- Client Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI)
- Project Design and development of a geospatial data sharing platform (ICBIMS), subsidised by the World Bank (WB) through the Kenyan Coastal Development Program (KCDP) Kenya
- Category PA, Environment and Territory
OBJECTIVES
The project objective is to improve management of natural resources in Kenya’s coastal regions (native animal species, forests, protected areas, fishing areas, etc.) through development of a platform to share geospatial data currently distributed among the offices of the various institutions.
The platform is known as the Integrated Coastal Biodiversity Information Management System (ICBIMS).
It aims to achieve the following goals:
- collection of available data from the various bodies;
- creation of a database containing significant information;
- circulation of data on a knowledge sharing web platform;
- training for local users on identified problems and technologies used.
DEVELOPMENT
The project is part of the Kenyan Coastal Development Program (KCDP).
It employed a cascade methodology with a series of macro-phases, each one including specific activities to reach the planned objectives and deliver the requested products on schedule.
The macro-phases for the development of the project were:
- analysis of the current status, with a study of the situation before the project began and analysis of available data, software applications, hardware infrastructure and domain knowledge of users;
- design of the various project components, including the data model to structure the central database, analysis of the platform functional requirements, required software applications and the overall architecture, plus development of a user training program;
- implementation of the activities covered by the design project, including physical modelling of the database, input of data into the database, development, personalisation and installation of the platform. The final stage was roll-out of the planned training activities.
CHARACTERISTICS
The main platform characteristics are as follows:
- Client/web server model, with a Geospatial Content Management System (Geo-CMS) structure, a geospatial information portal with management of content including documents (Doc, Pdf, etc.), spreadsheets (Excel), images, video, etc.
The system also manages the metadata catalogue on published data.
- Public access with individual and profiled credentials, to protect confidential information.
The platform provides standard GIS navigation functions: display of geospatial layers, thematic maps, alphanumeric attributes, searches, printing, etc.
- Use of open source technology.
- Training with classroom theory lessons and practical exercises using real cases. The sessions were organised for specific roles: user, data administrator, system administrator.
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES
The Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI) had the support of GeneGIS GI, whose years of experience enabled it to offer:
- extensive knowledge of execution procedures for projects funded and managed by world organisations like the World Bank;
- international expertise in implementing open source geoportals for government agencies.
