Development of an Environmental Cadastre Administrative System by GIS integration for the Environment Protection Agency in Sierra Leone

This paper explores the challenges faced by the manual system of issuing environmental licenses and
infer solutions to the current challenges by integrating a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to
develop an Environmental Cadastre administrative System (ECAS) which establishes a web-based
information repository database developed with open sources software (Java, PHP, MySQL, QGIS)
that published revenues online and made the data available to stakeholders and/or the public to
complete the cycle of accountability and transparency. The Environment Protection Agency Sierra
Leone (EPA) is mandated by law to issue Environmental Impact Assessment license. Currently the
agency achieves this mandate by issuing environmental licenses manually which al-ways
encountered lot of problems of accountability and transparency of the management of environmental
licenses and assessment documentation. Client’s information and documentation is usually mixed up
while carrying files from one point to the other or from one staff to another. Data on client are stored in
a way which makes it difficult for the management to retrieve useful information on time. The
information is presented and downloadable in a comprehensible and user-friendly manner, which in
turn improves monitoring and reporting, and increases effectiveness and accountability of the
management of environmental licenses and assessment documentation. The findings show these
challenges facing the manual system, the back and forth between EPA and the client in the EIA
process, the difficulty in the searching a client record, the mixing up of Client’s information and
documentation by carrying files from one point to the other, and the storage of data on client in a way
which makes it difficult for the management to retrieve useful information on time, and lack of back up
when data or information is lost. . The ECAS captures the full lifecycle of environmental licenses
including all stages of monitoring, licenses and payments and its saves time and money for the
agency. It improves the operations of the EIA license process, records management, data integration,
GIS integration and validation, and data analysis and gives the power to access, analyses, process
and manipulate EIA in-formation quickly and efficiently.