Reviving the old data: The spatial environmental database development approach

Taiwo Olalekan J.
Taiwo Olalekan J.
Head, Environmental Information Systems Dept.
Environmental Resources Managers Ltd.
Plot 107A Imam Abibu Adetoro St. Victoria Island, Lagos State., Nigeria.
E-mail: Ltaiwo@erml.net



Environmental issue became a major concern in the oil and gas sector shortly after independence in Nigeria. Towards this end, environmental consideration in project design, implementation and monitoring were strictly enforced in the oil and gas sector of the economy. The monitoring phase is perhaps the most data intensive. This is because the phase involve pre- and post data collection and analysis. Therefore, activities such as, Environmental Impact Assessments; Environmental Baseline Studies, Environmental Evaluation Report, Environmental Monitoring Plan etc. have been developed to measure project performance and compliance with the country’s regulations. Two major limitations of the data collected prior to 1995 using these tools are that they are essentially in hardcopy format and the data also lacks georeferencing information. This particularly reduces the utility of such data for current analytical purpose.

This paper describes an approach that has been used to “revive” such data in order to enhance their usability and integration within an exiting digital spatial environment. The methodology used involves the collation of reports and maps, the design of data universe and data templates for data extraction, scanning of report and conversion to portable document format, map digitizing, scaling of maps to extract coordinates, spatial database development and customization. The project customization was done with ArcView GIS.

The approach helped to convert the over three hundred hardcopy reports involved under the first phase of the project into a digital form. The tables contained in those reports are now been used to carry out change detection, compliance monitoring and baseline data evaluation. The project also serves to expose some of the limitations of the past field data collection methods. The paper concludes by recommending the use of standard data templates for environmental data collection. This is to ensure uniformity in data collection among the different actors and stakeholders in the environmental business.