WebGIS Services for Real-Time Water Monitoring An Application for Water Quality Crisis Management

Quantity and quality of underground water is stressed by multiple factors such as natural and human induced pollution, or water table recharge decrease due to climate changes. Approaches of constant monitoring and management of water resources shall promote the implementation of actions that may prevent irreversible damages to the resource and guarantee its availability and quality. Monitoring systems to assess water resources quantity and quality require extensive use of in-situ measurements, that have great limitations like difficulties to access and share data, and to customise and easy reconfigure sensors network to fulfil end-users needs during monitoring or crisis phases. This paper describes the application carried out for underground water monitoring and environmental crisis management through Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) services, under the European Integrated Project of the Sixth Framework Programme OSIRIS (Open architecture for Smart and Interoperable networks in Risk management based on In-situ Sensors, www.osiris-fp6.eu). The main objective of OSIRIS was to create a monitoring system to manage different environmental crisis situations, through an efficient data processing chain where in-situ sensors are connected via an intelligent and versatile network infrastructure (based on web technologies) that enables end-users to remotely access multidomain sensors information. The project has developed a service oriented architecture, accessible through INTERNET, with high levels of automation and interoperability, for the remote management of heterogeneous sensors (fixed and mobile) and the data processing for monitoring and managing environmental crises arising from natural hazard as well as industrial accidents (water pollution, urban air pollution, forest fires, etc.). The experimental system implemented at Santa Fiora (Grosseto, Italy) water springs, under the Italian responsibility by the Foundation for Climate and Sustainability and LaMMa Consortium, allows data acquisition and early identification of crises in the drinking water supply system, for supporting the assessment of proper intervention plans.