WemGIS™, point based GIS

Industrial operations today are required by regulatory agencies in all countries to monitor the environment which their operations may impact. This environmental monitoring requires a great deal of on-going effort and investment, and generates a large amount of data.

Management of this data requires an equivalent amount of effort and resource. Proprietary databases for the management of water and environmental data are available and are being used by industry world-wide. They are generally, however, found to lack flexibility in handling the variety of data encountered, and require dedicated personnel trained on that specific software.

To address this problem, CGSS have produced WemGIS™, an integrated data management system aimed specifically at the needs of operators who are required to monitor and report their impact to both surface and ground water, and to store associated hydro-chemical, geological and geophysical data. CGSS is a partnership which provides consultancy and software services to the mining industry world-wide.

WemGIS™ has been developed as a database system for storing, managing, reporting and displaying all relevant water and environmental data in a form which satisfies rigorous quality assurance and quality control, yet is readily accessible to users.

The system has been designed by water engineers and hydrologists using industry standard, flexible database, spreadsheet and draughting software resulting in a powerful tool for data management, spatial, time series and statistical analysis, graphical representation, and reporting.

The database:

• organises data which has historically been stored in a variety of different ways
• provides a framework for data capture and storage and prevents the loss and corruption of data which has been expensive to collect
• checks consistency and integrity of data interfaces with existing facility survey drawings
• provides maps, charts and reports of selected data, and makes maximum use of standard packages to reduce training
• increase user acceptance and ease transition between systems

The system is supplied as a standard database and software package, however, the nature of the application is such that the software can be configured and customised to suit the site needs, and not the other way around. Thus it is expected that each site will require site specific configuration as part of the system implementation.