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Geo-Spatial Data Infrastructure in Brazil : Some Keynotes
Tania Maria Sausen
INPE-CEP, Av. dos Astronuats 1758, Cx.P. 515
CEP 12201-970 São José dos Campos, SP, Brasil
Email: Tania@ltid.inpe.br
The National Insitute for Space Resources-INPE, in Brasil, is the main intitution in space area in Latin America. Since its fundation it has been involved in research and capacity building in remote sensing and natural resources areas. I
INPE has played an important role in creating a critical mass, in space area, mainly in remote sensing, in Brasil and Latin America. INPE is the only insitution in the region that have developed a software dedicated to GIS and image processing.
At the end of 60's and beginning of 70's INPE created the Remote Sensing Project-SERE, the embryo of the Remote Sensing Division. In June 1973 the Brazilian LANDSAT antena started its operation.
In order to create its own researcher team INPE has created a master degree course in remote sensing in 1968 and the doctor degree was created in 1998.
In the end of the 70's and begining of the 80's INPE created the SITIM system, the first Brazilian image processing software. In 1986 INPE has created the SGI system, the first Brazilian GIS software. These two softwares were developed in DOS and in Portugues;
In the 80's INPE started to developd the Amazonia Deforestation Project-PRODES, the largest forest monitoring project in the world.
In 1985, in order to dissemiante and to increase the remote sensing and GIS community in Brazil INPE started the RS Regional Labs Program. Totaday it is possible to find more than 100 labs in all country regions.
In 1992 INPE started to developed the SPRING Project; a new geo-processing software;
- SPRING - (Georeferenced Information Processing System) is a state-of-the-art GIS and remote sensing image processing system with an object-oriented data model which provides for the integration of raster and vector data representations in a single environment.
- INPE have invested more than 140 men/year on the development of SPRING which has been used for important projects in Brazil such as:
- Multi-temporal evaluation of deforestation in the Amazonia rain forest;
- Ecological-Economical Zoning for Brazil;
- The National Soils Database.
- SPRING Main Features are:
- An integrated GIS for environmental, socio-economical and urban planning applications;
- A Multi-platform system, including support for Windows95/98/NT, Linux and Solaris;
- A widely accessible freeware for the GIS and remote sensing community, on http://www.dpi.inpe.br
Monitoring the Brazilian Amazon Forest - PRODES (Deforestation Project)- is the largest forest monitoring project in the world
Its objectives are:
- to estimate the extent of gross deforesation and annual rate of gross deforestation;
- to update the digital database
- to distribute the increments of deforestation :
- into major forest types
- into classes of size
The Brazilian Amazon comprises the states of Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima, Tocantins and portions of Maranhão and Goiás, totaling an area of approximately 5 million square kilometers, large enough to accommodate the entire Western Europe. Of this, approximately 4 million is covered by forest formations.
The concern with a good territorial management has motivated the Government to better understand the human activities in the region, aiming to better guide its policies, including its sustainability, the rational use of the natural resources, and the well-being of the local population.
A fundamental aspect of the Government actions concerns the generation of periodic estimates of the extent and rate of gross deforestation in the Amazon, a task which could never be conducted without the use of space technology.
Brazil carries out these assessments based on the analysis of Landsat images acquired and processed by INPE since 1974. The first complete assessment conducted by the Institute was carried out for years 1974 and 1978. Annual assessments have been conducted by the Institute since 1988, under a project known as PRODES (Estimate of Amazon Gross Deforestation).
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