Welcome to the WebMAPS home page. WebMAPS is an eScience project developed at the Laboratory of Information Systems (LIS) of the Institute of Computing (IC) at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. It is conducted jointly with researchers from the FEAGRI (Agriculture Engineering - Geoprocessing Lab) and CEPAGRI (Center for Research and Education in Agriculture) at UNICAMP.
The WebMAPS project is a multidisciplinary effort involving computer scientists and experts on agricultural and environmental sciences.The project`s goal is to develop a platform based on Web services for agro-environmental planning.
One big challenge concerns providing users with the means to interact with, summarize and analyze long time series of satellite images. This analysis must correlate these series, for arbitrary temporal intervals and regions, with data from other sources -- such as data to allow the characterization of a region (e.g., relief or soil properties), crop physiological characteristics and productivity. Data quality and provenance are important factors, directly influencing analysis results.
Besides massive data volumes, several other factors complicate data management and analysis. Heterogeneity is a big barrier – many kinds of data need to be considered, generated from often faulty devices. Moreover, data correlations must consider a variety of time warp factors. For instance, the effect of rainfall in a region, combined with temperature and soil parameters, takes months to be reflected in vegetation growth detected by satellite imagery. Still other factors cannot be directly measured, being thus derived from primary sources such as images. Furthermore, there is a wide range of user profiles, with many kinds of analysis and summarization needs. The first prototype is available, concentrating on spatio-temporal analysis of image series, creating graphs that show vegetation evolution in arbitrary areas.
Already financed by the Brazilian government (CNPq), part of this project has been submitted and approved for joint Brazil-Germany financing.
The project`s source code and management information are available here. However, to access this information you need credentials (login/password). Get in touch with us (by email) and we will consider your request.
WebMaps involves experts from different areas, both in Computer Science and in Agro-environmental studies.
On the Computer Science side, the project involves researchers in databases, computer networks, software engineering, man-machine interfaces and image processing. These experts will cooperate along four major research and development lines: application design and development; interfaces; image processing, data analysis and spatial processing functions; database systems; and data communication across distributed systems using Web Services.
From the agriculture side, the project involves researchers in image processing for weather forecast and crop productivity, crop analysis, agro-environmental planning and precision farming.
The project's major institutional sponsor is CNPq (Brazilian National Research Council). It is being developed jointly at the Laboratory of Information Systems LIS , Institute of Computing and at the Geoprocessing Laboratory GEO of the Agriculture Engineering Faculty.
The project's goal is to specify and develop a Web information system to support monitoring and planning of agriculture activities in Brazil. This system will take advantage of advances in Semantic Web initiatives, and implement data access via Web Services. The idea is to create a basic platform to support formulation, implementation and evaluation of integrated practices in agriculture with environmental preservation.
The project will be strongly based on a satellite image database containing daily images of the region of Sao Paulo state, Brazil. Initial tests will concentrate on sugar cane crops. The project started in Aug 2003, and concentrates on the following issues:
- Production of innovative scientific results, which will be made public by means of different types of publications (papers, technical reports, theses);
- Development of tools for solving specific issues in geoprocessing and satellite image processing, that will be made available on the Web;
- Incorporation of new technologies to products under development.
Senior Researchers
- From the IC-UNICAMP Institute of Computing, UNICAMP
Coordinator: Claudia Bauzer Medeiros (databases)
Neucimar Jeronimo Leite (image processing)
Maria Cecilia Calani Baranauskas (human machine interface)
Ricardo da Silva Torres (image processing and information retrieval)
Edmundo Roberto Mauro Madeira (computer networks)
Eliane Martins (software engineering)
- From the FEAGRI (Agriculture Engineering - Geoprocessing Lab), UNICAMP
Jansle Vieira Rocha
- From the CEPAGRI (Center for Research and Education in Agriculture), UNICAMP
Rubens Lamparelli
Jurandir Zullo Jr.
PhD Students
- Carla Geovana do Nascimento Macário
- Rodrigo Dias Arruda Senra
MSc Students
- Leonardo Elias Mariote
- Jefersson Alex dos Santos
- Arnaldo Francisco Vitaliano Filho
- Maurício Figueiredo
Undergraduate Students
- Taísa Cristina Costa dos Santos
- Fernando Ito
Scientific workflows - documenting and managing models
WebMAPS will integrate scientific workflows as a means for specifying and monitoring models in agro-environmental planning and monitoring.
A first prototype can be found here. For more details, see Publications on the WOODSS project, and/or contact us.