As climate change continues, wildfire outbreaks are becoming more frequent and more difficult to control. In mid-July 2017, a forest fire spread from the forests to the city of Split in Croatia. This unpredictable spread nearly caused emergency systems to collapse. Fortunately, a major tragedy was avoided due to the composure of the responsible services and the help of citizens. Citizens helped to extinguish the fire and provided a large amount of disaster-related information on various social media platforms in a timely manner. In this paper, we addressed the problem of identifying useful Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) and georeferenced social media crowdsourcing data to improve situational awareness during the forest fire in the city of Split. In addition, social media data were combined with other external data sources (e.g., Sentinel-2 satellite imagery) and authoritative data to establish geographic relationships between wildfire phenomena and social media messages. This article highlights the importance of using georeferenced social media data and provides a different perspective for disaster management by filling gaps in authoritative data. Analyses from the presented reconstruction of events from multiple sources impact a better understanding of these types of events, knowledge sharing, and insights into crowdsourcing processes that can be incorporated into disaster management.

Spatial data infrastructure (SDI) related to marine spatial data is known as marine SDI (MSDI). In this paper, we determine data themes under the MSDI in the order of usefulness and efficiency. The purpose is to streamline and support the prioritisation of data to be further implemented in the MSDI. This is conceptualised using the logic of decision support systems and a multi-criteria analysis approach that integrates components such as data, stakeholders, and users through multi-criteria methods for priority ranking. This research proposes an MSDI development concept and is validated using the Croatian MSDI case.

Due to climate changes, wildfire breakouts get more frequent and difficult to control. In the mid-July 2017, the wildfire spread from wildland to the city of Split, the second-largest city in Croatia. This unpredictable spread almost caused the collapse of emergency response systems. Fortunately, a greater tragedy was avoided with the composure of the responsible services and the help of the citizens. The citizens helped in extinguishing the fire and timely provided the significant amount of disaster-related information on different platforms and through social media. In this paper, we address the problem of identifying useful Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) and georeferenced social media, for improving situation awareness while the wildfire was reaching the Croatian city of Split. Additionally, we combine social media with other external data sources (e. g. Sentinel-2 satellite images) and authoritative data (e.g. Croatian National Protection and Rescue Directorate official data and Public Fire Department of Split data) to establish the geographical relations between the wildfire phenomena and social media messages. In this manner, we seek to leverage the existing knowledge and data about the spatiotemporal characteristics of the Split wildfire in order to improve the identification of useful information from georeferenced social media with other integrated data sources that can be valuable for improving situation awareness in wildfire events.

There are multiple factors affecting the behavior of water properties in an estuary, including the hydraulic properties of rivers and corresponding receiving water bodies, along with the potential solutes brought by rivers. Although there are various numerical models and analytical approaches to solving particular or holistic problems in estuaries, measurements are inevitably required. In this study, we developed an innovative low-cost probe based on the Arduino platform as an alternative to more expensive measuring systems. Our device is designed to measure position, temperature, and electrical conductivity in multiple realizations, and it consists of a floating container equipped with the following components: an Arduino Mega development board, a power management module, an SD card logging module, a Bluetooth module, a temperature measuring module, a global positioning satellite (GPS) position module, and a newly developed module for measuring electrical conductivity (EC). We emphasize that all used tools are open-source and greatly supported by the worldwide community. We tested our probe during a field campaign conducted at the estuary of River Jadro near Split (Croatia). Nine probes were released at the river mouth and their position, temperature, and EC were monitored and recorded during the experiment, which ended when the probes stopped, due to the river plume attenuation. The same experiment was repeated three times. All of the probes recorded consistent temperature data, while the EC data show more variable behavior, due to the higher sensitivity of the corresponding sensor. This was expected as a part of the natural process in the estuary. The measured data were additionally used to parameterize an analytical model for mean flow velocity and salinity as a proxy concentration. This showed a good match between the experimental results and the theoretical framework. This work, although focused on water surface applications in the near field zone of an estuary, should be considered as a promising step toward the development of innovative and affordable measurement devices.

Need for a Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure (MSDI) as a component of a National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) is widely recognized. An MSDI is relevant not only for hydrographers and government planners, but also for many other sectors which takes interest in marine spatial data, whether they are data users, data providers, or data managers [9]. An MSDI encompasses marine and coastal geographic and business information. For efficient use of Marine Spatial Data, it is necessary to ensure its valid and accessible distribution. A geoportal is a specialized web portal for sharing spatial information at different levels over the Internet. This paper re-examines the implementation of an MSDI and what it means for data custodians and end users. Several geoportals are reviewed (German and Australian) to determine their web services functionality, capabilities and the scope to which they support the sharing and reuse of Marine Spatial Data to assist the development of the Croatian MSDI Geoportal. This framework provides a context for better understanding the information bases on spatial data standards and a tool for evaluation of MSDI dissemination - Geoportal.