The conservation estate in South Africa: Building an

authoritative spatial database Rudi Pretorius

GIS DAY 21-22 October 2013

Pretoria

OUTLINE

1 • Background

2 • PACA database

3

• Improving data quality

• User feedback

• Quality assurance

4 • Next steps

PART 1: BACKGROUND

Setting the scene

Complex system of protected & conservation areas

Mountain Catchment Area

Provincial Nature Reserve

Marine Protected Area

Biosphere Reserve

National Park

Protected Natural Environment

World Heritage Site

World Heritage Site - Buffer

World Heritage Site - Core

National Park

Many inventories

• Many data sets and inventories of protected and

conservation areas in South Africa

– Register of Protected Areas

– DEA spatial data set

– SANBI

– CSIR

– MAPA

– World Database on Protected Areas

• 2008 - No authoritative, national database on

protected and conservation areas

– Authoritative means a database that conforms to the

quality criteria and standards determined by Statistics

South Africa for Official Statistics.

Data Set Number %

WDPA 967 10.65

SANBI 838 5.92

MAPA 383 5.06

DEA 2010 ~660 ~6.4

DEA 2012 ~946 6.5

The need for an authoritative spatial

database on protected areas

• NEMPA requires DEA to maintain a register of protected areas – not necessarily spatial

• Spatial Data Infrastructure Act - DEA regarded as custodian of spatial data on protected areas

• As custodian DEA has an obligation to develop and maintain a national spatial database on protected areas

Legal requirement

• Measure conservation accomplishment

• Improved global reporting on implementation of international treaties – MDGs

• Proper delineation of buffer areas – Listing Notice 3

• Support Government Wide Monitoring and Evaluation System

Planning & reporting

PART 2: PACA DATABASE

Development of the current database

Agile methodology Brainstorm Design Development Quality Assurance Deployment

Development of a national spatial database

2008

2010

2013

Started 2008

Agile methodology Brainstorm Design Development Quality Assurance Deployment

Audit

Only one person can edit at a time Several different databases

Each database structured differently Spatial overlaps

Conservation areas Excluded Extracting statistics difficult

Issues One database that caters for protected areas and conservation areas

Enterprise Geodatabase

Classification Two main categories

Protected Areas

• National Parks

• Nature Reserves

• Protected Environment

• Special Nature Reserves

• World Heritage Sites

• Mountain Catchment Areas

• Forest Nature reserves

• Forest Wilderness Areas

• Marine Protected Areas

Conservation Areas

• Biosphere Reserves

• Ramsar Sites

• Stewardship Agreements

• Botanical Gardens

• TFCAs

• Conservancies

• Military Conservation Areas

Type and sub-type

Attributes

CORE ATTRIBUTES

Minimum • Unique IDs

• Name

• Type

• Sub type

• Legal status

• Date declared

• Date undeclared

• Documented area

• Management

• Verification status

• Security class

• Original name

• Farm name

• Farm number

• Sub division name

• Sub division number

• SG code

• Date property declared

• Date property degazetted

• Area km2

• Proclamation document

• Verification description

17 other attributes including:

• Governance type

• Ownership

• Relevant Act

• Applicable international convention

• Is there a marine component?

• etc,

ENHANCED ATTRIBUTES

Needed for reporting “Nice to have”

Characteristics of enterprise database

Protected area Number of

properties

National Park 3922

Nature Reserve 5266

World Heritage Site 7707

Mountain Catchment Area 2633

Forest Wilderness Area 174

Forest Nature Reserve 418

Simultaneous editing

Caters for conservation estate

Captures data on property level

All supporting gazettes stored in database

Versioning and archiving of data

Extraction of statistics

Time series analysis

Identify land

Approval to acquire

Acquire land

Intent to declare

Gazette Withdrawal

Workflow

Cradle to grave

Same data – 4 views

Farm – property

10 km Buffer

Outline

Areas to be added

Deproclaimed

Kaapse Grysbok Private Nature Reserve

5 km buffer

New prospecting right:

Feb 2010- Feb 2015

Mining of limestone

North of Uitenhage

PART 3: IMPROVING DATA

QUALITY

How do we improve the quality of the statistics extracted from the protected areas

database?

