THE USE OF GIS FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF MONITORING DATA FOR DREDGING ACTIVITIES IN THE LA SPEZIA HARBOUR (LIGURIAN SEA)

M.E. Piccione, A. Ausili, M. Gabellini, L. De Propris, S. Geraldini, F. Giaime, C. Innocenti, F. Loreti, E. Mumelter, M. Patacchia, A. Salmeri, V. Trama, C. Virno Lamberti

ICRAM - Istituto Centrale per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica Applicata al Mare, Roma (IT)

Introduction
The Port of La Spezia (Eastern Ligurian Sea) gained in the last years a leading role in the Mediterranean and European trade scene. Considering the increase in maritime traffic and the introduction of ships with bigger drafts, the Port Authority of La Spezia planned to deepen up to -15 m to mean sea level some areas of the Port, such as: the entrance channel, the evolution basin and some inner areas located close to the Fornelli pier and the Ravano pier (Fig.1 - Study area).
The whole area of La Spezia located within the protection dike has been classified as a "contaminated site of national interest" according to the Ministerial Decree of the Ministry of Environment n.468/01.
ICRAM (Central Institute for Research Applied to the Sea) is in charge of the definition of the characterization strategy and plans for the marine and brackish areas classified as "contaminated sites of national interest".
Because several characterization activities performed in the Port area revealed the presence in the sediments of several pollutants at high concentrations, the Port Authority has been required by the Ministry of Environment to make use of the best available technologies for environmental dredging and to design and execute an environmental monitoring plan, in accordance to some requirements provided by ICRAM, to evaluate the efficiency of the mitigating measures and to assure the minimization of the impacts to the environment due to the dredging activities.
The local Port Authority of the harbour of La Spezia has charged ICRAM, ARPA Liguria (Liguria's Regional Agency for Environmental Protection), ISS (Istituto Superiore di Sanità) and AUSL5 Spezzina (Local Sanitary Control Body) of the execution of the water quality and biota monitoring during the dredging activities.
Main objective of the monitoring plan is the evaluation of the possible effects of the dredging activities on the abiotic and biotic environment. Indeed acquaculture plants and benthic biocoenoses of very important ecological interest, such as Posidonia oceanica beds (a marine seagrass) and coralligenous are present in the Gulf area, close to the dredging locations.
Besides the field monitoring activities, ICRAM is carrying out the design and construction of a database and a related GIS for the collection and management of all the data related to the monitoring and dredging activities.

Database and GIS structure
ICRAM is carrying out the design and construction of the database for the collection of all the data related to the monitoring and dredging activities. Besides the database, a GIS is going to be built to receive, organize, manage and analyse all the data collected during the monitoring activities: general information, chemical analyses, microbiological analyses, ecotoxicological analyses, R.O.V. (Remotely Operated Vehicle) images, multiparametric probe files and bioassays.
The database has been built up in Oracle and contains all the information collected, organized in different tables. Since each agency is responsible for the monitoring of a specific matrix, its operators collect and analyse data and compile only tables corresponding to its own activity.
In order to share the information between all the involved agencies in the most efficient way and to simplify the input of the data, the database has been made accessible on internet. Every agency has different access to the database and has the possibility to fill in the masks only which are related to its specific role in the monitoring activities.
The input of the data is strictly controlled to avoid the insertion of errors.
For some kind of data, such as the chemical analyze, that involve numerous samples and fields, there is the possibility to include all the data in a text file, which is send by email to the database operator after the congruence of the information and the correctness of the format has been verified by a software especially built by ICRAM. This procedure allows to directly insert in the database the files generated by the laboratory, limiting as much as possible the editing of the data, and therefore the possibility of mistakes.
All agencies can consult the database, but can only modify the information related to its own activities. Besides a track is recorded for each change, associated to the name of the user who revised the data.
The database can be consulted both by hypertext links (that allow to access separately to different samples, analyses and results) and by specific queries for an advanced search.
Furthermore all the results can be downloaded in a text file and saved in other format to be manipulated.
A related GIS has been built up by using ESRI software, in order to display the monitoring data on the map of the area of interest and to query the database using the geographic information related to each data.
Base maps of the study area (coast line, bathymetries) and maps of the distribution of Posidonia oceanica beds and the locations of aquaculture plants have been loaded into the system.

Last June the preliminary survey of the area has been carried out.
Abiotic and biotic data have been collected: multiparameter sonde profiles have been logged, chemical analyses and bioassays have been executed on the water column, R.O.V. investigations along horizontal transects have been conducted on bottoms in proximity of seagrass beds, bioaccumulation testing and biomarkers have been done on mussel tissues and fishes respectively, and microbiological analyses have been performed on both mussels and fishes.
In this occurrence the database has been tested and improved.

All the information in database are correlated to geographic coordinates, inserted by the field operator in the default GPS format (latitude and longitude values are expressed in degree and minutes). All the position are automatically converted in decimal degree (the format of GIS data) by the system using a simple mathematic formula which catches the original data and transforms them in the correct numerical system.
All the data collected are loaded into GIS and overlapped to the base maps in order to create simple thematic maps showing the study area and the sampling sites.

Discussion and Conclusions
During a monitoring activity a big size of heterogeneous data are collected and it is necessary to store them in a system able to manage the whole information in order to allow different involved agencies to use it. The database, created to receive the whole data collected during the monitoring activities in the Port of La Spezia and linked to a GIS, is a good system to store and manage the information coming from different sources. GIS is used to visualize the whole information and to analyse the data coming from the fields activities. The possibility to load the data directly online simplifies the exchange and the diffusion of the information. In this way the information is immediately available for all the allowed users. In the near future the database will be further modified and improved in order to contain all the data that will be collected during the whole monitoring activity.