Posted on

UBITECH’s co-authored manuscript on climate-related, georeferenced information management has been accepted and published online at the Springer Journal on Earth Science Informatics

Following a peer-review process, Springer Earth Science Informatics has accepted to publish a scientific manuscript, authored by UBITECH, University of Aegean and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki,, entitled “Development of a Spatial Database and Web-GIS for the Climate of Greece”. Dimitris Ntalaperas and his co-authors present the design and implementation of a spatial database and a web-GIS application that allow the management, visualization and analysis of data that are directly or indirectly related to climate and its future projections in Greece. Emphasis is given to the design decisions made in order to fulfill the requirements of flexible data querying and reporting, and of maintenance cost minimization. Cartographic layers for climatic and other parameters are dynamically produced through database views and geographic web services. The web-GIS provides user-friendly cartographic operations for visualizing and manipulating thematic maps, as well as reporting services for selecting, displaying and downloading climatic values for selected areas.


In particular, a spatial database capable to store, manage and manipulate data directly or indirectly related to climate and its future projections in Greece was developed, along with an interactive web-GIS platform, called Geoclima, that allows the end-user to search, analy ze and visualize all this information. Geoclima is the first integrated web-mapping system for the climate in Greece. The categories of the data that are finally managed by Geoclima are as follows: (a) Climatic data for 87 weather station, for 28 climatic variables, at monthly, seasonal and annual timescales, including data series of monthly, seasonal and annual values (period 1955–2010), trends and statistical significance of the data series (periods 1955–2004 and 1955–2010), and climate normals expressed as three-decade averages (1975–2004); (b) gridded data of interpolated climate normals for the 28 climatic variables, at monthly, seasonal and annual timescales; (c) simulations from regional climate models (PRUDENCE database, ENSEMBLES database and RegCM3 model) for the future changes of seasonal and annual climate variables; (d) raster data for the area of Greece, including geographical and topographical data parameters derived by a DEM, land cover (Corine 2000 and GlobeCorine datasets), and satellite-based products provided at the global scale; (e) socioeconomic data at the prefecture level, for the period 1951–2011; and (f) base maps (Digital Elevation Model, rivers, country boundaries, coastline, settlements, prefecture boundaries, and region boundaries).

Source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12145-018-0351-9