IAMG 2001--Cancún Technical Program--Session I

Home Page Technical Program Session I Intro Session I Papers

Building of Trans-national Geologic Map Databases--The Iberian Pyrite Belt Case by Luís M. Delgado, Instituto Geológico y Minero de España (IGME), Madrid, Spain, Guillermo Ortiz, Instituto Geológico y Minero de España (IGME), Madrid, Spain, Román J. Hernández, Instituto Geológico y Minero de España (IGME), Madrid, Spain, and Fernando Pérez Cerdán, Instituto Geológico y Minero de España (IGME), Madrid, Spain The Iberian Pyrite Belt (IPB) running across the south of Portugal and the Southwest of Spain is one of the most important areas of Europe for the exploitation of basic metals from massive sulphides. Under the request of the mining companies operating in the area and the regional bodies regulating mining rights and environmental issues, the Geological and Mining Surveys of Spain (IGME) and Portugal (IGM) have built a regional geological and mining information service, integrating and harmonising the geological maps and mining data held by ITGE and IGM. The data were held in different systems in a non harmonised way, in disparate formats and different co-ordinate systems, lexicons and languages, so that difficulting the user access to the data. To build the regional geologic map database of the Iberian Pyrite Belt, the following tasks were worked out: to stablish standards, guidelines and harmonisation tools to harmonise and integrate the Spanish and Portuguese data bases; to stablish a common data catalogue and data dictionary to allow the redesign of data bases and GIS components at IGME and IGM with unified structures; design of a common metabase and 2-dimensional data models for geologic data; to develop a unique access point to metadata and geologic map data over the Internet defining and developing the data management services according with the user interests; to develop the electronic delivery services including thematic and 2-dimensional geographical search on metadata, geologic databases and interactive map services over the web. Within this project a theoretical framework giving guidelines to manage and visualise 3D geological and mining information was studied. The representation and visualisation of 3D lithostratigraphic units was based on the use of OMEGA (oil-industry oriented software) to generate VRML files that can be visualised over the Internet by using standard web browser. The work carried out by ITGE and IGM to launch the Regional Geologic Map database of the IPB, now in operation will be described in detail. Paper in PDF format Delgado and others, Acrobat PDF, 283 k. Animation showing system in use, AVI movie, 19 megs.