GAARI: Geovisor Ambiental de Aptitud Territorial por remoción e inundación para proyectos de infraestructura lineal en Tunja, Boyacá

Abstract

This work addresses a problem identified in the request review phase for the design of natural gas distribution networks by Vanti S.A. in municipalities outside Bogotá: the cartography available to assess territorial suitability is scarce, outdated, or only available in static PDF formats, forcing engineers to visually determine whether a site is suitable for network construction — a process that is imprecise, slow, and error-prone, which has led to approvals in unsuitable areas and costly infrastructure removals. The three critical evaluation variables are high flood hazard, high mass removal hazard, and the presence of protection soils. The municipality of Tunja, Boyacá, was selected as a pilot case due to its high susceptibility to these hazards and because of its official cartography, corresponding to the 2014 Land Use Plan (POT), does not include the mass removal layer. To address this problem, GAARI (Geovisor of Environmental Restrictions and Hazards by Mass Removal and Flooding) was developed — a web GIS tool that integrates the three variables to automate territorial suitability assessment. Following the XP agile methodology, the project was structured around official cartographic data collection, layer standardization and integration in PostgreSQL/PostGIS, and geoviewer implementation on an Apache Tomcat, GeoServer, and Leaflet architecture. The evaluation logic operates through a parameterized SQL view in PostGIS exposed as a WFS service, classifying any queried point as "Suitable" or "Not Suitable" in real time using a Boolean exclusion model. Validation through pre- and post-implementation surveys applied to Vanti's planning team demonstrated a reduction in evaluation time per site from 10–15 minutes to under 2 minutes in 100% of cases. GAARI proved that scattered official cartography can be transformed into an accessible, precise, and interoperable web GIS tool aligned with OGC standards, with a scalable and replicable architecture for other municipalities where Vanti and other natural gas distribution companies operate in Colombia.