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Marine GIS Methodology:

Introduction_____This page describes in general terms, the methodology of marine GIS development at IMBC. The methodology includes GIS-processing of time-series of 2D and 3D data
resulting in animated cartography of analysed and integrated raw data. The main idea is to create marine GIS tools for specific tasks and purposes in a way that users can visualize and analyse
marine data through automated procedures that run with the help of a user-friendly interface.

The result of this approach are marine GIS tools with:

  • a flexible relational database
  • a user-friendly interface
  • the ability to connect with external visualization and analysis tools, and
  • the ability to disseminate raw data and analysed information through the web

    Software_____Various ESRI products (mainly ARC/INFO and ArcView) are used as standard GIS software and are installed on UNIX and NT machines.
    AML (Arc Macro Language) is used as programming tool for data integration. Avenue and C routines are used for interface purposes.
    UNCERT (a geostatistical analysis package running Gslib), is used for 2D and 3D kriging and visualization.
    Vis5D+ (a system for visualizing data made by numerical weather models and similar sources), is used for extented 4D and 5D cartography.
    NCSA HDF Viewer and Windows Image Manager (WIM) are used for HDF data preparation towards GIS input.

    Databases_____GIS databases are stored inside ARC/INFO TABLES and GRID modules. Spatial data are stored as ARC/INFO coverages with point, arc, polygon and region topology and
    as ARC/INFO grids. All data are commonly projected in UTM, units meters (and in various other projections).
    Specialised routines are used for input/output of subsets of data among the above software.

    Analyses_____Spatial data interpolations are carried out by the various ARC/INFO statistical and analytical commands.
    Semivariogram fiting and 2D/3D kriging are carried out by Gslib via UNCERT, which is called directly from ARC/INFO user-interfaces.
    Satellite imagery is classified through ARC/INFO GRID module.
    Marine species life history data are used as constraint parameters in GIS analyses of biological data.
    Multidimensional visualisation is performed through Vis5D+.

    User Interfaces_____Developed tools feature user-interfaces, which consist of a main menu that calls various AMLs, which in turn, call a hierarchy of menus.
    Within this approach, the user is allowed to interact with specific parts of the GIS database and deal with specific, short analytical tasks.
    Through such interfaces, users may insert, edit, query, analyse, and visualise GIS-processed marine data.


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