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Auflistung nach Autor:in "Mirtl, Michael"

1 - 6 von 6
  • Konferenzbeitrag
    Analysis of Long-range Air Pollutant Transport Using Trajectory Residence Time Statistics
    (Environmental Communication in the Information Society - Proceedings of the 16th Conference, 2002) Kaiser, August; Langer, Matthias; Mirtl, Michael; Scheifinger, Helfried; Spangl, Wolfgang
    There is a wealth of experience with trajectories and their application for various studies mostly dealing with air pollution problems. Trajectories have been applied to define air pollution source regions and calculate the dispersion of pollutants (Stohl, 1996 and 1998; Stohl and Trickl, 1999; Kaiser et al., 2000 and Kaiser et al., 2001). In this paper, results of trajectory residence time statistics are presented for the alpine background measurement site Zöbelboden, 899 masl, with special respect to the results for Sonnblick, 3105 masl, with the aim to study long-range air pollutant transport. Both stations are involved in international research programmes: Sonnblick contributes to the Global Atmosphere Watch Programme (GAW) of the WMO with the aim to study changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere. Zöbelboden is Austria´s contribution to the International Cooperative Programme “Integrated Monitoring of Air Pollutant Effects on Ecosystems” of the Geneve Clean Air Convention within UN-ECE. The trajectory residence time statistics shows the importance of the Po basin as an ozone source, but during summer, regional ozone production also plays an important role; nitrogen oxide originates from the pre-alpine region north of the Alps, sulfur dioxide also from more distant sources (Czech Republic, southern Poland and Slovenia).
  • Konferenzbeitrag
    Data Integration in the Field of Environmental Monitoring
    (Environmental Communication in the Information Society - Proceedings of the 16th Conference, 2002) Briesen, Marcus; Hofmann, Claus; Otterstätter, Arnd; Nikolai, Ralf; Mirtl, Michael; Schentz, Herbert; Vogel, Wilhelm
    In order to improve the quality of the environment national and international legislation increasingly asks for monitoring systems as an appropriate basis for decision making at all levels. The fundamental basis for all decisions is an integrated access to data from various programmes, databases, provinces, states etc. In this article we analyze the needs and requirements of data integration based on the examples of the water framework directive and integrated monitoring. Depending on the power of the local systems already in place we suggest two different ways of fulfilling these requirements: 1.) Providing a system that has a common user interface and various data connectors to access existing data in a uniform way. 2.) To establish a super database for (nearly) any kind of environmental data. A combination of both approaches would provide a tool kit which significantly decreases the effort for integration of existing and new data including uniform, polysemantic views and enabling substantial analysis and reporting.
  • Konferenzbeitrag
    MORIS – MEDEA or Using Ecological Tools for Monitoring of Meteorological Extreme Events
    (Informatics for Environmental Protection - Networking Environmental Information, 2005) Schentz, Herbert; Schleidt, Katharina; König, Martin; Mirtl, Michael
    MORIS is an information system originally designed for the Austrian part of the UN-ECE “Integrated Monitoring” program. The requirements of an information system for heterogeneous and changing data led us to an object relational data model, with a predefined core ontology and end user defined extensions. This information system has proven to be effective for many different ecological topics, so that we dare say that MORIS is a universal information system for ecological data. Due to our success using MORIS in various ecological fields, when the need of an information system for meteorological extreme events came up, we checked the suitability of MORIS. When we started analyzing this problem, it seemed that “event” is a very broad and imprecise concept, hard to model in a normalised manner. On more detailed analysis, we realized that nature driven events like heavy precipitation or an avalanche are quite similar to man driven events like a campaign or a sample. Once these general decisions have been reached, creating the end-user defined classes and importing the instances turned out to be just as easy as with the ecological topics This leads to our assertion that MORIS is an appropriate tool for monitoring natural ecological events, and that the object oriented data model is an appropriate data-model for data-integration.
