Istsos, Sensor Observation Management System: a Real Case Application of Hydro-meteorological Data for Flood Protection

istSOS (Istituto scienze della Terra Sensor Observation Service) is an implementation of the Sensor Observation Service standard from Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). The development of istSOS started in 2009 in order to provide a simple implementation of the Sensor Observation Service (SOS) standard for the management, provision and integration of hydro-meteorological data collected in Canton Ticino (Southern Switzerland). istSOS is entirely written in Python and is based on reliable open source software like PostgreSQL/PostGIS and Apache/mod_wsgi. The authors during this presentation want to illustrate the latest software enhancements together with a real case in a production environment. Latest software enhancement includes the development of a RESTful service and of a Web-based graphical user interface that allows hydrologists a better interaction with measurements. This includes the ability of new services creation, addition of new sensors and relative metadata, visualization and manipulation of stored observations, registration of new measures and setting of system properties like observable properties and data quality codes. The study will show a real case application of the system for the provision of data to interregional partners and to a hydrological model for lake level forecasting and flooding hazard assessment. The hydrological model uses a combination of WPS (Web Processing Service) and SOS for the generation of model input data. This system is linked with a dedicated geo-portal used by the civil protection for the management, alert and protection of population and assets of the Locarno area (Verbano Lake flooding). Practical considerations and technical issues will be presented and discussed.