high cost to benefit ratio.

The objectives of the present study are summarized below:

• Evaluation of the change rates and extent during study period;

• Creation of GIS layers related to the environment of the island;

• Building a spatial GIS database for optimal land resource man-agement of the island.

BACKGROUNDThe creation of a spatial GIS database is a major objective of theactual study. To emphasize the issues related to the manage-ment of the island resources, multi date large scale aerial photo-graphs were scanned, georectified and integrated into the spa-tial database. Six different dates were considered, the only avail-able data!, mid-1970s, mid-1980s, 1999, 2000 and 2005 aerialphotographs with spatial resolution 1 to 2 meters. Vector datawere derived from the 1999 and 2005 by on-screen digitizationto evaluate the change occurred on the island during this activeperiod of management and laying down of infrastructures onthe island.

A total of 11 different GIS layers were produced namely: roads,roundabouts, footpaths/tracks, buildings, breaks/bays/ports/petrol station, palm trees, mangroves, shrubs, water bodies,water channels, and barren land. A DEM will be generated andadded to the database on a later stage because cuts, filling, andthe creation of new artificial hills continue to be done duringour study.

LAND ADMINISTRATION


SALEM ESSA, RONALD LOUGHLAND, MOHAMED E. KHOGALI, ABDULMUNEM DARWISH

Overlay analysis of GIS layersto evaluate changes onAL Sammalyah Island

Overlay analysis of GIS layersto evaluate changes onAL Sammalyah Island

This paper covers the initial phases of a research project for building a GIS database for AL Sammalyah Island.

40-43.qxp 11/9/2006 4:45 PM Page 40

The basic principle in using remotelysensed data for change detection is that:changes in the objects of interest willresult in changes in reflectance values orlocal textures that are separable fromchanges caused by other factors such asdifferences in atmospheric conditions,illumination and viewing angles, and soilmoistures.

STUDY AREAAL Sammalyah is located at approximate-ly 24o 26'10"N - 24o 28'56?N and 54o29'22?E - 54o 34'12?E (figure1). Situated inthe Arabian Gulf, about 12 km north eastof Abu Dhabi Island near (Um al-NarIsland) area and just opposite Shati'-AlRaha beach, is characterized by its richecosystems and marine life. The Islandarea covers about 14 square kilometers.Soil texture is dominated by sand, withhigh salt content reaching 31.5% TSS onthe surface, being mostly Chloride solu-ble salts giving a white colour to the soilsof the island, which produces high bright-ness levels on satellite imagery operatingin the visible portion of the EMR, howeverthe very narrow mangrove soils sur-rounding the island have dark colorbecause of high content of organic carboncontent. The Island is a natural reservecontaining high biodiversity, mangroves(Avicenna marina), including: Arthrocne-mum macrostachyum, Seidlitzia rosmari-nus, Suaeda vermiculata, and Cyperusconglomerates.

A change detection analysis using mul-ti-sensor and multi-temporal aerial pho-tographs and satellite imagery can helpin emphasizing changes in LandUse/Land Cover (LULC) that has occurredsince the establishment of the DER in1996, and to assess the degree of successin the implementation of the DER's man-date in protecting and developing theecosystems of the island.

DATAA temporal series of remote sensing data

was acquired forthe study area. Itwas composed ofaerial photographsfrom mid-1970s,mid-1980s, 1999,2000, 2005, and2006. For conduct-ing the changedetection study,aerial photographsfrom 1999 and2005 were used;this is becausechanges were visi-ble on availableaerial photographs only from the 1990s.No major activities were noticed from themid-1980s aerial photographs.

The software used includes ESRIARCGIS9 software for vector processing,and ERDAS Imagine 8.4 for image pro-cessing. The selection of data, used in thisstudy was largely governed by availabili-ty and accessibility of archived data especially at the MSD archives; the selec-tion of hardware, and software was gov-erned by the UAEU geology department'sfacilities.

