Bill Slimmon, GIS Project Geologist

Ken Tong, GIS Technician

Saskatchewan Industry and Resources,

Northern Geological Survey

Regina, Canada

Installation:

The Saskatchewan Industry and Resources department conducts geological surveys on the Canadian Precambrian Shield in Northern Saskatchewan. During the summer months, several crews carry out full-time field operations as they conduct comprehensive rock, mineral and structural surveys in the region.  Starting from base camps, 8-12 mapping teams gather data 5-6 days per week, and log 20-50 records per day.

To simplify data collection they have been equipped with Palm IIIxe handheld devices and GPS locators, and use a series of Pendragon Forms customized to meet their needs.  At each new survey site, a primary form is used to collect station, location and GPS data, as well as a date stamp.  Sub forms are used to log rock types, minerals within the rocks, geological structure data and other parameters. 

When the geologists return to base camp, the large amount of data collected is synchronized to an Access database on a laptop.  The data is imported into ArcView 3.2, a Geographic Information System, for analysis and map generation.

Another set of Pendragon Forms is used in other project work to log data from mining exploration drill core samples while in the field. 

Before Pendragon Forms:

Prior to using Pendragon Forms, the data was collected on paper forms, and geological assistants spent several hours in camp each day re-typing data.  An extra assistant was required to stay within the camp and enter data the following day.

Forms Development Time:

Prototype forms were created very quickly, based on those used by the Geological Survey of Canada; testing and content revision was completed within two weeks.

Benefits:

§         Significantly reduced time spent on data entry

§         Eliminated re-keying errors

§         Time previously used to transfer paper notes to digital format can now be spent more productively analyzing the data.