Web-based GIS borehole information management system: a case study of Wajir county

Abstract

In Kenya, just as it is in most parts of the world, natural resources are being depleted at high rates. In particular, the extraction of groundwater via boreholes has been going on for over half a century in Kenya. The Ministry of Environment, Water and Natural Resources is in charge of groundwater extraction but due to its broad mandate, there has not been proper management of the borehole records and this has hindered development in the water sector in Kenya. However, in the recent past the government has set up the Water Resource Management Authority (WRMA) to specifically fast-track the management of groundwater extraction. The authority handles most of its data and information relating to boreholes in an analogue form which presents a challenge of data retrieval, information analysis and decision making though there are on-going efforts to digitise them into Ms Excel format. The objective of this project was to develop a web-based GIS borehole information management system that will enable efficient and effective decision making. Stand-alone GIS systems are limited in data sharing abilities towards the public. Web-based GIS platforms provide resourceful means of data sharing and analysis. The system was based on open source applications. Programming languages such as HTML and JavaScript were used in defining elements within the system; Postgres was used to manage the database. OpenLayers was used for map rendering and display. The output was a fully functional web-based GIS borehole information management system in which information relating to boreholes was held and various query and analysis can be done. It is with such benefits in mind that a web-based GIS borehole information management system was developed with the case study of Wajir County which heavily relies on underground water. To enhance the functionality of the system, further studies should focus on enhancement of the application to allow for direct updating of the database where only hardcopy borehole data is available, more so, the application should be improved to enable borehole data collected in the field using applications running on a mobile device to be populated in the database in real time (or near real time) using 3G mobile networks