In January 2018, GAF successfully established a Geological Data Management and Information system (GDMIS) for the Ministry of Natural Resources, Energy & Mining in Malawi. A modern and reliable management of geological and mining data is an essential asset to better understand existing natural resources, recognize mineral potentials, and attract investments of the extractive industry. The GDMIS project, funded by the World Bank Group, established such a management and geographic information system for the Geological Survey Department (GSD) of Malawi.
The system is based on web-technology, allowing the administration and evaluation of non-public data (Intranet) and the promotion of public data (Internet) to attract potential investors of the extractive industry. The new website will be published soon – after pending clearance of some data copyright issues. Currently, the GSD holds approximately one Terabyte of digital geo-data and digitized documents. Additional data will be available in the near future from ongoing field works. The new system is the main tool to publish, archive, manage, evaluate, and cross-relate the various information layers. In particular, the geographic information system (GIS) component of the system allows the combined analysis of spatial and attributive data. This is of major importance for the identification of prospects for mineral deposits.
GAF, a German technical consultancy company, used its modular and scalable software GeMinIS (Geological and Mineral Information System) to realize this project.