Improving pest risk assessment and management through the aid of geospatial information technology standards

By

Rafoss, Trond
Skahjem, Jarle
Johansen, John Atle
Johannessen, Ståle
Nagothu, Udaya Sekhar
Fløistad, Inger S.
Sletten, Arild

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2013

Original Publication

NeoBiota : advancing research on alien species and biological invasions

Volume

18

Pages

119-130

Subjects

geospatial , GPS , mapping , mobile , Pest , risk , Standards

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sophia, Bulgaria Pensoft Publishers

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/neobiota.18.4017

 

Abstract

Delivery of geospatial information over the Internet for the management of risks from invasive alien species is an increasingly important service. The evolution of information technology standards for geospatial data is a key factor to simplify network publishing and exchange of maps and data. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)-geolocation specification is a recent addition that may prove useful for pest risk management. In this article we implement the W3C-geolocation specification and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) mapping standards in a Web browser application for smartphones and tablet computers to improve field surveys for alien invasive species. We report our first season field experiences using this tool for online mapping of plant disease outbreaks and host plant occurrence. It is expected that the improved field data collection tools will result in increased data availability and thereby new opportunities for risk assessment, because data-needs and availability are crucial for species distribution modelling and model-based forecasts of pest establishment potential. Finally, we close with a comment on the future potential of geospatial information standards to enhance the translation from data to decisions regarding pest risks, which should enable earlier detection of emerging risks as well as more robust projections of pest risks in novel areas. The forthcoming standard for processing of geospatial information, the Web Processing Standard (WPS), should open new technological capabilities both for automatic initiation and updating of risk assessment models based on new incoming data, and subsequent early warning.