December 18, 2002. ULRMC Launches the Project "Integrated Area Assessment in Southwestern Crimea to Support Natural Resources Conservation Using Remote Sensing and GIS".

The project is being implemented at the request of the Sevastopol City Administration, with financial support of ULRMC's activities provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID-Kyiv). The project will apply remote sensing and GIS data processing technologies to the integrated assessment of natural and land resources of the area under the authority of the city administration in order to identify city and recreational zone development capabilities. Elements of landcover; geological processes, air, water and soil contamination; industrial activity, etc. will be included into the integrated assessment.

There are four project goals:

1. to collect and to systematize spatial data concerning the state of natural resources in the target area;
2. to create a GIS that incorporates the elements of landcover; geologic processes; air, water and soil contamination; exogenous processes resulting from industrial activity; etc.;
3. to develop a conceptual GIS-based model to identify areas on the southwestern coast of Crimea that show potential for being developed into recreation and tourist zones near Sevastopol; and
4. to create zoning maps of infrastructure development of the territory that can be used by Sevastopol city planning authorities.

The use of ULRMC's archived Landsat and Aster imagery will be critical to the implementation of this initiative, which will be implemented in cooperation with the Institute SINECO, a Crimea-based environmental organization that will contribute data, algorithms and models to the project. The activity will be conducted through September 30, 2003.

For one-month following the date of this announcement (or longer if determined necessary by ULRMC), ULRMC will accept expressions of interest from Ukrainians who are qualified to serve as external experts during the implementation of the project. For specific information (in Ukrainian) on the external experts sought for this project, please click here.