The usefulness of public geoportal functions in planning and preliminary environmental assessment of rural areas

Contemporary spatial planning and environmental engineering increasingly rely on geographic information systems (GIS), which enable the integration and analysis of spatial and descriptive data.The aim of this study was to assess the usefulness of selected public GIS tools in the preliminary environmental assessment of rural areas.The analysis was conducted on selected plots located in the Kamionka Wielka municipality.Browser-based functions available within these platforms were used to evaluate land use, nature protection areas, technical infrastructure, and potential natural hazards.The results confirm that GIS tools provide effective access to essential information such as cadastral data, planning documents, protected areas, and risk factors including landslides and mining zones.Despite offering only basic functionalities, public GIS services prove useful in the early stages of investment planning and environmental assessment in rural areas.