Monitoring the Environment on the Internet with Open Source Software and Open Standards

Abstract

Open Source software and Open Standards have been gaining in popularity the recent years. We will show how we implemented environmental and agricultural monitoring systems using these tools. Based on technology developed and explored in the APNEE and APNEE-TU projects run under the 5th Fifth Framework Programme of the IST, we present how we managed to glue together software components from several different open source GIS and map initiatives and projects, into full-fledge web-applications. 2 cases will be used as examples; a khlong and river pollution monitoring application installed in Bangkok, Thailand, and an agricultural application for making state-of-the-art maps of farms in Norway, which in the future also will include wild life preservation, cultural inheritance, etc. The first is an example of a traditional web client-server application directly based on the APNEE core components, while the latter is a completely distributed system which only relies on external data sources, i.e. it contains and maintains no data on its own, and thus serves as an example on how Open Standards affords inter-application interaction. Both applications are based on a common core of software components and technology. We have deliberately chosen these specific cases so that the knowledge presented will be as broad as possible - both in the technological and the standardization dimensions.