Geospatial Web Applications for Environmental Assessment & Oil-

spill Preparedness in the Arctic Jason Duffe

Environment Canada

Geospatial Web Applications

• Northern Data Discovery Portal• Regional Environmental Assessment

Toolkit - BREA• Emergency Response Application

Northern Data Discovery GeoPortal

• Web based access to wide variety data of interest to scientists, policy analysts and decision makers

– Non-GIS practitioners can use portal• Data from many departments with goal of each

group/department housing and maintaining their own data

• Portal provides interface to display, explore, analyze different datasets

Putting PLACE first

• Geospatial information platform - link to place-based coordinates

– Web based application

allows various information

layers from different

organizations to be

visualized and analyzed

without managing the

data

Environment Canada’s Monitoring …

Northern Oil and Gas Potential…

Northern Shipping…

The Beaufort Sea – Wildlife and Monitoring

Protected Areas and EC Monitoring

Important Wildlife Areas (EC, DFO, Territories)

Traditional Knowledge/Use

The Beaufort Sea – Kendall Island MBSShoreline sensitivity to oil spills (eSPACE)

Regional Environmental Assessment Toolkit BREA

• Intended to aid government, industry, Aboriginal groups, resource managers and public stakeholders in better understanding the geographic distribution of areas which are sensitive for environmental and socio-economic reasons in the face of economic development

• Explore and visualize data

• Share and distribute data– Upload / download (with restrictions/control)

• Visualize and analyze interactions between biological or socio-economic variables with economic development– Where are potential conflict areas?– Cumulative effects scenarios

Advanced Functionality

• 2 Separate Tools Under “Cumulative Effects Scenario” menu

1. Analyze existing sensitivity layers (AANDC-PEMT) using the weighted overlay tool

2. Take vector sensitivity data either in portal or uploaded (i.e. Important bird areas) and generate VEC Sensitivity raster that can be incorporated

– Output new raster, named, stored

• Raster Calculator (simplified)– Combine rasters (with weightings) to create new outputs

Emergency Response Application

Mixed sediment beach with woody debris, upper intertidal zone, Yukon

Geotagged video

Summary

• Organizations make web services available – maximize use of existing data hubs

• Data stored, managed, updated by responsible organization – can be ingested, displayed, analyzed by others

• Requires coordination, adherence to standards, interoperability

• Arctic Ocean Observing System (AOOS) working example