Geospatial information on landslides and floods in Italy.

We describe a system for the dissemination of geographical and thematic information on landslides and floods in Italy. In the framework of the Integrated Management of the Environmental Data project - GIIDA - of the Italian National Research Council (CNR), the research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Hazard Assessment (IRPI) has designed and implemented a new Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). The SDI is compliant to Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) specifications for the publication, access, and discovery of dedicated services, including WMS, WFS, WCS and CSW services. The CNR IRPI spatial data infrastructure (SDI) fully exploits Open Source Software (OSS). Adoption of an OSS approach for the design and the implementation of the new SDI proved valid, and economically convenient. As part of the GIIDA project, the national landslide warning system for the possible occurrence of rainfall-induced landslides in Italy was integrated in the new SDI. The integration proved successful, and was facilitated by the fact that the warning system operates on data and geographical information stored in a PostgreSQL + PostGIS database.