Urban geology provides engineers, planners, decision makers, and the general public with the geoscience information required for sound regional planning in densely populated areas. Urban geology studies rely on diverse branches of earth sciences such as hydrology, engineering geology, geochemistry, stratigraphy, and geomorphology in order to build a three-dimensional model of the character of the land and to explain the geological processes involved in the dynamic equilibrium of the local environment. The geoscience information derived from various sources such as borehole logs, geological maps, hydrological reports and digital elevation models, is compiled in a digital format and stored in georeferenced databases in the form of point, linear, and polygonal data. This information constitutes the geoscience knowledge base which is then processed by Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to integrate the various sources of information and produce derived graphics, maps and models describing the geological infrastructure and response of the geological environment to human activities.

Urban Geology of Canada's National Capital Area is a pilot project aiming at developing approaches, methodologies and standards that can be applied to other major urban centres of the country, while providing the geoscience knowledge required for sound regional planning and environmental protection of the National Capital Area. A first phase of the project occurred in the 1970's and concluded with a report entitled Regional Geoscience Information: Ottawa-Hull (Bélanger/Moore 1999 [PDF, 60.8 kb, viewer]). Although the report was extensively used as reference for regional planning, the database and accompanying location maps were of little use because of limitations related to the mainframe computers available then (Bélanger, 1998). Responding to interests by local governments and the private sector, in 1994 the federal Government launched a second phase of the Urban Geology Project (Bélanger/Moore 1999 [PDF, 60.8 kb, viewer]). The purpose of the new initiative was to provide flexible on-line geoscience information, in formats compatible with user needs, based on cutting-edge technology to compile, process and display geoscience information.

Graphics and maps released within this project can be reproduced for non-profit purposes and as long as proper reference to the original material is provided. Interactive maps are served by an application developed by the Geological Survey of Canada. Some of the datasets are available free of charge, on-line. Instructions on how to download the data are provided with each dataset.

Author: Robert Bélanger