Christmas Island GIS

The Christmas Island Geographic Information System (CIGIS) is a collection of spatial data, viewing and analysis tools dealing with Christmas Island. The data include orthophotography, topographic, mining, cultural and environmental features of the island. Compilation of data and its organisation into a GIS together with documentation was undertaken by the Australian Geological Survey Organisation (AGSO) at the request of the Territories Office, Department of Transport and Regional Services (DOTRS). The data are presented in both ESRI ArcView and ArcExplorer projects. The ArcView projects require a licensed copy of ArcView. ArcExplorer is a free viewer and is distributed with the Cocos GIS CD-ROM. Data are stored as ESRI shapefiles and therefore readily useable with most modern GIS applications. Data were received from a variety of custodians and in many cases had no accompanying documentation. Lack of documentation made it increasingly difficult for AGSO with interpretation, translation and documentation of data. AGSO has attempted to include metadata for all datasets to ANZLIC core metadata standards, but the value of this is limited by the poor initial documentation. In addition to limited documentation, many datasets had inconsistent spatial accuracy. The CocosGIS comprises four main CD-ROMs with additional CD-ROMs containing full-colour orthophotography. A hard-copy user guide is distributed with the main CD-ROM set.