[okfn-za] Geological Data

Wed Feb 12 06:53:29 UTC 2014

Hi Martin,

I can understand them charging fees for printed maps (since each item is not cheap to produce), but I agree that the actual data should be more freely available in digital form.

My suggestion would be to file a PAIA request for a subset of the data you’re looking for and see what happens.

The Human Rights Commission has lots of information on the PAIA  http://www.sahrc.org.za/home/index.php?ipkContentID=25&ipkMenuID=45 and the Council for Geoscience lists all their contact points at http://www.geoscience.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1578&Itemid=153.

Cheers,
Greg

--
Greg Kempe
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On 06 February 2014 at 12:47:21 PM, mtb at martinb.za.net (mtb at martinb.za.net) wrote:

Hi All,  

I have a vested interest in being able to use geological data freely,  
specifically, the boundaries between different rock units as found on  
geological maps.  

While data is available, much of it is at too high a scale to be very  
useful for looking at specific sites. (That and the link to the 1:250  
000 scale maps is broken off this page:  
http://www.geoscience.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=203:data-sales&catid=46&Itemid=176  
)  

The people responsible for this in South Africa are the Council for  
Geoscience. Their licensing is incredibly restrictive:  
http://www.geoscience.org.za/content/SDMLicense.pdf  

How does this gel with the Freedom of Information act? I note that  
other spatial information seems to be freely available, so why is the  
geological data locked up to this extent?  

This looks like stuff that we should be able to freely access, since it  
contains information on mines and mineral claims and so on:  
http://www.geoscience.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=206:spatially-referenced-attribute-data&catid=46&Itemid=176  
I can not see how to get significant amounts of this without quite a  
heavy financial outlay.  

This is the sort of thing that should be possible, but why only a cd  
and not online:  
http://www.geoscience.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=453&Itemid=292  

Has anyone dealt with the CGS? I do not really see a way forward on  
this, but have no real background in the subject.  

Martin  
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