Geoportal of the green zones in the city of Sumy

Abstract

The article substantiates the significance of green areas geoportals’ creation for city (town) that will serve as a tool to order and systematize the information on quantitative, qualitative and other indicators of green spaces, including the volume, nature and mode of their use, as well as being the source of this information visualization by the Internet. It is noted that in the Ukrainian cities (towns), local governments monitor green areas by accounting and updating the register of plants by species composition and age. All kinds of planting should be included into the register: trees, shrubs, herbs, flower beds, lawns, etc. However, much of this reporting information is presented only by tabular data without accompanying cartographic visualization. As there is no single source of all available systematized information about the green areas of the city (town) with the corresponding cartographic visualization, it is difficult to systematize the recording of existing green spaces, to clearly delineate their boundaries, to monitor their condition, etc. To facilitate the solution to these issues we need to create a geoportal of green areas of the city (town) as a public source, containing a cartographic image of the corresponding green zone and correlated text, table, photographic and other information. On these bases, on Google’s service, we have developed a geoportal of green areas for Sumy town, intended for public use. The content of the portal is presented by the layers: parks and squares (allotted 14 zones), green areas (6), Natural reserve objects that are green zones - botanical gardens, parks-monuments (3), urban forests (2), boulevards (2), tracts (1). Functional capabilities of the geoportal include activating and deactivating visibility of thematic layers, outputting textual and photographic information about the greenery, represented in the geoportal, scaling, measuring the areas and distances, the mode of viewing the streets, laying the routes. It is also important that users can leave comments and suggestions to local authority about the current state of green areas and beautification of the city (town). It is indicated that creation of the city’s (town’s) green zone geoportal will improve the accounting and registration of green areas of the city (town) and their cartographic visualization. Promising in this study is the creation of a specialized geoportal of city’s green areas for official use only.