A Data Managment and Geographic Information System (GIS) for the Management of Land Quality on UKAEA Sites
Authors: Coppins Gavin J. , Ayres Michael , Pearl Mike 
Published: March 2009

On large industrial or nuclear sites there is a requirement to undertake assessments of land quality, from desk studies to detailed field investigations. Data obtained from such investigations provides the baseline from which known or potentially contaminated land can be managed. However, a commonly encountered problem is that this information is often disparate, collected for reasons not related to land quality management, with data from previous ground investigations also exhibiting the following particular problems: • The intent of a previous investigation is often not clear. • There can be much variability in investigation and analytical methods and standards. • The investigation techniques and standards are not documented. • Ground investigation and analytical data does not have adequate quality control in order to make a judgment about its value and applicability. Consequently, a commonly occurring problem is the frequent re-investigation of the same areas of a site for reasons that may not be very different. This is costly and incurs unnecessary risks. In order to resolve this problem, the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), in conjunction with ESiT Ltd, has developed and implemented a software application to capture, interrogate and present land quality assessment data for its sites across the UK. The overall assessment of land quality on the sites relies on information that is both varied and disparate in nature. Tools are therefore required to structure and assess this information to enable clear interpretation and management decisions to be made. UKAEA has applied these tools to several areas within its environmental restoration programme including delicensing activities, Safety Cases for contaminated ground, inventories of land liabilities as well as the general monitoring of the environmental conditions on and surrounding the sites. This paper will describe the software application in the context of its function as a land quality management tool. The software application, known as the Information Management and Geographic Evaluation System (IMAGES), has a modular design and facilitates multi-user access. IMAGES interfaces with standard desktop applications to enable straightforward upload or reporting of data. There are also interfaces with industry standard software packages for spatial analysis of data (ArcGIS) and to provide representation of borehole logging data. The modules that make up IMAGES are: • Land & Risk Assessment “Sentencing”; • Document Register; • Photograph/Image register; • Site Investigation; • Excavation & Soil Transfer; • Groundwater Monitoring; • Radiation survey (Health Physics) Monitoring; • Buildings Information; • Geographic Information System (GIS) Data Management. The IMAGES solution is process based, dealing with data acquisition through storage and interpretation to output and has the ability to systematically deal with large volumes of information while ensuring consistency in approach at each stage. It also provides data that is access and revision-controlled and quality assessed. IMAGES also includes a series of standard data capture templates to enable environmental monitoring and site investigation information to be captured directly in the field and automatically logged into the IMAGES relational database structure. Data within the system can be quality assessed and queried using a map-based interface. Information held within IMAGES can also be delivered seamlessly into UKAEA’s Geographic Information System (GIS) for visual assessment and further analysis.