US-Egypt Cooperative Research: A Web-based GIS for Egypt's Geological Datasets

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0318540SultanDescription: This award is to support a cooperative research project between Dr. Mohamed Sultan, Department of Geology, SUNY at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York and Dr. Zeinhom El Alfy, Associate Director at the Egyptian Geological Survey and Mining Authority (EGSMA), Cairo, Egypt. The investigators plan to develop a web-based GIS relational database for geological datasets for Egypt. It will comprise digital terrain elevation data, digitized geologic maps, remote sensing, seismic, geochronologic, geochemical, and isotopic data. They will compile and organize datasets, develop metadata files, and assemble online tools for visualization. The GIS and web-based technology will provide cost-effective tools for data integration, visualization, and modeling and will promote interdisciplinary research. Scope: Demand for the development of large databases (e.g., GERM, PETDB, Georoc, UNAVCO, PLATES) is increasing, especially to address global-scale geologic problems through spatial-temporal integration of geochemical, geochronologic, geophysical, and remote sensing data. The development of local databases such as the one proposed here for Egypt will serve similar purposes on local and/or regional scales and could potentially be integrated with global data sets. The project is an important step towards the construction of a comprehensive web-based GIS database for the Middle East and North Africa. The US and Egyptian PIs have considerable experience in manipulating raster and vector data as well as in remote sensing and GIS technology and are capable of carrying out this project. The products of this project will be directly applicable in scientific studies as well as practical issues of resource management in Egypt, such as in studies on water and mineral resources in this region. Sharing the data with the scientific community over the Internet is being planned. This project is being supported under the US-Egypt Joint Fund Program, which provides grants to scientists and engineers in both countries to carry out these cooperative activities.