An open-source GIS approach for a new abandoned quarries plan

The landscape and environment management sometimes depends on some decisions that can’t be based on numeric and objective factors since the evaluations are strongly subjective.
The impact level of an abandoned quarry is one of these critical cases. This paper aims to describe a project created to discover and to classify the abandoned quarries of the Regione Umbria (an administrative district of Italy). There are a lot of variables that are implied in defining if an abandoned quarry is environmentally worse than the others and the difficulties of choosing grows with the number of the quarries.
The logistic regression can be used in these cases. The project has been organised in two phases: the first one concerned a large field survey during which more than 350 dismissed sites have been visited, the second one concerned an extensive analysis of the collected data. The data have been organised into a geographical database that contains, among the others, information about: the quarry extension, the maximum height of the front, the inter-visibility area, the percentage of the vegetated area and of the quarry lakes, etc..
Each quarry was characterised using more than 100 parameters. The logistic regression method was used to classify the abandoned quarries with the aim of defining the priorities of environmental reclamation and since to obtain an ordered list of the worse sites. In particular the logistic regression allowed to minimize the subjectivity of the operators and to develop a classification model, based on the used variables, useful for the regional area.
So the method classified with a holistic parameter all the abandoned quarries, and selected 72 abandoned quarries with high environmental impact. This classification, with all the informations concerning the quarries, is now very useful for planning the actions of environmental reclamation.
This note describes also how the free/libre GIS software instruments (Grass Gis, PostgreSQL and R) have been used in this work. In fact the Regione Umbria, by means of the Regional Law n.11/2006, decided to favour the adoption and the spread of the Open Source Software. This considering the positive feedbaks on the development of the scientific and technological research and on the cost reduction for the Public Administration.