The PanGeo project
Geohazards in the built environment can be dangerous and costly, yet information about these phenomena and their effects can be difficult if not impossible to obtain. PanGeo is about generating information on urban geohazards and then making this information freely available and accessible to all, online.
Geohazards in PanGeo are natural and man-made phenomena that have the potential to make the ground unstable. These geohazards include: earthquakes, landslides, mineral workings, groundwater abstraction and recharge, shrink and swell clays, soluble rocks, compressible ground, collapsible deposits and landfill (many of these geohazards manifest as subsidence).
PanGeo is a 3-year Collaborative project that started 1st February 2011 with the objective of enabling free and open access to geohazard information in support of GMES. This will be achieved by providing an INSPIRE-compliant, free, online geohazard information service for the two largest towns in each EU country (Cyprus and Luxembourg only one) – 52 towns in total (~13% of EU population).
The geohazard information will be served in a standard format by the 27 EU national Geological Surveys via a modified version of the ‘shared access’ infrastructure as devised for the DG ISM project One-Geology Europe. The information to be served (a new geohazard data-layer and accompanying interpretation) will be made by each Survey, and be compiled from integrations of:
- Satellite Persistent Scatterer InSAR processing, providing measurements of terrain-motion.
- Geological and geohazard information already held by national Geological Surveys.
- The landcover and landuse data contained within the GMES Land Theme’s Urban Atlas.
Upon user enquiry, a PanGeo web-portal will automatically integrate the geohazard data with the Urban Atlas to highlight the landcover polygons influenced. Mousing over polygons will hyperlink to interpretative text. User input to design will be facilitated by the Surveys contracted into the project and initiation of a ‘Local Authority Feedback Group’.
It is trusted that sustainability of PanGeo will be achieved by attracting a proportion of the remaining 253 Urban Atlas towns to procure the PanGeo service for their towns. The service that will already be provided in their country will form the basis of the required promotional activity.
Target users of the PanGeo service
PanGeo is quite specifically targeted at four key user groups:
- Government Local Authority planners and regulators who are concerned with managing development control and risk;
- National Geological Surveys and Geoscience Institutes who collect and disseminate geohazard data for public benefit;
- Policy-makers concerned with assessing and comparing pan-European geological risk;
- The public, for general empowerment.
Service mechanics
In PanGeo, all 27 EU National Geological Surveys are producing two key products: A ‘Ground Stability Layer’ and a ‘Geohazard Summary’. The graphic above depicts conceptually how these products are made: Four InSAR providers are providing the Geological Surveys with terrain-motion data for each of the 52 towns involved in the service.
The Surveys use these data, in conjunction with their own geological data and expertise, plus an amount of validation, to produce the new Ground Stability Layer. This 2D vector layer comprises polygons surrounding discrete areas of common geohazard. Each polygon then relates to interpretative text within a newly-compiled Geohazard Summary document.
User Access
Users will access the information provided by PanGeo through a ‘PanGeo Portal’ – a derivative of the One-Geology Europe geoportal upon which the PanGeo service is built.
Upon user-enquiry for a given town, the Portal will automatically coincide the Ground Stability Layer described above with corresponding data from the EU’s Urban Atlas which comprises 27 landcover classes at 2.5m resolution (~1:10,000). Urban Atlas polygons that intersect with the Ground Stability Layer polygons will be highlighted indicating that they are influenced by a geohazard(s).
Mousing over these areas will pop-up a brief description of the hazard. A mouse-click will link the user directly to a full interpretation within the Geohazard Summary document.
Topographic maps for user-orientation will be facilitated by a user-option of either Google Earth or Open Source Mapping.
All PanGeo products (geocoded Urban Atlas, Ground Stability Layer and the Geohazard Summary as a standalone PDF) will be downloadable to enable use within a users’ own Geographic Information System.
The 52 towns currently included in the service
| The following table shows the 52 towns currently included within the PanGeo service. Note that Cyprus and Luxembourg only have one town each as these countries only have one Urban Atlas dataset available as the threshold for inclusion in the Urban Atlas is a minimum population of 100,000. In most cases the towns chosen are simply the two largest, however, the final decision was made by the National Geological Survey. Contribution to policy implementation and development The provision of an open-access, standardised information service on geohazards will enable policy-makers and regulators to:
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Contribution to policy implementation and development
The provision of an open-access, standardised information service on geohazards will enable policy-makers and regulators to:
- Systematically assess geohazards in each of the 52 towns involved.
- Gain understanding of the geohazards themselves.
- Know who to talk to for more information.
- Statistically analyse and cross-compare geohazard phenomena across EU countries.
- Gain a better understanding of the socio-economic costs involved.
- Make more informed decisions.
- Have confidence that the information provided is robust and reliable.
- Also, EU citizens will be empowered with access to knowledge previously known only to a few.
Relevant policy
Local policy: Following the EU subsidiarity principle, terrain-motion and associated geohazard policy is generally enacted at the local level. Some examples of local policies suggested by the Geological Surveys include: monitoring the impacts of dissolution and sinkholes in Hamburg city centre (Germany); monitoring of nuclear power plant stability (Lithuania); monitoring flood plain subsidence in urban areas (Luxembourg).
National policy: There are many national policies of EU member states that mandate the collection of geohazard data. Examples cited include: ‘Map of active faults’ project (Slovenia); Monitoring of hydroelectric power plants and the burial of nuclear and hazardous waste (Latvia); Mitigation of Climate Change impacts (Estonia, Denmark national programs).
European Union policies: PanGeo is relevant to several EU strategies and Directives:
* The EC Directive on Landfill (1999) requires that a landfill site must meet certain conditions relating to the risk of flooding, subsidence, and landslides.
* The EC Flood Directive (2007) requires Member States to assess the flood risk of all water courses and coast lines; map assets and humans at risk; and to take adequate measures to reduce this flood risk.
* The European Programme for Critical Infrastructure Protection (ECPIP, 2006) was introduced for the identification and designation of European critical infrastructure and the assessment of the need to improve their protection. Related to this, Eurocode 8 (of the European Structural Design codes) is concerned with making buildings and civil engineering structures resistant to earthquakes.
* Future EC directives relevant to PanGeo are The Prevention of Natural and Man-Made Disasters, and The EU Strategy for Supporting Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in Developing Countries. Both these strategies require disaster mitigation by obtaining detailed information on areas most at risk from geohazards and their indirect impacts.
Project Partners
There are 37 partners in PanGeo in total. These are divided into a Core Team of 13 and a Survey Team of 24 (3 Surveys are in the Core Team).
What is GMES?
Global Monitoring for Environment and Security is a joint programme of the European Commission and the European Space Agency, designed to establish a European capacity for the provision and use of operational information for monitoring and management of the environment and for civil security. GMES is intended to support Europe’s goals in relation to sustainable development, environmental protection and the capacity to respond to global crises, by facilitating and fostering the timely provision of data, information and knowledge to the standards needed to implement the environmental and civil security policies of the EU. For more information visit: www.gmes.info/.
Article by Ren Capes (PanGeo Project Coordinator)
Fugro NPA Ltd, UK