Maritime awareness and emergency management real time system using remotely accessible GIS technology

The paper concerns the concept of the application of the latest achievements in both information technology and remote sensing, including underwater acoustic sensors, for maritime awareness and emergency management supporting in a case of hazard of a different kind, e.g. terrorism, pollution and ecological catastrophes, or natural disasters. The real-time, remotely accessible marine GIS is dedicated for instantaneous integration, processing and multi aspect visualisation, in a form of time variable views and maps, of the data acquired by various types of sensors. The paper presents the prototype application of the marine GIS for remotely accessible, instantaneous detection, localisation and monitoring of sea water pollution aggregations, e.g. oil spills, discharge material plumes etc. The developed system is also capable of performing the instantaneous prediction of the pollutants' behaviour, i.e. the dislocation and spreading of an oil spill, in the nearest future, using the relevant physical models. The system utilises the SQL database for data storage and the SVG language for geographical objects remote presentation, and requires only the WWW browser and SVG viewer on the client side.