CASE STUDY

Canada

About the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Division

The Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment manages the development of onshore oil and gas resources for public lands in the Northwest Territories (NWT).  The Mineral and Petroleum Resources Division is responsible for the issuance and management of Exploration Licenses, Significant Discovery Licenses and Production Licenses for the onshore of the NWT. 

Challenge:
  • Need to produce and share maps with the highest levels of cartographic quality
  • Free mapping software takes data-rich maps and flattens them, preventing users from accessing the most valuable data
  • Using Esri®’s ArcGIS®, the industry’s most advanced GIS platform, to create advanced maps with valuable data-rich layers – need a way to share maps without losing all that value for end users and stakeholders
Solution:
  • GIS professionals utilize GeoPDF® Publisher for ArcGIS® to produce multi-layer, data-rich interactive GeoPDF maps
  • End users and stakeholders use the free GeoPDF Toolbar with free Adobe® Reader®
Results:
  • GIS professionals have complete control over the resolution of data elements and layers in product generation
  • Users can interact with maps, turn on/off multiple data-rich layers, query features attributes and create geo-referenced markup and notes
  • Users have ability to use maps and all features in remote areas with no network connection

The Challenge

Within the Mineral and Petroleum Resources division, there is a need to provide geomatics support and analysis, and to produce products that help communicate the potential of oil, gas, and mineral resources to the government and to the private sector, as well as to the public. These maps need to have a high cartographic quality, and free mapping software would take those data-rich maps and lose a lot of their quality and layers. They were creating maps using some of the most advanced, sophisticated tools in the world, and needed a product as professional as possible to help them record and share their findings.

“GeoPDF software lets us share maps with multiple data-rich layers. The maps don’t get flattened or lose any of their depth, but are also able to be viewed in a way that isn’t messy and overwhelming. Given the amount of information that the organization can pack into one map, this is an invaluable ability,” said Stan Johnston, Mineral and Petroleum Geomatics Officer with Government of The Northwest Territories.

The Solution

TerraGo’s GeoPDF Publisher software has been used to help solve the Mineral and Petroleum Resource division’s problems and help make their maps richer since 2015. With TerraGo’s GeoPDF software, they can now build complex maps with multiple data-rich layers, and have the ability to turn on and off which layers they’d like to see.  Another beneficial feature is that GeoPDF can be used by people without an internet connection, out in the field collecting data, with downloadable, customizable base maps.

 

NOTE:  If you would like to see how the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Division uses GeoPDF to share these powerful self-contained maps, click HERE

The Results

The Mineral and Petroleum Resources Division enjoyed the far more useful and interactive nature of the GeoPDF as compared to other map-based products with less limitations. TerraGo doesn’t have an image-flattening problem, and gives users the ability to have a lot of control over the resolutions of elements (raster, vector) in product generation. Users also enjoy more control over the elements of the actual GeoPDF being created, which gives the user much finer controls of the product that can be generated.