Floods in Greece, a statistical and spatial approach

Flooding is one of the most important types of disasters in southern Europe recording many victims and extended damages over the last century. The increased pressure for urban expansion together with the high population density has increased flood risk considerably in the region. Greece is not an exception in this regime, having a very rich flooding record since the ancient times. In this work, an extensive catalogue of flooding phenomena during the last 130?years in Greece has been compiled based on numerous sources. Based on this record the temporal and spatial distribution of flood events and victims was examined. In total, 545 events were identified, causing 686 human casualties and inflicting extensive damage across the country. Results showed seasonality patterns with more events clustering in November. They also showed that urban environments tend to present a higher flood recurrence rates than mountainous and rural areas. An increasing trend in reported flood event numbers during the last decades was discovered, even though the number of human casualties remains relatively stable during the same period. Moreover, spatial patterns were identified highlighting areas and administrational entities with higher flood recurrence rates across the country.     

Adaptable User Profiles for Intelligent Geospatial Queries

The geospatial information user community is becoming increasingly diverse, with numerous users accessing distributed datasets for various types of applications. Currently in GIS, unlike traditional databases, there is a lack of machine learning algorithms to customize information retrieval results. Thus the particular interests of individual users are not taken into account in traditional geospatial queries. In this paper we present a system that adjusts query results based on user requirements and needs. It does so by using a collection of fuzzy functions that express user preference specifically in GIS environments. The focus of this work is on preference learning for one‐dimensional, quantitative attributes, and on the customization of geospatial queries using this information. The model used to express user preferences adjusts gradually to the underlying complexity during a training process, starting with fairly simple linear functions and progressing to complex non‐linear ones as needed. Our advanced modeling capabilities are demonstrated through an applicability example, and statistical simulations show the robustness of our system.     

Language‐Independent Access to History Textbooks: Utilizing GIS Functionality with Spatiotemporal and Thematic Metadata

Integrating and accessing structured textual content obtained from different sources is a challenging task and becomes even more so when dealing with multiple languages. The objective of this article is to showcase the technological efforts towards the creation of a digital European history textbook repository that integrates respective textbooks from various countries and publishers. The content integration is achieved by introducing language independent metadata based on space (locations), time (dates), and thematic categories (history gazetteer). Providing adequate interfaces such metadata can be used to offer language‐independent access to Multilanguage history textbook content. The specific focus in this article will be on (1) presenting the metadata, (2) the data management approach including indexing the history textbook content and (3) the resulting textbook repository including its GIS‐based interface, allowing for a combination of map, timeline and keyword based search of the history content.     

A forward/backward principal component analysis of Landsat-7 ETM+ data to enhance the spectral signal of burnt surfaces

In this paper, principal component analysis (PCA), a dimensionality reduction method, has been applied successfully as an image enhancement technique to improve the spectral signal of burnt surfaces. Forward/backward PCA (F/B PCA) and image differencing, which the proposed method consists of, creates a new spectral space that preserves the original spectral patterns while enhancing particular structures of the original satellite data. Burnt surfaces constitute a spectrally enhanced feature after selective removal of spectral information from the original Landsat-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper data.Improvement of the spectral separability of burnt surfaces is most evident in spectral channels ETM+4 and ETM+7, where burnt surfaces already compose distinct spectral objects, and channels ETM+2 and ETM+5. This improvement is reasonable since the third PC axis, which is not considered in the back-transformation, is composed mainly of the spectral information in these channels. Another benefit of the technique is a reduction of interband correlation in the satellite data.No clear differences between the standardized and non-standardized F/B PCA were identified to recommend the use of one over the other. Both methods show advances in certain aspects. Finally, an increase of the separability value between burnt areas and dry vegetated areas from 0.473 to 1.06 and 1.31 was obtained with the use of the standardized and non-standardized F/B PCA, respectively.     

