Cree-Tech offers more than maps with GIS services

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When most people think about maps, they probably think about road maps they can buy at gas stations that are hard to fold back up once they're done with them. But when Wade Cachagee thinks about maps, he's thinking about something more than a piece of folded paper; he's thinking of an interactive tool that can be designed to meet the needs of almost any user.

Cachagee is co-founder and president of Cree-Tech Inc., a company that provides geographic information systems (GIS) services to a wide range of clients.

GIS is basically a computer system, but it's more than just software, Cachagee explained.

"It's software, it's people that have the experience using it, it's the specialized hardware, it's using satellite information imagery, it's using aerial photographs that are scanned in, and it's using various map sets to create a digital map," he said.

"The power of GIS is you can attach any type of data bases or information to any of the features on the map. So it's like a smart map where if you clicked on a house, I could have the lot plan come up off the lot, I could have the house plan come up, the electrical plan come up, the deed of the property to who owns the house, or to a data base of how many bedrooms or whatever. So you can attach as much information as you want to any type of feature."

The technology has been around for about four decades, he said, but it is being used more and more because of the number of ways it can be used-from helping emergency vehicles responding to 911 calls find the best route to the hospital based on distance, routes and traffic patterns, to showing a business person the best location to set up shop based on customer demand and travel routes. But right now, the greatest area of use for the technology is in natural resource management.

"It just makes for a very smart way to manage your land. If you have an area that, say, is five times the size of Edmonton, you're going to have a lot of different forest species, and different ages of trees and different things. That's where it's very powerful once you have systems in place, where you can query your data. Where I could say, 'Show me all the black spruce that's 50 to 60 years of age, and is of a certain density' . . . you can ask that question. And say, if you have a big map that shows all the forest areas in green . . . you can pull out the areas and see."

It's an ideal way to help scientists come up with better ways to manage the forest, he said.

That same technology can be used by First Nations to help them preserve knowledge for future generations. Cree-Tech has already completed one such project.

"We worked with four different First Nations and a tribal council. We mapped out an area in size of 30,000 square kilometres where we went to each First Nation, conducted interviews using the local people there to talk to the Elders, the trappers, and the other users of the land to capture and catalogue all cultural values information. Which is very important for First Nations, to start retaining some of their heritage and culture. Because as our Elders die, there's so much information that's lost from areas that they remembered that there was pictographs or fasting areas or praying areas, or family trap lines, to old cabins that were part of their family heritage, right from wildlife values to all this type of stuff.

"Our technology enables you to capture, store, and record and relate whatever documents or images or whatever you need, to those values. Just cataloguing it is a first step First Nations should be doing because once you have it, and when mining or forest industry comes into the area, you have a record of your history. And if you don't have anything on paper or in some digital format, you're not going to be able to protect those areas, because you don't know where they are. So it's a really important useful tool to-not necessarily give away the information, because a lot of it is sacred and bands don't want to istribute that information, which is pretty important to them. But they can use it, and if they know a company is going to be cutting in certain areas, then they can say, 'No, you can't cut there. We can't tell you why, but it's very sacred grounds.' Usually companies will listen, and you can negotiate other areas that they can conduct harvesting," he said.

Cachagee added that once the information is compiled, it can also be used for educational purposes.

"If you have all your traditional values of your First Nation, we could customize a software program that can be used as an education tool to teach. Kids 10 years of age, they can learn about culture, they can learn about computers, and they could learn about this technology all in one. . . . If you had different family trap cabins, you can click on the cabin and you can make it interactive where a story comes up and you hear audio coming from that cabin and the picture of an Elder telling a story. It's endless what you can do with it."

For more information, see the Cree-Tech Inc. Web site at www.creetech.com.