METHODOLOGYThe methodology applied to the changedetection analysis in this study is basedon integrating GIS with remote sensingmethod, including the advantage ofusing GIS ability to incorporate differentsource data into change detection appli-cations. Available high resolution aerialphotographs of 1999 and 2005 were used,and a post-classification comparisonmethod is implemented. Visual analysismethod was used for image interpreta-tion and simultaneously an on-screendigitizing of changed areas was per-formed. Texture, shape, size and patternsof the images were used for identificationof LULC change through visual interpre-tation. A unified land cover classificationscheme was established for classification

of images. Eleven land cover classes wereidentified in the image interpretationprocess (Table 1). The classified imageswere then used to derive class area statis-tics and class patterns over the past 6years. The output layers are brought intoa GIS database.

The methodology applied to the GISdatabase building follows the followinggeneral steps:

• data sources selected for entities andattributes are available large scale aerialphotographs used in the change detec-tion analysis (1999 and 2005), in additionto 11 vector derived layers. Other rasterdata include aerial photographs and hiresolution satellite images covering theisland. DEM is generated from availablespot heights. Other land cover types willbe digitized and added to the database frothe 2006 aerial photograph later.

• ArcGIS version9 geodatabase structureis adopted for the design and building ofthe database

• shapefiles created by digitizing usingArcGIS 9 under Edit session, then con-verted to the database using geoprocess-ing tools available in ArcGIS.

RESULTS Production of a set of imagery spanningthe period from the mid-1970s to the verynew 2006 aerial photo. Imageries aregeometrically corrected, co-registered,resampled to a pixel resolution of 2meters and projected to the UTM projec-tion zone 40N. Eleven land cover classes


Fig. 1 Location of the study area

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were produced and converted to vectorformat for the 1999 and 2005.

Two land cover maps were produced for1999 and 2005. Eleven land cover classeswere mapped and categorized into fourgroups, these include:

• Category 1 (Urbanization): Roads,Roundabout, and Buildings; as indicatorsof urbanization

• Category 2 (Forestation, Environmentaldevelopment): Mangrove (near the NNEcoast and in the inner parts of the island),Palm trees (along roads and as firm bor-ders) and other trees and grasses (nearthe ENE coast); as indicators of foresta-tion, agricultural activities, and environ-mental development.

• Category 3 (Desertification and land dis-turbance): Barren land, Tracks and Foot-paths; as indicators of desertification andland disturbance.

• Category 4 (Conservation and landreclamation): Water bodies and waterChannels; as indicators of conservationand land reclamation.

Figures 2 and 3 show some examples ofthe database layers produced during thestudy, while the aerial extent of the covertypes for the years 1999 and 2005 are pre-sented in table 2.

DISCUSSION

Change Detection AnalysisUrbanization: changes in roads, round-abouts, and building (1999 - 2005)

Table 2 shows that there has been anincrease of 23.6%, 300% and 220% inroads length, number of roundabouts andbuildings areas respectively between

1999 and 2005. This high increase of thelevel of urbanization in the islandrequired large amounts of investmentfrom the managing organization knownas the Emirates Heritage Club, to satisfythe increased demand to build newtouristic, scientific and sports facilities;e.g. horse riding halls, Olympic shootingrange, Olympic swimming pools, labora-tories, green houses, offices, dormitories,and the establishment of a modern roadnetwork.

These facilities are used to host increas-ing numbers of students from all aroundthe country as well as researchers and toemphasize ecotourism. This is attributedto the high-level political will of H.HSheikh Sultan Bin Zayed, Chairman of theEmirates Heritage Club to transform theisland from a desertified area into a well-developed reserve for protecting wild lifeand ecosystems and for developing eco-tourism and preserving local heritage.

