Spatial Monitoring and Routing System for the Transportation of Hazardous Materials

Abstract

The concept of Environmental Information Systems (EIS) emerged from the concerns and the efforts carried on by world wide private and official organisations in order to promote an effective use of environmental data. These data are of various natures such as statistics, thematic maps, or documents describing the identification and the quantification of the environmental resources. The Environmental Information Systems became institutional tools providing pragmatic solutions for sustainable development in various fields. The objective of an EIS is to increase the quality and the efficiency in the decision-making process. To achieve this goal, the EIS requires the integration of various information processing technologies: Geographical Information Systems (GIS); Database Management Systems (DBMS); Space Imagery; Decision Support Systems (DSS); etc. However, the implementation of such an integration generates new requirements, namely data interoperability, data description by metadata, reverse engineering from existing applications and remote data access and data processing. This leads to the reconsideration of the analysis and design methodology.