How can earth science information and web technology be used by planners and policy-makers to make decisions about policy research, planning and sustainable development? Specifically, how can they be applied to issues of resource scarcity and public safety:

• how can groundwater studies help decision-makers manage water resources and assess future growth strategies?
• how can geo-hazard studies help decision-makers mitigate disasters and assess future growth strategies?

The Pathways project addresses these questions. It bridges policy and science by working with decision-makers to incorporate earth science information in their decision processes via modeling methods and web-based tools. Pathways has three main activities:

• Assessment modeling: Pathways is enabling risk assessments that estimate the socio-economic impact of scenarios for surface and groundwater resources and geo-hazards occurrences in selected regions of B.C., and is determining future sustainable development scenarios for those regions using integrated socio-economic and natural science information.
  
  
• Decision Support: Pathways is developing a web-based toolbox that facilitates the decision-making process. Included are tools and methods for risk assessment and scenario modeling, scenario analysis and visualization, web-based collaboration, digital libraries as well as spatial data integration (via open standards-OGC, ISO/TC211-and ontologies).
  
  
• Decision-Making: Pathways is engaging municipal, regional and provincial decision-makers on an on-going basis to ensure their requirements are met and to evaluate the impact of Pathways' activities. Case studies are situated in lower B.C. in the Gulf Islands region, the Okanagan Region, and the greater Sea-to-Sky highway region (including Vancouver).

Pathways has many university, industry and government partners to help realize its planned outcomes of reducing technologic barriers and increasing the use of earth science information in decision-making for sustainable development.