Forestation, agricultural activities andenvironmental development: changes invegetation cover extent (1999 - 2005)

Total vegetation cover extent hasincreased from 3.742 km2 in 1999 to 5.101km2 in 2005, an increase of 36.3%between 1999 and 2005. The density ofthe vegetation has also increased givingincrease to the overall biomass produc-tion on the island. This biomass produc-tion can be quantified using vegetationindices calculated from satellite imageryand will eventually, be one of the objec-tives of future studies using satellite

imagery. Furthermore, this increase invegetation extent is mostly attributed tothe increase in mangrove planted areas;indeed mangrove planted area hasincreased from 2.256 km2 in 1999 to 3.568km2 in 2005, an increase of 58.2% in aboutsix years. This gain in the mangrove -occupied areas has occurred on previous-ly barren land which has been reclaimedand irrigated using sea water hence indi-cating the success of procedures appliedto combat desertification, enhance biodi-versity and sustain the environment onisland. Mangrove is highly adapted to theconditions of the island and is known forits high salt-tolerance, as a soil stabilizer,an ideal marine and bird habitat, and cansustain bees' elevation giving uniquenessto mangrove honey production.

This success in the extent of vegetatedareas especially mangrove plantations,gives evidences that the UAE is wiselyinvesting in the domain of scientificresearch oriented at producing speciesthat are adapted to its climatic conditionsand hence increasing green areas andcombating desertification locally and inthe region.

Deesertification and land disturbance:changes in barren land extent and foot-path lengths (1999 - 2005)

Barren land extent was studied as anindicator of desertification and abun-dance of green vegetation throughoutthe island, while tracks and footpathslengths are used as an indicator of landdisturbance and hence another indicatorof desertification. There has been adecrease of 15 % in barren land areasbetween the two dates; while tracks andfootpaths lengths have decreased by 32%between 1999 and 2005. This is anotherindicator of the decrease in desertifica-tion levels and the development of theecosystems on the island during studyperiod. The loss in the bare and disturbedareas is due primarily to new vegetatedareas (85%), urbanization (11%), and waterbodies and water channels (4%).


Fig. 2 Green vegetated areas Fig. 3 Building construction

Vegetated areas Buildings

40-43.qxp 11/9/2006 4:45 PM Page 42

Conservation and land reclamation:changes in water bodies and water chan-nels (1999 - 2005)

The spreading of water bodies andwater channels is clear evidence of con-servation and land reclamation. Table 2shows that there has been an increase of13.7% in the channel networks betweenthe two data sets while water surfacesappear on the 2005 imagery only, with alarge artificial salt water lagoon of 15,000m2 (figure 4).

Water surfaces are designed to attractmigrant birds during the winter seasonand to develop aquatic life on the island,while channels are used to bring high-tide sea current generated water intomangrove areas.

Database buildingAl Sammalyah GIS database contain bothraster and vector data, large scale aerialphotographs were scanned and convert-ed to ArcGIS geodatabase format. Vectordata were obtained from on-screen digiti-

zation of the 1999 and 2005 datasets, andare added to the geodatabase. An inte-grated geodatabase of six different datesof large scale aerial photographs, 11 vectorlayers spanning 3 different dates wereobtained totalizing 33 vector layers show-ing the status of the land cover on theisland during 1999 and 2005 dates, andassessing the rate and nature of changeoccurring on the island.

Results indicate good progress in thelevels of greening of the island, especiallyin the increase of the salt-tolerant man-grove plantation during the study period.A geodatabase of about 40 GIS layers isnow available to the decision makers ofthe island for the best management of itsland resources.

CONCLUSIONOn the island large-scale reclamationstarted in the early 1990s and hasincreased very rapidly since then. This isconfirmed by the decrease in bare landand the increase in vegetated areas espe-

cially plantations of salt-tolerant man-groves and palm trees. Urbanization andthe spread of water bodies is testimony tothe development of the island forenhancing scientific research and devel-oping the ecosystem.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTThe authors are grateful to the follow-

ing: (i) the Emirates Heritage Club, DER,for the financial support to carry out thiswork; (ii) the Research Affaires at the UAEUniversity for their assistance and con-tinuous support to this research; andfinally (iii) Mr. G. Abdul Fattah for hisassistance in digitizing vector data, pre-processing of aerial photos and in prepar-ing some figures for this paper.


