City of Ottawa Geoscience Information Platform Program - Gateway to Digital Data

The City of Ottawa (City) annually invests about $3M in studies of the local subsurface geotechnical, hydrogeological, and environmental conditions in support of municipal planning, development proposals, infrastructure designs, construction, and environmental protection studies.  Much of this valuable information remains with individual consulting firms and in City project files, so this data is relatively inaccessible and not ready for use to internal and external stakeholders. 
In alignment with the strategic initiative of the City to improve overall asset management, the City’s Geoscience Information Platform (GIP) program is providing knowledge of, and access to, available, consolidated, and high-quality geoscience information and data that is ready-for-use to help mitigate risks to the public, in the natural environment and in the design and construction of infrastructure projects. With provision of data that is prepared for immediate spatial analysis and visualization then timely data-driven decisions can be made and more importantly, the minimization or removal of human error when handling data from different project datasets.

The GIP Program has two methods to provide spatial geoscience information, where technical GIS skills is optional, to readily work with data. First, the City has available a web-based interactive map tool to view spatial data layers called geoOttawa - https://maps.ottawa.ca/geoOttawa/ . Recently added into geoOttawa is a group called Geoscience comprising five sub-groups - Data Points, Drift Thickness, Bedrock Elevation, Surficial Geology and Bedrock Geology. In this first phase, stakeholders now have access to authoritative geoscience information and spatial data that is ready-to-use from publicly released Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) and Ontario Geological Survey (OGS) publications along with the data layers available in geoOttawa. Geoscience data layers from GSC and OGS publications have been recreated as published by the author so that associated report(s) and map(s) can be easily consulted. Additional geoscience groups and data layers will be added as ready. Next, the City is designing and developing the GIP database – a centralized repository of normalized spatial geoscience data using an enterprise-level relational database management system. The GIP database will provide stakeholders access to a well compiled, organized and actively managed geoscience database housing data from authoritative sources like the GSC, OGS amongst others in addition to consultant data from City projects. The GIP database will have the ability to feed geoscience data into industry standard GIS softwares for 2D and/3D analysis and visualization, enabling stakeholders to readily work with the most up-to-date, integrated geoscience information covering Ottawa. All subject matter experts (SMEs) involved on a build project will immediately be able to begin working with the same available geoscience facts to effectively collaborate and share ideas to mitigate risks throughout the project life-cycle. Much like physical infrastructure assets such as roads and buildings, all of Ottawa will benefit when digital infrastructure assets – geoscience data and information, are soundly managed and maintained. 

The GIP program has taken its first steps to provide internal and external City stakeholders facts about Ottawa’s geoscientific surface and subsurface landscape from authoritative sources using web-based GIS tools. This allows for collaboration between SMEs, in turn improve decision making by sharing and incorporating knowledge of potential costly subsurface conditions like unstable soils or flowing groundwater conditions. Ultimately it is anticipated that there will be reduced costs incurred by developers for investigations involving subsurface drilling. With minimal to no digital data handling, the products of the GIP program are anticipated to be a long term, valuable resource for technical practitioners across the Ottawa region.