GeoSUR

With the support of the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science Center (EROS), GeoSUR developed the first regional portal for Latin America and the Caribbean in March 2007. The portal offers free access to an important collection of regional geospatial information, it contains detailed descriptions of thousands of spatial datasets, and connects the user to a great variety of maps and geographic services operated and maintained by participating institutions from 24 countries.

The Portal has a complete data base of metadata that describes the spatial data that have been developed by the participating institutions. This data base is connected to similar catalogues operated by these institutions and is periodically updated through an automatic metadata collection mechanism. The Portal has more than 13,000 metadata records in its central data base, and offers access, through a search mechanism, to more than 500,000 metadata records found in other catalogues. The GeoSUR Portal also provided access to a regional map viewer and a topographic processing service that will be described further on.

The Portal was developed with ESRI's Geoportal Server and uses the Joomla content management system.

This spatial data visualization service was designed by CAF and it was developed and it is hosted by EROS. The service contains information on supranational maps generated by third party institutions, and it offers access to national and local maps available in viewers operated by participating institutions. Most of the supranational information is public and is available for free download. The service has been in operation since January 2008 and it was built with ArcGIS Server 10.1. The service viewer was built using Flex technology.

The viewer also provides access to more than 10,000 digital maps contained in more than 350 OGC-based geoservices operated by participating institutions, integrates GeoRSS data, provides tools to evaluate the impact of infrastructure projects on-line and to derive data from digital elevation models, among others.

As part of a project advanced by CAF and the Dartmouth Flood Observatory of the University of Colorado, daily regional flood maps in near-real-time and historical maps of flood are being incorporated to the viewer. Also, a system to estimate daily river flow in more than 2,000 river points in the region is being implemented using remote sensing techniques.

Institutions such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Andean Community, the World Resources Institute, Nature Serve, Conservation International, NASA, the USGS, Woods Hole, the University of Colorado, the University of Buffalo, the University of Maryland, Guyra Paraguay, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Department of the Interior in the US, the US Forest Service, the Lincoln Institute, and the geographic institutes of Mesoamerica have contributed regional spatial data which is available at the Regional Map Service.

To date, the viewer has more than 700 regional maps, among which the following stand out:

• near-real-time daily flood maps and historic flood maps of Colorado University,
• biodiversity data from the North Andean area of the Nature Serve,
• coral reef maps of the Caribbean islands from the World Resources
• maps of Central American ecosystems from the World Bank and of Andean ecosystems from the Andean Community,
• mangrove maps of South America of the USGS.
• biomass and height of forest tree tops data from NASA,
• monthly deforestation maps of the Gran Chaco Americano,
• Change in forest cover from 2000 to 2010 in the region,
• Land use/cover of Latin America from the European Spatial Agency,
• climate maps from Worldclim,
• hydropower potential of selected regions of South America,
• geology maps of South America from the OneGeology initiative,
• maps of mineral resources and flood maps from the USGS,
• and land use/cover maps for the Caribbean islands.[8]

GeoSUR developed a free access Topographic Processing Service (TPS) which is available on the web and allows for the generation of data derived from digital elevation models (DEMs) of Latin America and the Caribbean. Users may execute the computer models available in this service by using a varied set of DEMs with 1 km., and 500, 250, 90, and 30 meter resolutions. The models available in the TPS include: elevation profile, classification of slopes, watershed delineation, shaded relief, elevation classifications, aspect, viewshed analysis, dam flood areas and rain drop, among others. Users may select and download the DEM of any area of interest in Latin America and the Caribbean (with the exception of the 30 meter DEM) from the TPS.

EROS filled the information gaps of the DEM generated by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM, resolution: 30 meters) with ASTER, GDEM and GTOPO30 data for all the Latin American and Caribbean region, and created derived and consistent maps for the region which include shaded relief, slope, and aspect, and which may be visualized and downloaded from the Regional Maps Service.

Access to the SRTM 30-meter DEM of Latin America and the Caribbean has allowed CAF, with the support of CAF's Energy Program and some ministries of energy, to carry out detailed assessments of the hydroelectric potential of the State of São Paulo, Peru and Bolivia (the power potential of each 1 km. segment of river is calculated).[9]

The Regional Map Service described above basically contains regional information. The national and local geospatial information for the region is available through a decentralized network of map services operated by participating institutions, where each institution is committed to the development of map services and metadata catalogues under the standards of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). The participants act as data editors and have accounts in the GeoSUR Portal which allows them to register and manage their geoservices.

The participating institutions have the liberty to choose the hardware and software platforms to share data with the Network, under the condition that they use regionally recognized standards.

Currently, the GeoSUR Portal offers access to more than 100 viewers, more than 350 WMS services, and more than 40 WFS services. It offers access to more than 10,000 digital maps available in geoservices operated by participating institutions. GeoSUR offers capacity-building, technical assistance, and support to the institutions that are planning - or in the process of developing - their geoservices, and also helps stage some of them to the Cloud.[10][11]

During 2013, it was decided to complement the information and services offered in the GeoSUR Portal by launching a Regional Portal based on ESRI's ArcGIS Online. Through this Portal, access is offered to part of the information included in the www.geosur.info Portal in a more user friendly platform.[12]