FTZ (MT) produced 2 maps that pertain to the Plan4All requirements. The descriptions of the two layers are as follows:
- Land Cover
- LandUse
Land Cover Mapping in Malta was initiated as part of the accession exercise carried out to conform to the priority dataflow requirements as established by the European Environment Agency. The initial exercise was carried out for CLC2000 and was validated based on a 100% parameter take as sampling was deemed difficult due to the small area of the islands. A second run was carried out for CLC2006, where the opportunity was taken to carry out CLC1990 and change analysis for 1990-2000 and 2000-2006. The layer used for Plan4All is based on the CLC2006 map, which includes 19 categories (agriculture with significant area of natural vegetation, airports, complex cultivation patterns, coniferous forest, continuous urban fabric, discontinuous urban fabric, dump sites, green urban areas, industrial or commercial units, mineral extraction sites, mixed forest, non-irrigated arable land, port areas, salines, sclerophyllous vegetation, sea and ocean, sparsely vegetated areas, sport and leisure facilities, and vineyards).
The LandUse map for Malta was created for this project as based on the CLC mapping exercise with additional review of areas that pertain to specific development planning and environmental legislation. Malta has a series of maps that have been created for local planning purposes, quasi-equivalent to NUTS4/LAU1, which however do not have a harmonised attribute as well as spatial structure thus they were used only for comparative and specific use review.
LandUse in Malta is highly mixed, however most of the areas have a predominance of one main use which is mainly residential with commercial and industrial areas situated in specific locations.
The landuse attributes were those agreed at the Olomouc workshop (agriculture, commercial, industrial, mining/quarrying, natural, other, parks, residental, services, transportinfrastructure) and for each area the relevant legislation was consulted due to the fact that Malta as of 2010 has a combined development planning and environmental law, which identifies different levels of use and protection through a series of subsidiary legislation. Prior to 2010, there were two separate planning and environmental laws.
The data sources included development planning zoning, predominant landuse and data from the various spatial maps created for the legislative process inclusive of development application process, environmental protection and resource mapping.
Detail Description of Source Data
The scheme used for Land Cover was that identified by the Plan4All guidelines and the Application Schema was the “Land Cover” Schema. As most of the attributes were not included in the original CLC2006 map, new datasets had to be integrated in order to follow this schema.
The Codelists used for this layer include the following.
The table describes source data features, attributes and code lists important for data transformation and harmonisation.
Note that the attribute names are truncated due to the transformation from MapInfo (.tab) to ESRI (.shp) format.
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Attribute: Code2006 |
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Value type: |
number |
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Definition: |
ID of the feature |
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Code List: |
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Attribute: Description |
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Value type: |
string |
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Definition: |
Land Cover Code |
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Code List |
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The scheme used for Land Use was that identified by the Plan4All guidelines and the Application Schema was the “Land Use” Schema. The attributes had to be restructured to conform to the requirements for the Plan4All map and the attributes were updated accordingly. Source datasets were acquired from the Landcovermap, a planning datalayer and the CDDA (Environmental protection) datalayer.
The Codelists used for this layer include the following.
The table describes source data features, attributes and code lists important for data transformation and harmonisation.
Note that the attribute names are truncated due to the transformation from MapInfo (.tab) to ESRI (.shp) format.
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Attribute: Code |
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Value type: |
number |
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Definition: |
ID of the feature based on CLC |
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Code List: |
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Attribute: Description |
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Value type: |
string |
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Definition: |
Land Use Code based on CLC2006 |
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Code List |
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Attribute: Legislation (Planning) |
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Value type: |
string |
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Definition: |
Legislation Date Planning |
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Code List: |
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Attribute: Legislation (Environment) |
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Value type: |
string |
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Definition: |
Legislation Date Environment |
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Code List: |
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Attribute: Protection (Environment) |
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Value type: |
string |
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Definition: |
Protection Type |
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Code List: |
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Transformation method
For both LandCover and LandUse datalayers, the transformation method used was mainly one from a GI format to another GI format with projection formats being required as follows:
All data was already in a spatial format and additional features not in the original dataset were added through SQL querying in order to conform to the data requirements for the Plan4All transformation output.
The source for LandCover was that produced for CLC2006 and the transformation process was enabled through the linking of Code2006 to InspireID and the Description was linked to Classification in the target data. The additional information was sourced from the metadata documentation provided on the EEA CDR.
The source for LandUse was that based on both LandCover and a number of datasets; one designating landuse legislation and another, the CDDA (environmental protection areas as required by the EEA). In addition references were made to the Structure Plan (1988) documentation. The transformation process was enabled through the linking of Code to InspireID and the Description was linked to Classification in the target data through an area designation as it fitted within the target designation such as residential, quarrying.
The transformation process for both datalayers was carried out through SQL (Table update) queries in MapInfo and the respective updates where copied for the target ;layer. Note that Maltese legislation incorporates both planning and environment and covers all the national areas, thus attributes are populated throughout by the reference to the national legislation. In addition, there are no sub-national legislative planning and environmental legislation except for specific areas that have been indicated in the respective cell.
The spatial transformation was more complex due to the fact that Malta holds all its data in a truncated ED50 format which required the following steps in order to be converted to the final required projection:
- Restoration of the truncated 4 in Northings and 39 in Eastings;
- Reprojecting to WGS84: EPSG: 36233;
- Conversion to shp format from .tab format;
- Colour schemes are lost in the transition and need to be recreated in the geoserver.
Publication
The webmap client used isGeoserver which is hosted on the FTZ geoportal (http://ftzgeo.org:8080/geoserver/web)
Land Cover
Land Use
The services offered by the system are WMS, WFS, whilst metadata services are provided through a link to the Plan4All metadata service where these files were stored in both xml and xls formats.
The main data layers are made available through OpenLayers format incorporating WMS and WFS services:
LandCover
Landuse