– Rio de Janeiro, RJ- Brasil

This work describes the use of a distributed system on an Internet/Intranet environment-DISI2E. This system is being applied to environmental data at the Pantanal area in Brazil, as a tool for accessing several different thematic maps, dealing with different scales, gathering information from multiple sources, and enabling the decision process at municipal and regional level to be interactively accomplished. The system integrates heterogeneous data presented as modules. These modules can be any kind of file visualised by a browser: pictures, html files, audio files, animations files and other types of files visualised via a plug-in, like executable programs (CGI), applets and queries to databases. The user, through an interface very similar to the Windows Explorer, selects these modules. Then, these modules, following the object-oriented paradigm, are related basically in part-of relations (containment relationships, like regions on a map) or some of them – simpler – are taken as attributes of more complex ones. In order to operate DISI2E users need onl