To increase the quality of life for the peoples of the Andes will take economic activity on a broad enough scale that through taxation revenues governments can provide infrastructure and other social benefits. In order to foster economic activity companies must feel that social and political stability exists in order to proceed with investment. Natural hazards and access to water form part of the complex mixture of natural, social and political factors that influence the location and type of investment. The availability and integration of updated data on natural hazards, mineral resources and ground water will help land use planning and optimize economic investment. It is expected that the information contained in these databases will be used by local governments in better planning of the placement of infrastructure and community development (hazard zonation). Appropriate mitigation strategies for large business is as important as providing information on anthropogenic and natural hazards to individual citizens - if a natural disaster destroys the economic base of a region the impact will be even greater and recovery longer. This impact is especially hard on the women and children.

Stewardship of shared information resources to promote scholarly research and community involvement in decision-making has traditionally been a principal role of our library systems. Libraries connect people with ideas. They are vital in their ability to manage and archive large volumes of shared information, and in their potential to stimulate new thought and, thus, to foster growth of our collective knowledge resources. The Georgia Basin Digital Library provides a framework for understanding issues of regional sustainability through an information architecture that integrates data warehousing, principles of object-oriented data model design, geographic information systems (GIS), knowledge representation and community mapping. Concepts and their relationships (knowledge) are represented in the library through the use of semantic networks that connect individual topics with a distributed network of geographically referenced information assets. Individuals need a familiar and understandable frame of reference in which to assess the complex interrelationships between the ecological, social and economic systems of which they are a part. This framework (a shared sense of place) is a necessary step toward developing a meaningful understanding of what sustainability may mean in the context of a region or community, and for making informed decisions about a collective future.

Led by the Sustainable Development Research Institute (SDRI) at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and with support from the Network Centre of Excellence in Geomatics, GEOIDE, and the Earth Sciences Sector of Natural Resources Canada, this two-year research project was completed in September 2002.

The technical structure that underlies the library resource and determines its functionality is contained in a relational database system based on the United States Geological Survey/American Association of State Geologists/Geological Survey of Canada digital geological map data model design (NADM, http://ncgmp.usgs.gov/ngmdbproject). The library accesses data in a distributed network environment.