The Diputación de Málaga has launched the Málaga Provincial Geoportal, a new Spatial Data Infrastructure platform for the province that improves on the current portal (Idemap) through the introduction of new tools and applications and the updating and modernisation of existing ones.
The president of the Diputación de Málaga, Francisco Salado, today presented this new platform (www.idemap.es), which will provide access to the province’s spatial databases and brings together a wide range of graphic information (such as orthophotos, cartography, topography and satellite images) with a large amount of statistical information on the territory that is georeferenced, such as local infrastructure and facilities, buildings on non-developable land, street maps of the municipalities, street furniture, long-distance footpaths and points of cultural and environmental interest.
It is the most complete spatial database on the province, with 3,180,517 records and a size of 20 GB, including a detailed, georeferenced description of infrastructure, buildings, furniture, real estate, tracks, footpaths and more. As spatial data, it includes provincial orthophotos from different years, which take up around 329 GB and total 57,169 JPG files that make up the images. However, it is a project that remains active and will be permanently updated and expanded.
Salado explained that this new tool, on which technicians from the Diputación’s Architecture-Urban Planning and Territorial Information Service have worked for two years, is compatible with mobile devices and has been designed using free software, which offers major advantages in terms of cost and interoperability with tools from other administrations and bodies.
«It will be a highly useful platform not only for the day-to-day management of the town halls, the Diputación itself, other sectoral administrations and the professional associations most closely linked to planning (such as architects, quantity surveyors, engineers and surveyors), but it will also be of interest to the public in general», he added.
Francisco Salado stressed that, «at the Diputación, we do not want any municipality in the province – especially the smallest ones and those with less technical and financial capacity – to be left behind in the use and exploitation of these technological resources, but rather for all towns to be able to benefit from the great advantages offered by the products and applications that help to understand and analyse the territory in a more agile, effective and higher-quality way».
Two distinct areas
The new portal has two distinct areas. On the one hand, there is a public section, open to the general public, with various viewers providing access to very complete and varied documentation. On the other hand, there is a private area that allows town halls, or professionals who are granted permission through agreements, to edit the existing information in the databases on a particular municipality, modifying and updating it.
This new platform includes, for example, important information such as existing buildings on non-developable land and public-use tracks. As for the former, more than 94,000 buildings in 62 municipalities have been identified, indicating the type of restriction affecting them (protected area, public woodland, roads, water, etc.).
As for the tracks, almost 7,300 kilometres in 68 municipalities are included, with details such as their condition and the type of surface they have. In both cases, data for all local entities with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants will be included by the end of this year.
Of particular interest, too, is the viewer for local infrastructure and facilities, which contains data, updated annually, from 95 municipalities in the province with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants on the water supply and distribution cycle (such as reservoirs, abstraction points and pipelines), sanitation (outfalls, discharges, collectors and treatment plants), facilities (town halls, care centres, schools, parks, roads), solid waste, paving and street lighting.
The records include, for example, 3.2 million metres of water supply pipes, 1.7 million metres of conduits, 2.3 million metres of sewerage networks and 20 million square metres of paved roads. There are also 224 gardens, totalling 390,000 square metres, and 186 playgrounds, as well as 754 schools and 144 health and care centres.
In this way, detailed information is provided that makes it possible to know, for example, how many pipes are made of fibre cement or are in poor condition, how many streetlights do not yet have LED lights, in which areas green spaces or playgrounds are located, or which areas have no recycling containers.
Inventories of real estate and street furniture
The geoportal has added other inventories that are also very useful for town halls, such as the real estate inventory (already available for 36 municipalities and giving direct access to land registry data on each property), and the street furniture inventory, which can detail the location of, for example, litter bins, tree pits, planters, benches, traffic lights, fountains, hydrants or bicycle parking in each municipality.
Another very important tool available to municipalities, especially given the progress of the covid-19 pandemic, is one specific to Civil Protection, created during lockdown, which allows users to consult data on municipal emergency plans and information of interest on the resources available in each town for emergency situations, such as the current one.
It includes data on the location and characteristics of all care homes for the elderly in the municipality, which is very useful for disinfection work or if specific action needs to be taken. Supermarkets, schools and other logistical infrastructure that could be taken into account if emergency beds need to be set up or prepared are also listed. And it provides access to all the measures taken to tackle the pandemic in each town.
Environmental and footpath information
In addition, a viewer on environmental information is included for the first time, which will in future integrate all environmental restrictions, determinations and records for the municipalities and districts on aspects such as relief and geomorphology, surface and groundwater, biodiversity, flood-prone areas and other climate-related risks in the territory.
It also includes viewers of general interest on the Caminito del Rey, long-distance footpaths in the province and Points of Provincial Interest, with information on historical, ethnographic, architectural and natural heritage. This viewer shows, for example, the location of the 828 stepping-stone crossings in the province or the 61 golf clubs and courses.
Orthophoto comparison tool dating back to 1956
At the same time, the existing Idemap tools have been updated, such as the orthophoto viewers, the cartography and the historical orthophoto comparison tool (offering images from 1956), which is very useful, for example, for understanding the urban development of the territory or for detecting possible illegal buildings.
Updated graphic information is available from the PNOA (National Aerial Orthophotography Plan), from 2019, along with orthophotos produced by the Diputación de Málaga, which are of higher quality and resolution. In this case, the images date from 2012 and the Diputación has committed to updating them, starting this year, so that these images, which give detailed, high-quality access to every point of the territory, are as recent as possible.
Francisco Salado also indicated that the portal allows geographic information to be downloaded in various formats, spatial data to be exported to external sources, information to be consulted and searched using advanced spatial criteria, and the current state of infrastructure, facilities, furniture, real estate and buildings to be studied.
To help with its introduction and to ensure that the resources it offers are well understood and put to full use, a number of guides and video tutorials will be produced on how to use all the geoportal’s applications. Training sessions aimed at town halls will also be held to deal with queries and questions arising from its launch.
You can visit it at: http://www.idemap.es
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