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MRIS version 1.0:
A prototype Mineral Resource Information System P. K. Champati ray Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, 4-Kalidas Road, Dehradun-248001 (India) Email: champati_ray@iirs.gov.in Abhishek Ayachi A/C 213 Ashadeep, Aghaya Nagar, Bilaspur (Chattisgarh) Email: bharatayachi@yahoo.com
Introduction
Mining and mineral exploration is as old as the present modern civilization in India. Different parts of India contain wealth of mineral deposits, which have attracted worldwide attention since the time immemorial. In the present era of information age new tools and technologies have emerged to collect, store, retrieve and analyse various types of information related to mineral deposits. Commercial GIS packages offer tremendous opportunity in this regard. However, very few attempts have been made so far in this direction, primarily due to the fact that the relevant data is mostly considered as proprietary and lies with different organizations (in public sector and private sector -organised and disorganised) and therefore, considered as responsibility of respective organizations to prepare and maintain such databases. Secondly developing a GIS based mineral resource information system requires a lot of investment in developing GIS infrastructure within the organisation. It is also a well known fact in mining industry, that a lot of information is generated at a huge exploration cost and therefore, can not be shared with other competitors. However, some of the information that exists or being generated can be shared with others without sacrificing the commercial benefits. Secondly, in the present scenario, stake holders are many for such information, which is sought by government, industry, academicians and general public. Therefore, an attempt has been made to develop a prototype of a "Mineral Resource Information System" to provide all basic information related to mineral deposits of a region in a most cost effective manner. In the present study, Singhbhum-Keonjhar region of Orissa and Jharkhand has been selected, as it is one of the most important iron and manganese-producing belt of India. This area is under mineral exploration and exploitation since beginning of last century, and as a result quite a large amount of data is generated and it is essential that the wealth of information be organized in a systematic manner to facilitate easy access and utilization for various academic and commercial purposes. The concept The MRIS concept is derived from basic GIS concept and concept of MERIGOLD, a database on gold deposits of Australia. It aims to provide spatial and non-spatial information on iron and manganese deposits and geological set up of the region. The system is designed such a way that all basic information related to mineral deposits is accessible on click of a mouse vis-à-vis spatial information layers such as satellite data products and thematic information layers. The system is expected to provide basic information independent of expensive GIS packages, and should there be any package, a link is available for advance GIS analysis. Most importantly, the non-spatial data can be edited and saved with latest information and thereby provides opportunity for continuous data updating. Information content The information content of the MRIS is divided into three parts: spatial, non-spatial and contextual. The spatial information consists of remotely sensed data and thematic information layers. The remotely sensed data consists of raw and processed data products from various sensors such as IRS-LISS-II, Landsat 5-TM, and ERS-1-SAR (Figure 1). The thematic information layers consists of lithology, lineaments, mine location, road network, drainage network, DEM, slope, aspect and location map. All such information and data layers are organized using GIS and image processing packages such as ERDAS Imagine 8.4 and ARC GIS 8.1. The non-spatial database is stored in a MS Access file and the contextual information is stored in hyper linked MS Word file. The non-spatial database consists of basic information on deposits, year wise, grade wise production, chemical analysis and mining environment (Figure 2). The non-spatial and contextual data can be edited and updated, however the most critical non-spatial database can only be updated with password permission.  Figure 1. Organisation of spatial data  Figure 2. Organization of non spatial data Software design and implementation The MRIS is designed in such a way that its concept can be used for other related fields, where input data is spatial or non spatial or both. In the present context, data related to Keonjhar region has been used for demonstrating capabilities and applications of MRIS. In the software, the spatial data is displayed in the back ground and non-spatial data is displayed in the fore ground. The information regarding a mine can be obtained through graphics by clicking on the appropriate location or selecting from the adjacent scroll bar, where all mine names are kept in order. Following are the information content and salient features of the prototype MRIS v 1.0 (Figure 3, 4, 5, 6, 7).  Figure 3. Front Page of MRIS v 1.0
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