Environmental Management and Emergency Response Planning for Pipelines Using Geomatics Technologies

The challenge in pipeline emergency response planning is to respond effectively and efficiently to emergencies or incidents which may occur over a wide geographic area with variable degrees of potential human exposure and environmental sensitivities. The type and level of response is dictated by the nature and extent of the emergency, as well as the location of sensitive environmental and human resources. Access and use of both spatial and temporal information in responding to the emergency must therefore be efficient and subsequent decisions and actions clearly understood and passed on from a management/co-ordination level to the field operations. One means of increasing the efficiency in this process is through the use of geomatics technologies (i.e., geographic information system (GIS). Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) data, image processing software) integrated with a database holding both spatial and non-spatial information.