  • Konferenzbeitrag
    Das objektrelationale Softwarepaket MORIS (MOnitoring and Research Information System)
    (Environmental Communication in the Information Society - Proceedings of the 16th Conference, 2002) Schentz, Herbert; Mirtl, Michael
    MORIS is an object-relational information system for various kinds of environmental data: results of chemical analyses (in form of time-series), the outcome of assessments as well as descriptive word documents or PDF Files (for laws, standards, decrees ) and maps (GIS) and even sketches, photos, filmor sound-documents. Within predifined packages the user can create classes with their attributes and polyhierarchical relations to other classes without changing the database or application. A lot of surfing tools, adaptable import and export interfaces and a sophisticated selection tool help to easily access data. Thus MORIS is a system suitable for many areas of environmental research and control.
  • Konferenzbeitrag
    Semantics in Ecosystem Research and Monitoring
    (Innovations in Sharing Environmental Observations and Information, 2011) Schentz, Herbert; Peterseil, Johannes; Magagna, Barbara; Mirtl, Michael
    The field of ecology in general, and environmental assessment in particular, demands the sharing of knowledge, information and data. On the European level –on the legal basis of the INSPIRE directive - a framework has been established which enables public access to geo-data in a structurally harmonized way. However, for ecological data the temporal dimension is just as important as the spatial dimension. Some of the existing data integration approaches show that efforts are needed to extend structural harmonization and include semantic harmonization. The sharing of knowledge, information and data implies a common understanding of the meaning of terms and concepts. This requirement has been met by controlled vocabularies, such as species lists and other taxonomies or catalogues of domain terminologies, long before the first computer was built. Current IT technologies have adopted these concepts of controlled vocabularies, and established and published them in digital form, mostly via the world wide web. This has resulted in a lot of benefits, such as accessibility, shared editing and the usability of controlled vocabularies in all sorts of applications. Some of the most prominent vocabularies are GEMET, CORINE Land Cover classes, EUNIS habitat list, Catalogue of Life, SERONTO, OBOE, Observation and Measurement, just to name a few. Those controlled vocabularies can be used in various ways: - As reference lists for scientific publications: e.g.: looking up GEMET concepts in different European languages on the site of the EEA (EIONET) - To tag metadata with keywords using controlled vocabularies by e.g. inserting keywords into an ISO19115 compliant XML document, as demanded by the INSPIRE directive, using SoilThes as a source for the keywords. - Semantic based data management linking data and semantically enriched metadata, e.g. of Integrated Monitoring Austria using the information system MORIS. However, efficient use of these resources is still hampered by the lack of a standardized framework for their interlinkage. The need for such a framework is not specific to the field of ecology or science in general. It is a requirement for all domains dealing with the sharing of information, knowledge and data. Technologies based on internet technologies such as the emerging Linked Data approach are trying to meet this challenge. This article first focuses on the specific needs for the use of semantics in ecological monitoring and gives a rough overview of how these have been met so far, independent of IT solutions. Secondly, we describe some technical approaches to meet these requirements and outline how these approaches are applied to specific solutions. Then we give an outlook on how these solutions could become part of a larger network of linked ecological data.
  • Konferenzbeitrag
    Strukturen und Funktionen zur Abbildung interdisziplinärer Langzeitprojekte im Bereich von Ökosystem-Monitoring und –Forschung: Der Weg zum Hauptmenü von MORIS / Das objektrelationale Softwarepaket MORIS
    (Environmental Communication in the Information Society - Proceedings of the 16th Conference, 2002) Mirtl, Michael; Schentz, Herbert
    Originally, MORIS (Monitoring and Research Information System) was designed to store and provide all data gathered by the ecosystem-monitoring activities of the UNECE Integrated Monitoring Programme in Austria. Society, facing challenges like climate change or loss of biodiversity is in urgent need of reliable information on environmental trends and cause effect relationships. To fulfill this requirement ecosystem monitoring and research strongly depend on information systems capable of depicting the results of a wide range of disciplines in the long term. Such systems have to provide not only raw data but also information on the methodological and spatial designs and their changes (primary meta-information). Only a generic and comprehensive architecture (object-relational approach) will allow to avoid redundancies across disciplines while, at the same time, guaranteeing the capacity for continuous adoptions. Highly valuable information is usually hold by the persons involved in the process of data gathering and primary data assessment (personal memory, field protocols). To maintain access to this secondary meta-information an appropriate information system must provide tools for referencing actors, projects and archives anywhere in the system.