Download Zachary Kimutai

Zachary Kimutai
The availability of conservation data and information of a
conservation area (such as a national park) can lead to an
improvement in the exploitation of its natural resources,
management and preservation and to a greater fruition by the local
and international community. To this aim, a Web-GIS of Virunga
National Park (Parc National des Viruga, PNVi) – a natural and a
UNEP world heritage site and among the oldest parks in Africa
located in the eastern part of Democratic Republic of the Congo
(DRC) – was designed and implemented. The main goal was to
create a tool, easy to access and suitable both for domain experts,
such as conservationists or tourist purposes. Territorial and
environmental information was organized in two different parts, in
order to provide a complete and exhaustive frame where the
environmental and administrative aspects of the area, providing
several groups of thematic maps; the second one deals with the
study of the conservation features (distribution/occurrence of
species), giving their position and their main characteristic (such as
taxonomic classification) and features.
Data sources sere both digital data (existing and in-situ acquired)
and non-digital hard copy maps which were scanned, georeferenced
and digitalized during the data mobilization phase. All data was
processes and loaded in the system as vector (shapefiles) and raster
(Geo TIFF files) which were then subsequently stored in
PostgreSQL DBMS tables. The whole system lives in a common
web site, implemented in Python, HTML and Javascript languages
and exploiting GeoServer for GIS functionalities and PostGIS
(spatial and engine) for its connection with the PostgresSQL
database as well as GeoNode for its map-rendering/viewing and
creation features.