Difference between revisions of "Standardising Auxiliary Data"

Revision as of 21:18, 2 June 2014

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Auxiliary data provide supplementary or additional help and support to items and include Assistance classification, Cause classification, Country structure, Needs classification, Ordnance classification, Organisations and Places.

Country Structure

The Country structure represents a gazetteer, or the political or administrative divisions within a country. In IMSMA^NG, the Country structure allows a Mine Action Programme to link mine action information to areas and report statistics such as number of victims per province or district. So the Country structure should be set up before beginning data entry.

Ideally, a Mine Action Programme uses an official, countrywide country structure that ensures mine action information is compatible with other national datasets. Implementing an existing gazetteer requires two steps:

1. defining the levels of the Country structure
2. defining the nodes of the Country structure

Define the Country Structure Levels

Defining the levels of the Country structure includes defining the number of levels and the names of the levels. For Country structure the maximum number of levels are seven. For example, in one country the Country structure has four levels, while another country has five levels in the Country structure, and the levels are not called the same in all countries.

Ideally, the country structure in IMSMA^NG, covers all levels of the existing Country structure, from the country level down to a level that can be represented with a single point such as a town or village. If a Mine Action programme has special areas or districts that are not consistent with the defined country structure levels, artificial areas may be inserted.

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Define the Country Structure

When defining the Country Structure nodes, it may be desirable to add only the nodes for the portions of the country affected by mines rather than the entire official country structure. This reduces the amount of data in IMSMA^NG to only that which is important, improving performance and usability when entering and searching for data.

To display a Country structure node like a town or village on the map, it is necessary to add a geographic coordinate for the node. Typically, a single coordinate is sufficient for displaying a node on the map.

As with all objects in IMSMA^NG, the Country structure supports the incorporation of Custom Defined Fields (CDFs. These fields can be used to collect and track information such as population, numbers of families and infrastructure information that is helpful in planning Mine Action activities.

For ease of access, it is recommended to associate the majority of the Locations with one of the levels in the Country structure, normally the lowest level such as town or village. If the map extent is set IMSMANG automatically zoom and centre the map when the user clicks in the Country structure pane in the main navigation window. Alternative names may be in different languages and alphabets. It is also common to add PCode as an alternative name.

Assistance, Cause and Needs assessment classifications

These classifications are used in Assistance and Victim items.

• Cause for someone having become a victim
• Needs that the victim is assessed to have
• Assistance that the victim has received

They are as Country structure a tree structure and should be set up before beginning data entry.

Ideally, a Mine Action Programme uses official, countrywide classifications that ensures mine action information is compatible with other national datasets. Implementing these classifications requires two steps:

1. defining the levels of the classifications
2. defining the nodes of the classifications

Define the Classifications Levels

These classifications may have maximum of ten levels.

Define the Classifications

Define Other Auxiliary Data

In addition to establishing the Assistance classification, Cause Classification, Country Structure and Needs assessment classifications in IMSMA^NG, information managers can establish other Auxiliary data, including data for:

• Ordnance Classification
• Organisations
• Places

While this information is easily updated during operational use of IMSMA^NG, it is helpful to establish a baseline of information prior to proceeding with Data Entry Form template design and data entry. Many IMSMA^NG users already have a baseline set of information created for each of the Auxiliary data types, either through the standard, predefined data available within IMSMA^NG or by migrating auxiliary data from a previous IMSMA version. Auxiliary data can also be augmented by creating CDFs to track additional information.

Ordnance Classification

This classification is used in Land, Activities and Accidents. IMSMA^NG includes from the installation more than 5,000 predefined ordnance models.

All ordnance is grouped according to categories and subcategories. For example, an explosive ordnance may have a category of “Landmine” and a subcategory of “Antipersonnel.” In this way, IMSMA^NG provides the ability not only to search and report on models but summarise information on categories and subcategories. This allows queries such as “how many landmines or bombs were cleared in a specific period?” or “how many anti-personnel mines were found?”.

Other categories than Landmines have ordnance that belong to the subcategory Anti-Personnel so if you only want to report on AP-mines you need to filter on both category and subcategory.

Furthermore, programmes can limit which ordnance can be used for data entry by making ordnance inactive. To making only the ordnance that may be found in the country facilitates both data entry and data quality.

Before beginning data entry, standardise the ordnance available for use to ensure data consistency of reports. When adding an ordnance to the database, determine if the ordnance already exists in IMSMANG and the correct classification.

IED, Less-lethal weapons, Light weapons, MANPADS, Small Arm Ammunitions and Small Arms have been added as Category. The new field Statistic Group has been added in order to facilitate flexible reporting

Organisations

IMSMA^NG provides the ability to track information about Organisations participating in Mine Action. Organisations can be categorised by type and assigned “work areas” based on the country structure. To display Organisations on the map, they must have geospatial data (minimum one set of coordinates).

Additionally, IMSMA^NG supports the creation of parent-child relationships with organisations so that information managers can create hierarchies of organisations. For example, a mine clearance organisation may be responsible for several clearance teams within a country. As shown in the figure below, this relationship can be mapped by creating one organisation for the mine clearance organisation (NGO1) and one organisation for each team (TeamA, TeamB and TeamC), then specifying the parent organisation of each team as NGO1.

This kind of hierarchical relationship allows for complex searching and reporting on information such as how many square meters were cleared by each team and the total square meters that were cleared by the entire organisation.

IMSMA^NG also supports the tracking of competencies and accreditations for each organisation.

Places

IMSMA^NG offers the option to track information about specific places or infrastructure elements within a country that are relevant to Mine Action. These can be ammunition storages, armouries, airports, community centres, hospitals, refugee camps or any other structures/buildings which designate a political, economic, social, and/or logistical value.

Places can be linked to:

• Land and Activities to represent the nearest medical facilities
• Land and Activities to represent ammunition storage or armoury
• Victim to represent hospital
• Assistance to represent Place where the Assistance took place
• Education activities to represent the location of the activity

As with other IMSMA^NG data, Places can be customised using CDFs and represented on the map by adding geospatial information.

Ammunition storage and Armoury have been added to Place Type

Import Auxiliary Data

To import auxiliary data using an Excel spreadsheet, refer to Importing Auxiliary Data.

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