Marisa Silva
Engineer
Directorate-General for the Territory Development
Portugal

Biography
Marisa Silva works at the Directorate General for Territorial Development of Portugal, in the Geodesy and Geographic Information Department. After the license degree in Surveying Engineering she is now taking the masters degree. Her main activities are related to Remote Sensing and Cartography.

Abstract
Geospatial Reference Data for Portugal Mainland Coastal SDI: SIARL

Co-Authors:
Antonio Alves, Technician, Directorate-General for the Territory Development
Marco Morais, Technician, Directorate-General for the Territory Development
Manuel Valerio, Eng, Directorate-General for the Territory Development
Paulo Patri­cio, Eng, Directorate-General for the Territory Development

Portugal is a coastal country with a remarkable maritime tradition. Great part of that coast is exposed to the water of the Atlantic Ocean and its temperamental winds which harass and weaken this fragile slice of the territory. Besides these natural events, like in most countries, the anthropomorphic activities induce a great deal of pressure in these areas. In the last years the Portuguese mainland coast has suffered many changes, some of them more or less predictable, others completely unexpected. These changes carry great damages and can even endanger the life of people. So it is vital that we are utmost prepared to face these events in different approaches: planning, management, prevention and reaction. It is common knowledge that in order to preserve something we first need to know it deeply. Having this in mind the Directorate-General for the Territory Development and the Portuguese Environment Agency congregated energies, designing a plan to collect geographical data. These datasets provide solid large scale cartographic information as a base to study, providing state-of-the-art data to the scientific community as well as to the decision makers. The first survey took place in 2008 with a Photogrammetric flight with a 10 cm GSD. With these data it was possible to acquire a Digital Terrain Model with a 2 m resolution and 10 cm GSD Orthophotos. In 2011 a Topographic and Bathymetric LiDAR survey was specially conceived to get to a difficult access area: the shallow waters. In a 600 m meters strip, the bathymetric LiDAR gave us the chance to know with more detail the morphology of this crucial area. In 2014 a new Photogrammetric survey is ongoing, with the special requisite of collecting the intertidal area with low tide, maximizing the potential of this technology. These surveys allow us to perform temporal analysis and to monitor the changes. All of this information is available for the public entities and for the citizens and it's the base information of the Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) specially designed for the management of this part of the territory: SIARL.