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Environment and location-based information
Location-based or “geospatial” information and online mapping are important to making smart decisions about the environment and contributing to sustainable development.
Maps have long been used to portray a variety of geospatial information—land use, land cover, zoning, development proposals, species ranges, and environmental impacts, to name a few. Mapped information and geospatial analysis can contribute to assessing the current state of Canada's environment and to modeling the future of Canadian landscapes and influencing plans to reach a desired future state. Further, these techniques can help measure the cumulative effects of development options on the environment.
In short, geospatial information, together with state-of-the-art techniques to portray, integrate and analyze the data, can aid in land-use planning and environmental monitoring activities and can contribute to effective assessments in support of regulatory processes.
The need for a unifying spatial data structure
Geospatial information is held by a multitude of organizations—federal, provincial, territorial, municipal, non-government, private-sector, and academic. As well, the information is fragmented by subject (e.g., land use, water quality, and species). A unifying structure is needed to link these disparate sources and types of data together. Spatial data infrastructures can provide that cohesiveness.
To one degree or another, spatial data infrastructures can now be found in more than 100 countries. Canada's spatial data infrastructure is called the “Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure” (CGDI), and the national GeoConnections program is designed to enhance the CGDI's development and encourage its use as a decision-making asset.
How the CGDI and GeoConnections improve environmental decision making
GeoConnections aims to contribute to improving environmental decision making by:
- working with user communities to develop online systems that integrate and analyse the diverse data sets required for effective decision making, for example, in areas such as land-use planning, environmental monitoring, and contributing to such legal requirements as environmental assessments;
- working with data suppliers to make key environmental data sets, as identified by the user community, available through the CGDI;
- working with developers of national information systems, such as the National Land and Water Information Service, to ensure they use CGDI tools effectively to meet the needs of their user communities in support of sustainable development decision making;
- working with the Canadian geomatics industry to develop online, open standards based tools that support environmental decision making; and
- working through federal and national geomatics committees to change policies
and reduce barriers to sharing geospatial data via the Internet.