Data sharing - a case of shared databases and community use of on-line GIS support systems

Data management is becoming increasingly simple and complex at the same time. The challenge is to effectively use the increasing number of tools available to manage increasing amounts of environmental information for purposes of data capture, analysis, display, sharing and storage. Government is no longer the main collector and provider of data. Community groups possess vast amounts of data collected through daily work of monitoring the environment in their local community. The chief concerns are data access, sharing, integrity and comparability. The capacity of groups to sustain data management is the key to making the sharing possible. The Southeast Environmental Association has been working with Environment Canada to develop a community, on-line database that will be linked to other geo-spatial data sets to allow instant access to geo-referenced data.