Farm-Scape is sponsored by Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork Play Audio Farm-Scape is a Wonderworks Canada production and is distributed courtesy of Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork.

Farm-Scape, Episode 1371

A Georgetown, Ontario company has kicked off the development of a system designed to integrate geographic information systems data into one central base to be used in defense against foreign animal disease.

The project is being spearheaded by the Canadian Pork Council in conjunction with the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency, the Canadian Animal Health Coalition, various federal agencies and several other commodity groups.

Angus Geosolutions has been contracted to put together the structure that will allow GIS data already being collected to be integrated into one central system.

Consulting Services Vice President Geoff Cameron says several groups are already collecting information but there is no central data base.

"What we've done is broken it down into a couple of stages.

The first stage is looking to see what is needed for emergency preparedness by the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency for its data collection process and by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency which is actually on the ground running a response.

The next piece is to look at what we already have and that a big one.

That's where we're surveying and looking at data that's already been captured by other commodity organizations or provincial government organizations.

The final product will be a template that covers a couple of areas. One is the geographic livestock premise information required to be useful in terms of a foreign animal disease outbreak.

The other is the mechanism to capture this data and then further maintain that geographic information data through ongoing lifecycle management.

We want to tie it into that and help the system maintain the geographic information system once it's in place. "

Cameron expects to have the template developed within about eight weeks and he's confident an operational system can be in place within one year.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.