Development of a spatial database and web-GIS for the climate of Greece

摘要

Climate information is important for scientific research and decision making. Nowadays web-based cartography technologies provide the means for wide dissemination of such information. This paper describes the design and implementation of a spatial database and a web-GIS application that allow the management, visualization and analysis of data that are directly or indirectly related to climate and its future projections in Greece. Emphasis is given to the design decisions made in order to fulfill the requirements of flexible data querying and reporting, and of maintenance cost minimization. Cartographic layers for climatic and other parameters are dynamically produced through database views and geographic web services. The web-GIS provides user-friendly cartographic operations for visualizing and manipulating thematic maps, as well as reporting services for selecting, displaying and downloading climatic values for selected areas.