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Next  Emmanuel John M carranza Assistant Professor Department of earth systems analysis ITC, The Netherlands carranza@itc.nl Mostafa Radwan Associate Professor, ITC, The Netherlands radwan@itc.nl Martin Hale Head of Research and Professor, ITC, The Netherlands hale@itc.nl This paper discusses general issues pertinent to mineral resource development, role of geographic information systems in mineral resource development and concept of a geospatial data infrastructure and its potential value to sustain development of countries particularly those with mineral-dependent economies Responsible mineral exploitation requires a geo-information base that allows recognition of potential for mining and development of adequate and timely plans for mitigation and remediation of mining-related environmental and societal hazards. GIS for Mineral Resource Development Synthesis of geospatial data is facilitated greatly by GIS. Different but inter-related geoscientific studies, which address different issues critical to mineral development, greatly benefit from applications of GIS to mineral potential mapping, geoenvironmental and/or spatial epidemiological studies around mineral deposits and/or mines. In many countries, different GISs are presently being developed by different organizations involved in mineral resource assessments, land management and environmental risk assessments. While these different GISs use common geospatial data, standards of data capture and database designs of these systems are usually different, which make them non-interoperable. Interoperability among GISs enables interchange of geospatial data. Non-interoperability between GISs can render land-use decisions, mineral development plans and provisions for mitigation of mine-induced environmental and societal hazards non-optimal. Research of solutions to integrate GISs into interoperable systems is needed to migrate from monolithic systems that dominate the GIS market. Integration of diverse GISs is a basic guideline for new generation of GISs. Impediments to integration of GISs are, however, conceptual rather than technical in nature. For example, a problem in geospatial data exchange among different GISs is semantic non-interoperability. Use of metadata has been proposed to resolve semantic conflicts among autonomous systems. Recently, ontologies - theories that use specific vocabulary to describe entities, classes, properties and functions related to a certain view of the real world - are considered adequate to support geographic data sharing and geographic information processing among GISs. Ontology, which, in computer science is popularly defined as ‘an explicit specification of a conceptualization’, provides a 'common basis' for semantic mapping between geo-information communities. While technologies for interoperability of GISs are present and continue to evolve, effective access to geospatial data remains to be poor or non-existent in many countries. Despite undertaking various geographical surveys (e.g., topographic, geological, pedologic, cadastral, natural resource inventories, etc.) and producing geospatial data, many countries are still unable to make geospatial data readily available to potential users. Governments of such countries must recognize that geospatial data are a national resource and their civil societies have a right to access data/information. A geospatial data infrastructure is therefore a current need of many countries. Geospatial data infrastructure Concept of GDI first emerged in early 1980s in Canada (Groot and McLaughlin, 2000). Concept of a GDI is not to establish a central database but a distributed network of geospatial databases, managed by individual government and industry custodians. A GDI aims to ensure users of geospatial data ability to acquire consistent datasets suited to their requirements, although data are collected and maintained by different organizations. A GDI is composed basically of: geospatial data, metadata, clearinghouse(s), standards and partnerships.
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