The landscape of applications with which we can learn about the world is becoming richer. Continuing instrumentation of the physical world through the proliferation of sensors, increasing interconnection of people and institutions and the broadening of access to high performance analytics are the main trends that are observed. Practitioners are specialists in their fields, but they are missing the technology to support their skills and knowledge. Ecometrica has developed a web-based mapping platform that enables accessing, organising, sharing and analysing spatial data on ecosystems for non GIS experts. As higher resolution data becomes available at a lower cost, research, governments and industry all face the challenge of managing this “big data” to deliver mapping-related activities of various scales. Data has traditionally been stored on unconnected devices, with analysis requiring download to GIS software, proving it difficult to share project spatial outcomes. The Ecometrica mapping platform is built on spatial cloud technology and brings together in a geospatial paradigm relevant data, areas of interest and stakeholders.
Essential functions include viewing and querying spatial data, providing guidance to help users interpret the results they extract, and summary reporting. Access is secure but mapping applications can also be made publicly available.
The platform can be used in many ways; e.g. by publishing or sharing research results with peers, and providing practical and insightful advice to non-specialist end users, industry groups and policy makers. Depending on how a mapping application has been customized, end-users can obtain quantitative and qualitative information about resources, measure impacts and opportunities, check compliance to environmental legislation, monitor changes to vegetation, water and other resources.
We will illustrate these capabilities using a case study concerning seagrass in the Balearic Islands. The mapping platform supports an application, built as part of the OPERAs project on ecosystem services, that shows how various stakeholders extract the information needed on coastal ecosystem services to make informed decisions.