The value of Gi4DM for transport & water management

Abstract

The tasks and responsibilities of the ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water management in the Netherlands are focused on water management (water quality and water quantity) and traffic and transport over waterways, roads, rail and in the air. In the past several calamities have taken place in those sectors: heavy car collisions due to intense fog nearby the city of Breda (1972, 1990), pollution of Rhinewater due to fire in Sandozplant (1986), airplane crashes near Schiphol and Eindhoven (1994, 1995), derailment of chloride trains in Delfzijl and Kijfhoek (2000, 1986), river floods (1993, 1995), and recently some dike collapses due to heavy drought and rain (2003, 2004). Besides managing these large(r) calamities daily traffic incident management along the main roads and waterways is a major task of the Ministry as well. At all those occasions the need for (spatial) information and supporting information systems is large. That need has only grown because the attention has also shifted to the proactive and preventive phase in the calamity control and incident management. © 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.