Mining Division's GESTIM Honored at Hommage 2001

Mining Division's GESTIM Honored at Hommage 2001

Huntsville, Ala., April 16, At the recent Hommage 2001 awards ceremony held in Quebec City, Province of Quebec, the Ministere de Ressources naturelles du Quebec (MNR) - Mining sector was awarded first place in the Ministries category for their innovative Gestion des titles Miniers Title Management (GESTIM) system. MNR was also awarded the Jury Grand prize given to the best project among all category finalists.

Launched in November 2000, the GESTIM system is powered by Intergraph's GeoMedia WebMap 4.0 product and enables access to mineral rights records over the Internet. MNR provides the public access to the mining title register, which contains thousands of records including information about lapsed claims, active titles, and details about assessment work declarations.

Hommage 2001 is an annual provincial event celebrating the best IT projects in the province of Quebec that aid the government in cutting costs and improving services to their clients. The Hommage awards are considered the "Oscars" for the Quebec government IT industry.

GESTIM saves time and money. One of GESTIM's most innovative aspects is the distribution of Geomatics data over the Internet. Clients who want to access or acquire mining titles can call up sectors that will appear with basic reference data such as surveying, topographic, hydrographic, and toponymic information. The areas covered by the titles appear on this reference background with an accuracy of a few centimeters, complete with descriptive data from the public registry of mineral titles. The maps are assembled in MicroStation, tagged through MGE, and loaded into an Oracle8i database. They are then viewable on the Internet with GeoMedia WebMap 4.0.

Prior to the system revision, registering a claim could take from 60 to 100 days, involved eight steps, and required a 15-point verification. When the system is fully loaded using the GeoMedia WebMap registry, issuing a mining claim will take as little as three days and the process will be reduced to five steps and a four-point verification. After one year of operation, it is estimated that the revision will save in excess of a million dollars in travel, postal, and communication expenses.

Denis Fortin, department head, Mining Titles Management Systems Service, comments, "What impressed the jury was the esthetic interest of the application and the volume of information we could process on one single request. But the key factor in winning the award was the autonomy granted to the titleholders by using e-commerce and the Internet. Intergraph's GeoMedia WebMap proved to be the right choice in helping us achieve the success we've realized with GESTIM."

Visit: www.mrn.gouv.qc.ca & www.intergraph.com/imgs