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The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) has responsibility for managing one of Australia’s greatest natural resources, The Great Barrier Reef.

GBRMPA manages impacts on the reef through the issue and enforcement of permits.  A daily challenge to GBRMPA is to identify all the impacts of proposed activities and apply, in a consistent manner, the necessary conditions and restrictions to protect the Reef.

In early 2000, Spatial Vision won a contract to develop a system that would enable GBRMPA to process permit applications in a consistent, accurate and efficient manner.  This project sheet focuses on the spatial component of the PEMS application (a separate project sheet details the work flow and case management component).

Spatial Vision has delivered a work flow system that assists in the achievement of consistency and efficiency throughout the permit application process. However, key benefits  of the system are achieved by integrating the work flow system with GBRMPA’s spatial data sets, to more effectively determine the impacts of proposed activities.

Spatial Vision helped GBRPMA implement ESRI ArcSDE and ArcIMS software and assisted in the conversion of a number of key data sets that were to be used in PEMS.  These data sets are interrogated in the work flow to identify things such as impacted native title claims, management plans and sensitive locations.  As a result, permit officers no longer have to manually interpret hard copy maps to determine native title impacts and, more importantly, do not have to rely on local knowledge to determine those sensitive locations likely to be effected by a proposed activity.  The overlay process also allows appropriate conditions to be automatically added to permits.

PEMS also provides a mechanism to capture the location of activities through a map based interface that allows them to visually pin point the location of the activity and capture its coordinates and other attributes.

PEMS also provides permit officers with an attractive mapping interface that allows them to view permit extents, record the location of proposed new structures and query other permits that might have been issued at any point in the Great Barrier Reef.