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Bay of Fundy Marine Resource Centre plots success with GIS
Each year, dozens of oil tankers move through the Bay of Fundy off the Nova Scotia coast to and from oil refineries in St. John, New Brunswick. What would happen should a tanker spill its cargo?
Swiftly combating a coastal oil spill would require coordinating several hundred clean-up workers–housing and feeding them, providing communications, pinpointing wharves, designating priority clean-up areas, identifying local services–essentially providing these people with the tools and resources to do their jobs.
With memories of the Exxon Valdez tragedy in mind, the Bay of Fundy Marine Resource Centre (MRC) in Nova Scotia is using geographic information system (GIS) technology to develop an oil-spill preparedness plan. Funding from GeoConnections' Sustainable Communities Initiative (SCI) enabled the MRC to purchase a full-size map plotter and upgrade its GIS software–two important ingredients for developing such a plan.
"We have the information we need to deal with an oil spill," says Martin Kaye, Manager of the MRC. "But someone would have to search through paper documents to find what they're looking for. We want to make the information instantly accessible on a digital map, which will speed clean-up efforts."
Developing a community management plan
An oil-spill preparedness plan is one of several community-initiated digital mapping projects sparked by the new GIS technology. The St. Mary's Bay working group and the Annapolis Bay working group have been created to update provincial and federal data collected in 1997. This data includes information about the local fishery and the locations of various community assets such as churches, halls, training centres, and arenas. The MRC intends to create a community management plan, one that hinges on residents adding local personality to this data: capturing folklore about places, recording names of beaches and inlets, describing historical events–the foundations of their communities.
In fact, the funding from GeoConnections' SCI has allowed the MRC to serve as the GIS access point for all communities in the southwest region of Nova Scotia. "People are interested in developing projects for economic development and environmental issues," says Mr. Trevor Robar, GIS Consultant with the MRC. "We've dedicated a computer to housing local economic and environmental data, and we're offering it to everyone in the region."
Long-term sustainability at Digby Neck
Digby Neck has embraced this vision in an effort to boost economic development. A community of some 1000 people on a narrow peninsula in the St. Mary's Bay area, Digby Neck intends to use the MRC's GIS to record the historical, cultural, environmental, economic, and social assets of the community. In the short term, the community proposes to harness this data to publish a directory of small businesses, update a tourism brochure, and record the community's local history and heritage.
"It's a huge amount of work," says Arthur Bull, Chair of the Digby Neck Community Development Association, "but the mapping is providing the platform for these types of economic development initiatives, and the GIS greatly simplifies our job."
The GIS offers Digby Neck residents the opportunity to promote local small businesses, especially tourism, and in so doing improve long-term sustainability. "The work we're doing today will eventually provide the basis for an integrated community development plan," says Mr. Bull. "A community plan would give our residents a greater sense of self-determination. The people here want to determine how, when, and where to develop the community, and the GIS becomes a powerful tool for defining what kind of future we desire."
Show me the map!
Initially convincing local residents to get on board the GIS bandwagon, however, took the MRC some doing–until people saw the 1:10,000-scale maps that the new plotter could produce. "When we first discussed the project–before we got the printer–people had difficulty seeing the benefits," says Mr. Robar. "Once we printed these big colour-coded maps, interest exploded."
Given that the MRC is the only non-profit organization in this region of Nova Scotia with a full-size plotter, Mr. Kaye is arranging to make the machine available to other non-profit groups in the area. "I didn't realize how valuable the plotter was," he says, "until we put the word out that we're providing free access to it."
Despite his good intentions, Mr. Kaye might have a hard time convincing current users to give up the plotter–even temporarily. "It's amazing to see our residents, many of them retirees, latch onto the GIS, learn new technology, and then apply it within their community," he says. "The MRC started by leading the community, but now the community is leading us, which is excellent. Once our GeoConnections funding is over, this project will continue. The people here are going to run with it."
| GeoConnections is a national partnership initiative led by Natural Resources Canada to build the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI) and make Canada's geospatial databases, tools, and services readily accessible on-line. |