Context
The mission of the Hellenic Ministry of Environment and Energy is to maintain and improve the quality of the environment, and improve the country’s spatial and urban planning. This includes and promotes developments in the fields of energy and mineral raw materials, in accordance with the principles of sustainable development. As part of the policy design and implementation of the overarching objects, a large volume of thematic spatial data is collected and produced. This makes the Hellenic Ministry of Environment and Energy one of the largest and most important producers of spatial data and information in the country.
Objectives
The objectives set for the development of the web application were: (1) The organisation of the Ministry’s spatial information in a ‘single point’ (website); (2) the accessibility of such information by (a) providing the basic possibilities for overview and combined display of information without the use of specialised software programs in a user-friendly environment, (b) providing the download of spatial information and its metadata and (c) making web services available, in accordance with the Open Geospatial Consortium Standards (OGC Standards); (3) the feeding of future systems (such as the National Spatial Information Infrastructure); (4) the visualisation of environmental ‘effects’ such as thematic maps, which can work at multiple levels (such as environmental awareness, public administration, education, research, economy, investment); (5) the sustainability of the application.
Implementation
Through the implemented web application, the dissemination of spatial information concerning phenomena of the physical and urban environment takes place in the form of digital maps, spatial data files and web services. This gives immediate and easy access to all interested parties to the Ministry’s spatial information and adds value to this information. The user has the ability to visualise, view and combine thematic layers, called pads, on generally available backgrounds (such as OpenStreetMap, OpenTopoMap, ESRI World Imagery). The portal has been enriched with spatial information from the thematic services of the Hellenic Ministry of Environment and Energy (e.g. Biodiversity and Protected Areas, Forests, Water, Atmospheric Pollution, Climate Change, Urban Planning, Spatial Planning, Mineral Resources, Energy); the Hellenic Statistical Authority (e.g. Population Census 1991, 2001 and 2011); the European Copernicus Programme (e.g. Corine Land Cover – CLC); the National Observatory of Athens (e.g. climate change); and the Hellenic Regulatory Authority for Energy (e.g. renewable energy sources). The process of introducing new elements is continuous. A total of 569 layers of thematic information and 104 digital maps are available today through the portal.