Salem EssaGeology DepartmentU.A.E. University, Al-Ain, U.A.E.

[email protected]

Ronald LoughlandMohamed E. KhogaliAbdulmunem DarwishEnvironmental ResearchDepartment, Emirates HeritageClub, Abu Dhabi, U.A.E.

1 Roads

2 Roundabouts

3 Footpaths / tracks

4 Buildings

5 Break waters/ bays/ ports/ petrol stations

6 Palm trees

7 Mangroves

8 Shrubs

9 Water bodies

10 Water Channels

11 Barren Land

Visual Interpretation of the aerial photographs of 1994 and 2005

Table 1: Land cover classes used for the interpretation of the data

Note: Decrease carries negative sign while increase carries positive sign.

No. Class name 1999 2005 Increase Decrease % Change

1 Roads (Length, km) 21.6 26.7 5.1 - +23.6

2 Roundabouts (no.) 2 8 6 - +300

3 Buildings (area, sq km) 0.05 0.16 0.11 - +220

4 Break waters/ bays/ ports/petrol stations( no.) 3/1/2/1 3/3/2/1 2Bays - 28.6

5 Shrubs (area, sq km ) 1.322 1.322 - - 0

6 Palm trees (area, sq mt) 0.164 0.210 0.046 - 28.1

7 Mangroves (area, sq km) 2.256 3.568 1.312 - 58.2

8 Barren land (area, sq km) 9.60 8.16 - 1.44 -15

9 Footpaths/tracks (length, m) 33.917 23.08 - 10837 -32

10 Water bodies (area, sq km) 0 0.015 0.017 - +New

11 Water Channels (length, km) 20.4 23.2 2.8 - +13.7

Table 2. Land cover statistics in the study area (1999 - 2005). Building construction

40-43.qxp 11/9/2006 4:45 PM Page 43

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GIS Development Middle East Calendar for Year 2007

Issue Theme

January-February Oil & Gas

March-April Surveying & Mapping

May-June Infrastructure

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September-October e-gov

November-December 3D GIS

44.qxp 11/9/2006 4:03 PM Page 44

45G I S @ D E V E L O P M E N T - M I D D L E E A S T

November 2006

13 - 17 NOVEMBER SPIE Asia-Pacific Remote Sensing, Goa, Indiahttp://spie.org/conferences/pro-grams/06/ae

20 - 21 NOVEMBERArab eGovernment SummitDubai, UAEwww.datamatixgroup.com

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Clipboard

Oil spill spreading fast

G I S D E V E L O P M E N T - M I D D L E E A S T

Through the World attention isfocused on the fight and resulting

human casualties out of armed conflictbetween Israel and Hezbollah, the environ-mental damage caused in the region alsoappears severe. Many of the once-pristinebeaches in Lebanon are black with oil. Abombed power plant about 30 kilometerssouth of Beirut and within 100 meters of thesea burnt for over three weeks. It pollutedthe skies with black smoke and leaked thou-sands of barrels of oil into the sea. Environ-mentalist Wael Hmaidan says, "If there was-n't other issues covering this problem thiswould be the story of the year in theMediterranean region."

Satellite imagery shows rapid spreading ofthe oil slick. More than 80 kilometers ofcoastline have been affected. There arereports of problems all the way to Syria. BerjHatjian is with Lebanon's environmentalministry. "What we have here is the equiva-lent of a tanker sinking into the sea and 20to 30,000 tons reaching the shore line."

Edgar Cherab is with the United NationsEnvironmental Program. He worries aboutwhat can be done. "We don't have the equip-ment nor the proper knowledge in the coun-try." Fishermen and marine life are feelingthe first effects of the spreading oil. Esti-mates differ wildly on the amount of oilspilled and the extent of the destruction.United Nations' experts coordinating dam-age and clean-up efforts say any oil slick ofthis magnitude will have serious ramifica-tions for the environment.

source: www.voanews.com

46.qxp 11/9/2006 4:06 PM Page 46

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