Fish fauna recovery in a newly re-flooded Mediterranean coastal lagoon

Drana Lagoon, located at the NW site of Evros River Delta, was drained in 1987 and re-flooded in 2004 within the framework of an integrated wetland restoration project. This study presents the results of a monitoring program of the lagoon's oceanographic, water quality and fish fauna characteristics, during the pre- and post-restoration period. Results depict the presence of high salinity water (up to 41) due to seawater intrusion, strong evaporation in its interior and inadequate freshwater inflows. Overall, nutrient levels were low depicting local changes. Tidal variability at the mouth was approximately 0.2 m, producing high velocity tidal currents (up to 0.75 m/s). Eleven fish fauna species were collected; seven species were caught in both the inlet channel and the lagoon during the pre-restoration period and nine species in the post-restoration period. Atherina boyeri (37.6%) and Pomatoschistus marmoratus (31.7%) dominated the lagoon during the post-restoration period. Most of the A. boyeri specimens (88.5%) were caught inside the lagoon, while P. marmoratus had an almost equal distribution in the inlet channel and the lagoon (56.3% and 43.7% respectively). The presence of species of the Mugilidae family (5.2% total average catches after lagoon re-flooding) was mainly in the inlet channel (12.6% of the average catches) and not inside the lagoon (only 1.3% of the average catches). The small number of fish species inhabiting the lagoon might be the result of the recent restoration or it could be related with the increased water flow observed at the lagoon mouth during the flood and ebb tidal phases, and also in the presence of a smooth bank in the concrete waterspout that connects the entrance channel with the lagoon. The limited presence of the Mugilidae juveniles inside the lagoon could be related to the prevailing tidal inlet dynamics (i.e. strong ebb flow at lagoon inlet), thus preventing the species to enter the lagoon. In order to restore the lagoon environment, careful and gradual steps should be undertaken under the basis of continuous monitoring of hydrologic, environmental and fisheries system's status.     

Factors Affecting Engineering Properties of Microfine Cement Grouted Sands

An experimental investigation was conducted in order to evaluate the influence of distance from the injection point and of parameters pertinent to the cement, the suspension and the sand on the effectiveness of microfine cement grouts. Three different cement types, each at three different gradations having nominal maximum grain sizes of 100, 20 and 10 μm, were used. Grouting effectiveness was evaluated by injecting suspensions with water to cement (W/C) ratios of 1, 2 and 3, by weight, into five uniform sand fractions with different grain sizes and eight composite sands with different gradations, using a specially constructed apparatus. Unconfined compression and permeability tests were conducted on the resulting grouted sand specimens, after curing for 28 and 90 days. Microfine cement grouted sands obtained unconfined compression strength values of up to 14.9 MPa and permeability coefficients as low as 1.3 × 10^?6 cm/s or by up to 5 orders of magnitude lower than those of clean sands. The W/C ratio and the bleed capacity of suspensions as well as the effective grain size and the permeability coefficient of sands are very important parameters, since they affect substantially the grouted sand properties and are correlated satisfactorily with them. The strength and permeability of grouted sands can increase, decrease or remain constant with distance from the injection point depending on the easiness of suspension penetration into the sands. The improvement of grouted sand properties with increasing distance from the injection point is consistent with the observed increase of the cement content of grouted sands.     

Image based remote sensing method for modeling black-eyed beans (Vigna unguiculata) Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Crop Height (CH) over Cyprus

In this paper, Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Crop Height (CH) are modeled to the most known spectral vegetation index — NDVI — using remotely sensed data. This approach has advantages compared to the classic approaches based on a theoretical background. A GER-1500 field spectro-radiometer was used in this study in order to retrieve the necessary spectrum data for estimating a spectral vegetation index (NDVI), for establishing a semiempirical relationship between black-eyed beans’ canopy factors and remotely sensed data. Such semi-empirical models can be used then for agricultural and environmental studies. A field campaign was undertaken with measurements of LAI and CH using the Sun-Scan canopy analyzer, acquired simultaneously with the spectroradiometric (GER1500) measurements between May and June of 2010. Field spectroscopy and remotely sensed imagery have been combined and used in order to retrieve and validate the results of this study. The results showed that there are strong statistical relationships between LAI or CH and NDVI which can be used for modeling crop canopy factors (LAI, CH) to remotely sensed data. The model for each case was verified by the factor of determination. Specifically, these models assist to avoid direct measurements of the LAI and CH for all the dates for which satellite images are available and support future users or future studies regarding crop canopy parameters.