The Open Government Data portals (OGD), thanks to the presence of thousands of geo-referenced datasets, containing spatial information are of extreme interest for any analysis or process relating to the territory. For this to happen, users must be enabled to access these datasets and reuse them. An element often considered as hindering the full dissemination of OGD data is the quality of their metadata. Starting from an experimental investigation conducted on over 160,000 geospatial datasets belonging to six national and international OGD portals, this work has as its first objective to provide an overview of the usage of these portals measured in terms of datasets views and downloads. Furthermore, to assess the possible influence of the quality of the metadata on the use of geospatial datasets, an assessment of the metadata for each dataset was carried out, and the correlation between these two variables was measured. The results obtained showed a significant underutilization of geospatial datasets and a generally poor quality of their metadata. In addition, a weak correlation was found between the use and quality of the metadata, not such as to assert with certainty that the latter is a determining factor of the former.

Triangulated Irregular Networks (TIN) efficiently define terrain models from which drainage networks and watersheds can be extracted with important applications in hydrology. In this work, the TIN model is represented by a constrained Delaunay triangulation obtained from contour lines and sampled points. Paths of steepest descent calculated from the TIN are connected by processing the triangles according to an associated priority, then forming a drainage graph structure proposed to generate drainage networks from accumulated flows. Major problems such as flat areas and pits that create inconsistencies in the terrain model and discontinuities in flows are removed with procedures that interpolate the elevation values of particular points on the TIN. Drainage networks are defined by arbitrary threshold values, and their associated watersheds and subwatersheds are then delineated. TIN results are qualitatively and quantitatively compared to an available reference drainage network, and also to regular grid results generated with the TerraHidro system. The drainage networks automatically obtained from the drainage graph highly agree to the main courses of water on the terrain, indicating that the TIN is an attractive alternative terrain model for hydrological purposes, and that the proposed drainage graph can be used for the automatic extraction of drainage networks that are consistent with real-world hydrological patterns. HighlightsAn algorithm to generate a drainage graph structure from a TIN model is proposed.The drainage graph allows to derive drainage networks from accumulated flows.An improvement on the procedure for removing flat areas from TINs is presented.Drainage networks and watersheds are consistent with real-world drainage patterns.The algorithms developed are computationally efficient with linear-time complexities.

Fruit of a collaboration between two international research institutions, the paper presents the ongoing activity to foster the provisioning of South America drainage datasets, by means of Open Data principles and tools. We discuss how those environmental data sources may be published and shared for the benefit of public and private organizations and advantage of multi-sectorial research disciplines. The aim is to adopt, either emerging and well-established, tools or practices supporting Open Data production, publication and re-use. We discuss the former results achieved and provide an outlook of the further steps involved in the releasing of South America and Amazon drainage datasets.