Mauritius Hosts the 3rd ODINAFRICA Coastal and Marine Atlases Workshop

The Mauritius Meteorological Services hosted the ODINAFRICA Coastal and Marine Atlases workshop from 25 – 29 July 2011 in Grand Baie, Mauritius. 26 participants from 13 countries participating in ODINAFRICA attended the workshop (Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, Seychelles, and Tanzania).

The participants made presentations on the progress they had made in the development of their national coastal and marine atlases. Invited experts and resource persons from other atlas initiatives assisted in assessing the progress made in development of the national coastal and marine atlases and advising on improvements to be made. Tasks identified included:

• Metadata record should be created for each data type, with valid link to metadata in GeoNetwork.
• ABSTRACT field in the mapfile should be completed for each data layer. The abstract should be in the language of the targeted users (English, French, Portuguese, Swahili e.t.c). Standard Abstracts should be prepared for global data sets
• There should be LEGENDs for layers, with units and ranges for classification clearly indicated.
• ATTRIBUTES – the mapfile template section or all vector layers should be completed.
• Short names should be used for LAYERS and FOLDERS. Other details such as source should go into abstract. Separate folder should not be created where there is only one layer.
• All layers should use the same PROJECTION. Use of layers with different projections causes some layers not to be visible.
• Common COLOR PALATTES should be used for symbols (eg mangroves should be green, reefs should be pink). Duplicate color palettes should not be used for different data layers.
• Concerted efforts should be made to include national scale data. Atlas will be a useful tool only if it contains local-scale data
• An editorial team should be established to review the layers (QA/QC) and ensure compliance with standards.

On the whole the invited experts were impressed by the results achieved so far, and pointed out that these were typical problems faced in atlas development.