A modern and reliable management of geological and mining data is an essential
asset to better understand existing natural resources, recognize mineral potentials,
and attract investments of the extractive industry. The GDMIS project, funded by the
World Bank Group, established such a management and geographic information
system for the Geological Survey Department (GSD) of Malawi. The system is based
on web-technology, allowing the administration and evaluation of non-public data
(Intranet) and the promotion of public data (Internet) to attract potential investors of
the extractive industry. The new website will be published soon – after pending
clearance of some data copyright issues.
Currently, the GSD holds approximately one Terabyte of digital geo-data and digitized
documents. Additional data will be available in the near future from ongoing field
works. The new system is the main tool to publish, archive, manage, evaluate, and
cross-relate the various information layers. In particular, the geographic information
system (GIS) component of the system allows the combined analysis of spatial and
attributive data. This is of major importance for the identification of prospects for
mineral deposits.
GAF, a German technical consultancy company, used its modular and scalable
software GeMinIS (Geological and Mineral Information System,
https://www.gaf.de/content/geminis) to realize this project. GAF proved once more
its capacities in technical consulting for the implementation of complex spatial data
management projects.