SaDIN (Sahel-Doukkala Information Network) Progress in the Realisation of an Online Geoinformation System in Morocco

Abstract

A critical necessity to achieve international standards in public health, sustainable development and land management is to monitor all natural resources, problems and potentialities of a region.

With the contribution of the LIFE – THIRD Countries financial instrument of the European Community, the SaDIN project creates a knowledge pool in the centre of the Chouaïb Doukkali University, El Jadida (Morocco), in collaboration with the Data Centre of the GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (Germany) and the private enterprise smartcube ltd. (Germany), in order to provide a basis for any kind of environmental investigations. It comprises tools for data acquisition, sample collection and multidisciplinary analysis with a long-term storage database. It addresses fundamental scientific, environmental and anthropological problems of national importance and social relevance. The aim is a regional real-time geoinformation system with worldwide access via Internet and interdisciplinary dynamic content enabling the communication between scientists, technicians and policy makers. The scientific objectives of this project focuses on the evaluation of the potential of aquifers in the region, which supply an arid, yet increasingly densely populated area. These investigations are accompanied by an epidemiological study on the health situation of the local population, which would be seriously affected by groundwater pollution. Another main focus is based on environmental parameters, such as wildlife, vegetation and illegal waste dumps.

The project has been carried out since January 2004 and a huge amount of data has just been entered into the databases already implemented. It is the interaction of the different working groups and partners, which make a permanently textual and technical enhancement of all components of the system possible.

The experience and knowledge gained in this project will be a source for technology transfer and policy decisions. This is a pilot project, which could serve as an example for similar projects in other regions of northern Africa and beyond.