Road Ecology Center

Applying a consistent and defensible approach to the evaluation of projects is a key challenge to today’s resource/land manager. Many projects require a high degree of planning and analysis to ensure that the impacts on natural resources are minimized, and that all relevant issues affecting the project are brought forward for consideration. Achieving these goals are often hindered by the cumbersome planning and evaluation process itself, and the accessibility of relevant policy, knowledge, procedures and regulations.

Project Objective Nobility EM, a GIS decision support system, was implemented within a federal government agency in 2000/01, and is now being used operationally to flag direct and indirect impacts and relevant land use policy and regulations as part of a NEPA screening process. The goal of this project was to introduce a structured methodology for the evaluation of projects, and give decision makers easy access to all relevant knowledge, policy, procedures and regulations so that key issues are identified early on in the project screening process.