19^th International CODATA Conference
Category: Economic Development

Developing An Environmental Management Information System For Kumasi, Ghana

Prof. Mensah, Mr. Edward Antwi
Institute for Quality, Energy and Environmental Management (IQEEM), Ghana

Environmental Management Information System for the city of Kumasi in Ghana is the first of its kind in the country and the sub-region. This is modeled along the lines of already existing ones in Berlin and other European cities.

This paper seeks to present the progress made in coming out with this all-important programme and the challenges already encountered as well as those anticipated.

Ghana like any other developing country is bereft with the problem of logistics in terms of organized data, most of the data required is either non-existent or in their raw form or what is more, portions of the required data are in departments which have little or no link with each other.  This renders the task more complicating since most of the data will then have to generated or processed unlike our developed partners whom had most of their data processed already prior to the development of EMIS. A not too accurate GPS tool and funding will be among the few problems that will be discussed in this paper.

The initial and fundamentally crucial stage of this EMIS involves upgrading and digitalization of the existing map of Kumasi and using remote sensing instruments like the Global Position Satellite (GPS) and Geographical Information System (GIS) to capture new areas and latest development into the existing map of Kumasi. Certain key areas of environmental interest like forest reserves, landfill sites (both in operation and those closed down), industrial area, water bodies, places of high vehicular concentration, like “Kejetia” (a suburb of Kumasi) and residential areas will be selected for study. Environmental data on air quality, water quality, temperature variation, topology and land ownership will be collected, analysed and processed into the digitalized map with the help of ARCView 3.2 (software). The varied nature of the data required makes this task multidisciplinary presently requiring experts from the Departments of Chemical Engineering, Geodetic Engineering and the Institute of Natural Resources, Geological Survey Service of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and the Environmental Protection Agency. Through this, it is hoped that a center will be set up within the university comprising staff from these afore-mentioned department to update and monitor the environmental factors already made mention of.