Case Studies

Land-use changes are typically modeled using geographic information systems because of the spatial nature of the data. But the complexity of coupled human and natural systems and the fourth dimension involved with change over time and time-series data expose some limitations of GIS tools when used on their own. In this paper we present the application of REPAST, a free and open source geospatial Multi-agent Model (a.k.a. Agent-based Model or ABM) to the dynamic simulation of greenhouse gas (GHG) changes in a sub-watershed in Ontario, Canada with predominantly agricultural land use. The combination of Geospatial analysis and use of an Agent Based Model is a new way to solve complex problems involving multiple decision makers on the landscape. The combination of these modeling approaches helps to address the time dimension in geospatial modeling problems. ABM can model dynamic systems, their evolutionary changes and importantly, can predict options for sustainable system configurations. As a part of this research project, open source tools were developed to integrate ABM and GIS environments, specifically with respect to data transport and coupling of GIS and REPAST tools. In this paper we present scenarios to estimate the GHG emissions in an agricultural watershed, and the FOSS tools we both adopted and have been developing to undertake this project.

The province of East Kalimantan located in Borneo island is one of the largest province in Indonesia. With an area and population approximately similar to the State of Oregon, the provincial government tries to manage effectively the natural and human resources. A web-based information system is an option to display and share the potency of East Kalimantan province. The purpose of such application is to provide a complete spatial information of East Kalimantan in a web GIS. The users are not only the local government but also prospective investors who are interested in developing the province. Due to the budget limitation, the government decided to choose free and open source software to implement the system. The application is built using PostgreSQL and PostGIS to store the data in the spatial database. The web GIS interface is developed using OpenLayers with the base map from Google Maps. The natural resource and statistical data are displayed as thematic maps and charts. Such data can be downloaded in a spreadsheet format to allow furhther use. As a conclusion, the provincial information system is found to be a useful and effective approach to manage and share spatial information in East Kalimantan.

This paper discusses advances in the development of a software environment with capabilities for accessing, utilising and incorporating geospatial data and processes into the scientific workflows of researchers interested in incorporating earth observation and geospatial analysis into their work. In previous work [McFerren et. al. 2010], we introduced the concept of geospatially-enabled scientific workflows; this paper shares progress made, insights gained and future research avenues exposed in the process of implementing EO4Vistrails (http://code.google.com/p/eo4vistrails/), a geospatial extension to the open-source VisTrails scientific workflow, provenance management, data exploration and visualization system (http://www.vistrails.org). FOSS4G software and toolsets are heavily used in EO4Vistrails to provide spatial database, OGC Web Service, geospatial analysis, data transformation and visualization capabilites. We identify the reasons for the suitability and usefulness of spatial databases in scientific workflows, in the context of wildfire research, noting, for example, that (spatial) SQL provides a clear provenance mechanism and a means to distribute processing tasks. Regarding OGC Web Services, we report that certain services are readily implemented into scientific workflows, notably the WFS and WCS, since the kinds of data they work with are well supported by many tools and applications. Other services are more difficult to incorporate: the SOS outputs data that are difficult to translate into formats acceptable to most scientific software; the WPS is very generic, increasing the challenge of developing workflow modules that can handle dynamically the variability of inputs and outputs that can be expected for a WPS.