THE ROLE OF GIS IN ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING

Abstract

The paper tries to analyze the role of GIS in environmental monitoring. When it comes to GIS environmental modelling applications, in many respects GIS software can be considered comparable to a programming language. Unfortunately, however, the typical environmental GIS users are focused on environmental issues and only rarely do they have the additional technical knowledge necessary to develop new GIS applications. As a consequence, most domain experts are forced to work with GIS that have predefined underlying data structures and ‘standard’ interfaces. We will try to understand the issues to be considered by the designers and programmers of such turn-key applications within the areas of environmental issue related monitoring. Some characteristic examples of applications will be given together with a closer look at the demands that the individual applications make. First it is useful to distinguish between the various types of environmental monitoring methods. In monitoring methods emphasis is placed on data collection, pre-processing, and quality control. Analysis techniques focus on using tools to manipulate and model data. Information systems, on the other hand, are more concerned with the storage and management of data.