Volumen 21 (2013): Heft 1 (March 2013)

Climate change is one of the largest threats to the modern world. It is primarily experienced via changes and extreme weather events, including air temperature changes, the uneven distribution of precipitation and an increase in the alteration of torrential short-term precipitation and longer non-precipitation periods. However climate change is not only a change in the weather; it also has a much larger impact on an ecosystem. As a result of expected climate change, a lack of either surface water or groundwater could occur within wetlands; thus, the existence of wetlands and their flora and fauna could be threatened. This submitted work analyses the impact of climate change on the wetland ecosystems of Poiplie, which is situated in the south of Slovakia in the Ipeľ river basin. The area is an important wetland biotope with rare plant and animal species, which mainly live in open water areas, marshes, wet meadows and alluvial forests. To evaluate any climate change, the CGCM 3.1 model, two emission scenarios, the A2 emission scenario (pessimistic) and the B1 emission scenario (optimistic), were used within the regionalization. For simulating the soil water storage, which is one of the components of a soil water regime, the GLOBAL mathematical model was used.

The resilient behaviour of an unsaturated, unbound granular material is a primary input used in the mechanistic analysis of pavements incorporating such layers. Various models exist for the determination of the resilient behaviour, mainly based on the output of tri-axial laboratory testing. This paper describes an investigation where basic engineering properties such as grading, laboratory compaction characteristics and optimum moisture content are incorporated into the resilient behaviour model to quantify the effect of basic material properties on the resilient response of unsaturated, unbound granular materials. Such a resilient behaviour model will enable practitioners to estimate the behaviour of specific material, which might enable the use of available quality material that was discarded in the past. Data from tri-axial laboratory tests on materials originating from the Long Term Pavement Performance test sections are combined with basic engineering parameters of typical unbound granular material through a statistical modelling process to develop a model for predicting resilient behaviour, which can be used as a practical predictor of the expected behaviour during a Level 2 and/or Level 3 Mechanistic Empirical Pavement Design analysis. The work illustrates the process and the potential to develop a general resilient behaviour model for unbound granular materials incorporating saturation effects.

An impoundment is an engineering construction used for the safe deposition of unexploitable waste from industrial and mining facilities. In terms of the legislative requirements of the Slovak Republic, a “Measurements Project” must be developed for each impoundment. In this document the prerequisites for the safe operation of an impoundment, the limit and critical values of the monitored phenomena and the facts influencing the safety of the impoundment and the area endangered by such a site are also defined. The safety and stability of an impoundment are verified according to a ”Measurements Project” by considering stability at regular time intervals. This contribution presents, in the form of a parametric study, a stability analysis of an ash impoundment. The stability analysis provides an example of the utilization of an information database of the results of the regular monitoring of the geotechnical properties of the materials forming the impoundment´s body and the surrounding rock mass. The stability of the impoundment is expressed for a recent state - without a continuous water level in its body and, at the same time, for a hypothetical limit and critical water level according to the valid “Handling Regulations“.

The basic database for a geographic information system (BD GIS) forms the core of a national spatial data infrastructure. Nowadays decisions are being made about the potential data sources for additional data updates and refinement of the BD GIS. Will the data from departmental or other information system administrators serve for this purpose?

This paper gives an answer as to whether it is advisable to use “geodetic mapping” (the results realized in the process of land consolidation) or “cadastral mapping” (the results realized in the process of the renewal of cadastral documentation by new mapping) for additional data updates. In our analysis we focus on the quality parameters at the individual data element level, namely the positional accuracy, attribute accuracy, logical consistency, and data resolution. The results of the analysis are compared with the contents of the Object Class Catalog of BD GIS (OCC), which describes the group of objects managed by BD GIS and defines the data collection methods, types of geometry and its properties.

The paper deals with the performance testing of web mapping services. The paper describes map service tests in which it is possible to determine the performance characteristics of a map service, depending on the location and scale of the map. The implementation of the test is tailored to the Web Map Service specifications provided by the Open Geospatial Consortium. The practical experiment consists of testing the map composition acquired from OpenStreetMap data for the area of southwestern Slovakia. These tests permit checking the performance of services in different positions, verifying the configuration of services, the composition of a map, and the visualization of geodata.

The task of this paper is to also highlight the fact that it is not sufficient to only interpret a map service performance with conventional indicators. A map service’s performance should be linked to information about the map’s scale and location.