Appropriate technology for low cost Geological Mapping
 Nichola Smith  James Passmore  Colm Jordan  Dr Eugene O’Connor British Geological Survey, Kingsley Dunham Centre Keyworth, Nottingham, NG12 5GG, UK Emil: nasm@bgs.ac.uk
Gathering geological data and disseminating the data by traditional methods is a slow and expensive process. In order to re-address the deficiency of geological information world wide within a reasonable time frame and cost then more rapid approaches are needed. Geological Surveys in the developing world, especially those in countries where minerals play and important role in the national economy are increasingly searching for cost-effective and rapid techniques to increase the efficiency of their geological data gathering.
Various affordable, operational technologies such as remote sensing, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), GPS and laser range finders can significantly contribute to improved efficiency. Several levels of technological sophistication are envisaged ranging from off-the-shelf satellite imagery to report generating software that will automatically retrieve specific client orientated information from a global database. The main focus of the project has been directed to the use of remote sensing to gain geological and geohazard information. Funded by the Department of International Development (DFID), London, this British Geological Survey (BGS) project aims to demonstrate that appropriate and affordable technologies such as those mentioned above, together with access to the internet can contribute to data sourcing efficiency in diverse geographic and climatic terrains. Methodology The starting point for the project was a manual written by The British Geological Survey, entitled Remote Sensing and image analysis a practical training manual, this contained information on guidance for the use of the technology available. This document was then marked up using eXtensible Markup Language (XML). XML is a document processing standard that allows text documents such as the manuals to be encoded with information to allow the retrieval of information as requested by the user. This is a highly useful and relatively new form of designing text formats, and produces files that are easy to generate and easy for a computer to read. (XML) allows text to be encoded with 3 broad types of information. They are:
 Fig. 1: The ArcIMS front end for the project The text documents for this project were received in a variety of formats including Word document and RTF files. The software was then used to convert these documents into XML files included WorX-SE, XMLSpy and Omnimark. The map based front end for the project was developed using ArcIMS which is a web-based Geographic Information System (GIS) produced by the Environmental System Research Institute (ESRI). It allows the dissemination of GIS data and mapping services via the internet and it was decided that this was the best software for our purposes. ArcIMS has a simple browser interface and provides some of the standard tools present in Desktop GIS systems such as Arcview. Using ArcIMS however means that we are able to serve GIS data across the internet. An example of a standard GIS tool that we have used is the hyperlink function that has enabled us to link between the example satellite images and the country’s map so that at the click of a button you are able to view an example image for that country. |