Information Management

BPAMP introduced a spatial Management Information System (MIST) to provide the management of Virachey National Park with easy access to timely and up-to-date information for their decision-making, planning monitoring and evaluation. MIST is a custom-made tool for protected area managers and for use at the national level.

MIST stores and processes data from a wide range of sources. The most important data for park management are collected by rangers on park protection patrols, the so-called ranger-based data collection. Rangers collect data about illegal activities and wildlife, and use hand-held Global Positioning System (GPS) units to record the geographic locations of the observations.

The MIST programme is easy to use and can be completely controlled by clicking on map items, page tabs, list entries and buttons of the MIST query wizards. Additional visual tools enable advanced users to create any kind of query not included in the custom-made wizards. Fast and accurate data entry is guaranteed through data download from GPS units and the use of look-up tables and wizards for data entry.

Information on ecotourism (number of visitors, nationality, length of stay, fees) is currently collected by the Ecotourism Unit and will be entered and analysed in MIST.

Outputs produced by MIST include patrol reports, patrol coverage maps, distribution maps of wildlife species and illegal activities, indices on abundance of wildlife species, indices to monitor trends in illegal activities, and visitor statistics.

The Community Development Unit collects data from local communities on natural resource harvest in the Community Protected Areas. These data will soon be entered into MIST to analyse trends and assess the sustainability of the harvest of these resources.

The MIST programme

MIST consists of an SQL database (Structured Query Language, InterBase from Borland), application processing libraries, a graphical user-interface programmed in Delphi and spatial display (ArcObjects from ESRI). MIST has been developed as a client/server application and for use on stand alone PCs. MIST is an open source programme, distributed free of charge for non-commercial use. More information about MIST can be found on the developer's website www.ecostats.com.