Coupling an environmental database to a geographical information system

Abstract

The Ria Arosa is a coastal zone located in the north-western region of Galicia-Spain. An information system was developed as a decision support tool for environment management and protection of that coastal zone. Geographical Information System (GIS) in an integrated database-model system has greatly increased the overall performance of the decision support tool. The tool developed for environmental assessment has the following elements: simulation models for detailed analysis of the hydrodynamics and water quality status of the Ria Arosa and a GIS for linking model input and output data to geographical entities, and for the visualisation and analysis of data and simulations results. This work deals with the general framework used to organise the large amount of data resulting from the continuous monitoring program and from models output.