Confederación Hidrográfica del Guadiana

Areas of Activity: Information Systems

Sectors of Operation: Freshwaters, Dammed waters, Dams, Meteorology, Irrigation Systems

 

 

Since August 2004 Adasa has been carrying out continuous maintenance and improvement work arising from the project for the study and implementation of the Guadiana River Basin Authority’s corporate geographic information system (GIS). This corporate GIS is based on the generation of a common work platform integrating and coordinating the data, services, procedures and human and material resources of the Authority’s various units.

A major part of this system’s development has been the processing, sorting and centralization of data. A geographic data model has been defined on the basis of the identification and review of geographic, alphanumeric and georeferenced information, designed with reference to national and international regulations and especially those concerning water management, such as the Water Framework Directive. As a result of this activity, users have access to a corporate geodatabase based on Oracle database technology and ESRI’s ArcSDE as a geographic link port.

The architecture underlying the system is based on a high-availability configuration in its hardware and software, in which emergency backup and retrieval services have been installed.

The existence of a private, flexible and enlargeable communications network has allowed the development of specialized tools both in a client-server environment, catering for heavy editing and advanced analysis tasks, and in a web environment offering light query modules.

The basic software used in developing the applications has been ESRI’s ArcGIS technology, divided into server components (ArcSDE and ArcGIS Server) and client components (ArcInfo, ArcEditor, ArcView and extensions).

The functional scope provided covers the generation of basic guided processes for users with no experience of GIS tools. Thus priority has been given to the construction of simple tools and processes for information access and management as against other more technical and specific processes.

Even so Adasa’s accumulated experience in projects for the development of technical systems for the Basin Authority has allowed advanced functions to be integrated into the project, most notably the generation of structural and control data theme maps and phenomenological data trend maps, and real-time display of hydrological information (integration with SCADA tools).