Lebanon National GIS Infrastructure Feasibility Study
CLIENT: Lebanon Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR)
LOCATION: Lebanon
STARTING YEAR: 1998
GPC was awarded a contract to prepare a feasibility study for a national geographic information infrastructure for Lebanon. This work was carried out for the Republic of Lebanon, Council for Development and Reconstruction, a multi-disciplinary organization with umbrella responsibility for overseeing and administering coordination among 17 sectoral ministries.
The effort was initiated with a review of geographic information infrastructure initiatives around the world. The findings of that review were documented to a working paper entitled “NGII Background, Components, and Implementation Process”, November, 1999. The team then conducted interviews with representatives of selected organizations involved in the development of geographic data in Lebanon to determine the current level of GIS development, the purposes and applications for which geographic data are gathered and utilized, the degree of interagency sharing of these data, and objectives and issues for further information sharing.
Information gathered during the interviews was synthesized to two documents, including a “User Survey Report” and a “Data Inventory and Evaluation Report”. The User Survey Report summarized the existing situation with GIS development in Lebanon, and the opportunities and constraints that might affect the development of an NGII. The Data Inventory and Evaluation document summarized the existing geographic information identified during the interview stage, and presents a metadata catalog describing each of the identified data sources. The “Conceptual Design” report prepared next used all the information from the previous papers to establish possible models for the development of an NGII for Lebanon, and defined the structure for a hybrid model that can be implemented in phases.
Following development of the Conceptual Design, an “Implementation Plan” was prepared to lay out a series of Tracks and Tasks for the implementation of the Lebanon NGII. Implementation programming was more specific and detailed for the earlier phases of the program, reflecting the recognition that both the situation in Lebanon and the rapidly evolving technology environment in the world at large are rapidly evolving and will influence later phases of NGII development.
The results and recommendations of the previous Project stages were incorporated to the development of a pilot program specification in the form of an “Invitation to Bid” tender document. That paper laid the groundwork for the first pilot phase of NGII development. It is expected that once the CDR Technical Coordination Unit (TCU) has been established, those staff will take responsibility for further extending and refining the tender, and managing its release, assessment of contractor bids, and the selection of an appropriate contractor to support the first phase of effort.