Featured Stories: Volume 5 No. 2

• Understanding the Geodatabase (316KB)
  The geodatabase represents a paradigm shift in the way spatial data is stored, used, and manipulated in a GIS. Other articles in this edition provide examples of how many users are taking advantage of the new capabilities the geodatabase offers. This article will focus on answering some of the important, common questions often asked about the geodatabase by many long-time GIS users.
  
  
• Oak Bay Succeeds with the Geodatabase (182KB)
  The District of Oak Bay, a small municipality of approximately 18,000 people on southern Vancouver Island, first became involved with GIS in the mid-1980s as part of a total solution for integrating engineering field survey data with a facility database and mapping system. At that time their objective was to replace their manual record keeping system with a more automated and centralized approach. They were successful in this endeavour and continued to move forward with GIS, transferring their data from a legacy system to the ESRI coverage model in the late-1990s. Today, the District's water and wastewater data is stored in a personal geodatabase and they are recognizing tremendous benefits from using this model.
  
  
• A Tool for Forest Management/Un outil d'aide aux travaux d'aménagement forestier (163KB)
  The environmental issues associated with tree harvesting present a challenge for the entire forestry sector today. As a result, the industry has been compelled to adopt harvesting methods that reflect a more detailed planning process.
  
  
• Navigating Icy Waterways with GIS (540KB)
  Water transit is vital to Canada's economy. Each year, ships face many challenges traveling the waters of the Labrador Sea, Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the Arctic Ocean. Ice flows and icebergs clog fresh and saltwater shipping lanes, delaying transit and creating hazards for both the ships and those onboard. These environmental conditions have caused some of history's more famous maritime disasters - most notably the Titanic, which sank off the coast of Newfoundland in April, 1912.
  
  
• City of Regina - Step-by-step with the Geodatabase (321KB)
  Located in south central Saskatchewan, the provincial capital of Regina has a population of 187,500 residents. Since becoming a city in 1903 Regina has grown and prospered through good farming, a booming oil industry, and expanding government services. The City began to implement GIS on a departmental basis in the early 1990s, using ESRI technology, and moved to an enterprise GIS in 1999. At that time, a project team called Regina's Enterprise GIS (REGIS) was formed to concentrate on the implementation of the enterprise GIS model.
  
  
• Flood Management and Planning using ArcIMS (350KB)
  The sinuous Red River, and the fertile soils that make the Red River Valley one of the richest farming areas in the world, were left behind thousands of years ago when the huge Glacial Lake Agassiz receded. The Red River twists and meanders northwards 872 river kilometers (nearly twice its land distance) from its source in Wahpeton, North Dakota to its outlet at Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba. The gently sloping nature of the Red River Basin has created an area that is prone to widespread overbank flooding from the Red River, and its tributaries, particularly during spring snowmelt. A new ArcIMS website will soon be launched to provide important flood information to the general public and flood management personnel, via the Internet.
  
  
• HRIA - BC's Archaeological Geodatabase (117KB)
  The Heritage Resource Inventory Application (HRIA), an archaeological and heritage site management system, was designed to provide the functionality to maintain data and produce maps and reports using a province-wide archaeological geodatabase. The HRIA application was designed by the Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management (SRM), Terrestrial Information Branch, Archaeology and Recreation Inventory Section, in British Columbia. It was built by INFORM - Network for Management Systems Limited.
  
  
• Ontario's School Facilities Inventory System (57KB)
  In 1998, the Business Services Branch of the Ministry of Education developed a School Facilities Inventory System (SFIS) to collect and report key information on building components for over 5,000 school facilities in Ontario. The SFIS operates as a "live", web-based database that is updated regularly by school board staff in order to provide accurate and current information about Ontario schools.
  
  
• Complete Issue (3.5 MB)