Resources & Tools
Inuit Communities Now on Firm Footing with Land-use Planning Application
When the northern Inuit community of Kujjuaq looked to expand its waste-disposal site, land-use planners produced a multi-layered online map to assess how such an expansion could affect local streams and rivers. The perspective gained from the online map enabled the community to plan the expansion so that it minimized the impact on the area’s watershed.
This is one example of how Kujjuaq and 13 other Inuit communities in Nunavik are using web-based maps to better manage their lands and resources thanks in part to the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI) and $200,000 in funding from GeoConnections. Home to just over 10,000 people, 90 percent of whom are Inuit, Nunavik occupies approximately 500,000 square kilometres in Northern Quebec. With no road network, these isolated communities are accessible year round only by air, and seasonally by boat and snowmobile.
Fulfilling a land-use planning mandate
Although each of the 14 communities operates as a municipality, none has the capacity to perform land-use planning and management. They receive technical support on those and a number of other issues from the Kativik Regional Government, which is based in Kujjuaq.
Before the web-mapping application was implemented, the Kativik Regional Government had two options when developing community land-use plans: mail paper maps and documents to the communities, or fly a land-use planner to the sites. “Sending material by mail was slow,” said Caroline Larrivée, Land-use Planner with the Kativik Regional Government, “and flying to the communities was time-consuming and expensive. We wanted to find a way to use electronic tools to simplify the planning process.”
The Kativik Regional Government realized it was essential for decision-makers to have better knowledge about their territories—their occupants, uses, constraints, hazardous zones, natural resources, and protected areas—and also to have the right tools to make informed decisions about the use of their lands and resources. This goal became much more achievable after a broadband satellite system linked each community to the Internet. But that advance was only part of the solution.
Integrating data from different sources
The Kativik Regional Government also needed to integrate its data with datasets generated by the many other organizations involved with land and resource management in the communities: the villages, landholding corporations, federal government, provincial government, and Makivik Corporation (a non-profit organization owned by the Inuit of Nunavik). Because these organizations used different software to collect, store, and analyze their geospatial data, integrating data was extremely difficult. Consequently, the Kativik Regional Government had no way to produce comprehensive and informative community maps.
For example, the Quebec Department of Public Security collects information on areas at risk, such as those prone to avalanches or flooding. Natural Resources Canada collects survey information about development in northern villages. But there was no consistency between the two datasets. “We could look at the datasets individually,” said Ms. Larrivée, “but we had no way to generate an integrated view of geographic information for the region.”
Moreover, datasets were often duplicated, contributing to their quick obsolescence. And having to use unreliable and incompatible data hampered the Kativik Regional Government’s ability to help communities manage their lands.
Offering an easy-to-use Internet solution for land management
To address these concerns, a consulting firm recommended that each community be set up with its own geospatial software and tools. But the Kativik Regional Government recognized the limitations of that proposal. “The communities do not have the resources or expertise to work with those kinds of tools,” said Ms. Larrivée. “We wanted to give people easy access to the information, so we saw the Internet as a vehicle for achieving our goal.”
The CGDI, along with its data and service standards, proved to be the answer. By encouraging data providers to adhere to the standards, and with funding from GeoConnections, the Kativik Regional Government built the Kativik Community GeoPortal, an interactive web-based application that integrates geographic data sources covering northern Quebec.
Under this system, data providers maintain their own data and make it available to others in a standard format over the Internet. The Kativik Community GeoPortal then capitalizes on the GeoConnections-endorsed Web Mapping Service and Web Feature Service to blend topographical information, orthographic photos, digital elevation models, and other data layers into cohesive and easily varied maps. These maps equip municipal employees and elected municipal council members to work together more efficiently on land-use plans.
“The infrastructure helped us overcome our data-compatibility problem,” said Ms. Larrivée. “And the support from GeoConnections enabled us to achieve results much more quickly than would have been otherwise possible.”
Partners include: Department of Fisheries and Oceans; Holonics Data Management; Makivik Corporation; Natural Resources Canada-GeoConnections; Natural Resources Quebec; Nunavik Landholding Corporations Association; Quebec Ministry of Public Safety
| GeoConnections is a national partnership initiative to evolve and expand the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure. |