How many protected areas are there in SA?

What is the growth in protected areas coverage over the last 10 years?

How do we improve the data already in the database?

User feedback

Collaboration

Quality improvement

Official statistics are statistics

designated as official statistics by the

Statistician-General

National statistics are statistics not

designated as official statistics by the

Statistician-General

Aim to have statistics generated from the

database designated as official statistics

Database & statistics extracted

must meet quality criteria

of SAQAF

SAQAF 9 quality criteria,

indicators & standards

SASQAF Quality statistics (4)

2. Relevance

4.Accuracy

8. Coherence

5. Timeliness 7. Interpretability

6. Accessibility

Meeting real needs of clients

Correctly describes phenomena it is designed to measure

Info available at desired reference point

Ease of obtaining info from agency

Availability of supplementary info and metadata

Degree to which different information within broad analytical and temporal Framework can be Brought together

1. Integrity

Free from political interference: Adherence to objectivity, professionalism, transparency, ethical standards

3.Methodological soundness

Sound methodologies: •International standards and guidelines - good practice •Agreed practices •Dataset-specific

Quality Dimensions: Review SASQAF identifies 9 quality dimensions with Prerequisites being over-arching

9. Pre-requisites for quality Institutional and org. conditions that have an impact on data quality.

Quality statistics (4)

Acceptable statistics (3)

Questionable statistics (2)

Poor statistics (1)

7 Develop Dataset

Improvement Plan

Assessment

Initiation Phase

Assessment of Protected Areas

dataset

1 Identification of

dataset to be

assessed

2 Selection of

relevant standards

under 9 dimensions of

quality

3 Collection of supporting

documentation for selected

standards

4 Conduct in-

house SASQAF

assessment

5 Core-DQAT

assessment

Protected Areas dataset

selected based on current

availability of supporting

information – First

Geospatial Dataset to be

taken through the process

All dimensions that apply

Identified relevant standards

– Only assessed the Spatial

Dataset at this point and

not the proposed statistical

release that will be

released in 2 years time

In excess of 90 documents

collected

- Including acts, policies,

guideline documents,

minutes of meetings etc…

6 Official

assessment

Improvement

8 Implement Dataset

Improvement Plan

Reassessm

ent

after

1-3

years

2012

Jan-July 2013

August – September

2013

Deployment and further development

4th Q 2013

1st Q 2014

4th Q 2014

2016

First full

release

http://egis.environment.gov.za

Thank You! egis.environment.gov.za

User feedback & collaboration

Need easier way to collaborate with management authorities

regarding data in the protected areas database

Crowdsourcing is becoming a popular way to

collaborate on projects

Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining needed services,

ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group

of people, and especially from an online community, rather than

from traditional employees or suppliers. Often used to

subdivide tedious work ….., this process can occur both online

and offline.[1] The general concept is to combine the efforts of

crowds of volunteers or part-time workers, where each one

could contribute a small portion, which adds into a relatively

large or significant result.

1. Source: Wikipedia

Examples:

Map Africa Project http://www.mapaproject.org/about/

Tracks 4 Africa http://tracks4africa.co.za/

1. Extract data

2. Summarise data issues

3. Meet separately

with management

authorities

4. Agree on data to be corrected

5. Capture data

Traditional way

Development of collaboration tool

Work on the tool started April 2013 and is currently being tested

Technical specifications

Accessible via Internet Browser – no GIS software

required

Google Maps type interface

Users need to register to edit or contribute data

All editing done on a copy of the

database

Initially only for conservation authorities

Management console

Functionality

View all data in database in map

and tabular format

Search the database

Select and open a protected area

record

Edit reserve details

On screen editing

Upload supporting documentation and

data

Add new reserve

Administrator

Add and manage users

Administer submissions

Administer site

Site is expected to go live towards the end of 2013