Glossary

A

APMBC

Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention

ArcGIS

It is a software suite developed by ESRI Inc. IMSMA incorporates the ArcGIS Engine to display the geographical data in the map pane

Auxiliary Data

Auxiliary data provide supplementary or additional information to the main items/objects in IMSMA. Auxiliary data is of the following types in IMSMA: Country structure, Organisation, Place, Ordnance classification, Cause classification, Needs classification and Assistance classification.

AXO

Abandoned Explosive Ordnance, explosive ordnance that has not been used during an armed conflict, that has been left behind or dumped by a party to an armed conflict, and which is no longer under control of the party that left it behind or dumped it. Abandoned explosive ordnance may or may not have been primed, fuzed, armed or otherwise prepared for use. (CCW protocol V)

B

Benchmark

is a fixed point of reference used to locate a marked and recorded hazard or hazardous area. It should normally be located a short distance outside the hazardous area. It should be safe to walk from the Reference / Landmark to the Benchmark.

C

C-IED

Counter-Improvised Explosive Device is an activity done by a nation’s security forces (i.e. not humanitarian demining organisations). It includes all elements of defeating IEDs and the people funding, making and laying them, so not only neutralising the devices (IEDD) but tracking where components came from, who made the IED, who planted it etc.

CCM

Convention on Cluster Munitions

CCW

Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons

CDF

Custom Defined Fields are fields that allows you to create fields for country specific needs.

Centroid

The geometric center of a feature. For line, polygon, or three-dimensional features, it is the center of mass (or center of gravity) and may fall inside the feature or outside the feature.

CHA

Confirmed Hazardous Area, refers to an area where the presence of mine/ERW contamination has been confirmed on the basis of direct evidence of the presence of mines/ERW.

CRPD

Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

D

Data Category

The Data Inventory Manager allows you to organise item attributes into meaningful groupings, or data categories.

Data Entry Form

Data entry forms are used to collect mine action data such as accidents and victims, land, activities, locations, education activities, and quality management information and display them in a standardised format. They used to be called Field Reports.

Data Entry Form Templates

They are forms that can are used for adding data IMSMA. Templates are created by IMSMA administrators.

Data Inventory Manager

Using Data Inventory Manager, information managers can create new data elements or modify existing elements to map to their programme’s information needs.

Derived field

a field that is calculated from another object

E

EOD

Explosive Ordnance Disposal, the detection, identification, evaluation, render safe, recovery and disposal of explosive ordnance.

ERW

Explosive Remnants of War, includes landmines, Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) and Abandoned Explosive Ordnance (AXO).

Evidence point

is used for Cluster munitions and other UXO. It is used for recording where ordnance are found i.e. a strong claim with high confidence

G

GICHD

Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining

GIS

Geographic Information System

GMAP

Gender and Mine Action Programme

GPS

Global positioning system

I

IED

Improvised Explosive Device is a device placed or fabricated in an improvised manner incorporating destructive, lethal, noxious, pyrotechnic or incendiary chemicals and designed to destroy, incapacitate, harass or distract.

IEDD

Improvised Explosive Device Disposal means neutralising the device which is not the same as C-IED.

IDP

Internally Displaced Person

IM

Information Management

IMSMA

Information Management System for Mine Action

IMSMA Legacy

refers to IMSMA version 1 - 3

IMSMA NG

IMSMA New Generation, refers to IMSMA version 4 - 6 and should be written IMSMA^NG

IMAS

International Mine Action Standards

Items

There are three different type of items in IMSMA:

1. Location,
2. Task
3. Land, Activity, Accident, Victim, Assistance, Education and QM.

They can be viewed in the Items Pane of the IMSMA Navigation Window.

L

Landmark

is a fixed point of reference some distance outside the hazardous 'area. It should be an easily recognised feature (such as a cross-roads or a bridge) which can be used to assist in navigating to one or more benchmarks.

M

maXML

Mine Action Extensible Markup Language

MBT

Mine Ban Treaty, another acronym for APMBC Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention

MGRS

Military Grid Reference System (MGRS)is the geocoordinate standard used by NATO for locating points on the earth. The MGRS is derived from the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) grid system and the universal polar stereographic (UPS) grid system, but uses a different labelling convention. The MGRS is used for the entire earth. An example of an MGRS coordinate, or grid reference, would be 4QFJ12345678, which consists of three parts:

4Q (grid zone designator, GZD)

FJ (the 100,000-meter square identifier)

12345678 (numerical location; easting is 1234 and northing is 5678, in this case specifying a location with 10 m resolution).

MINT

(Mine action INTelligence) which was a business intelligence tool developed by GICHD

MIQ

Mine action Information management Qualification, old term for the different levels of IMSMA training

N

Navigation Window

The IMSMA Navigation window is the main window from which all of IMSMA’s features are accessed. The window contains a menu toolbar, a status bar, and three panes: the country structure pane, map pane, and items pane.

NMAS

National Mine Action Standards but could also refer to National Mine Action Strategy.

Notification area

a notification area (also system tray or status area) is the portion of the user interface that displays icons for system and program features that have no presence on the desktop as well as the time and the volume icon. It contains mainly icons that show status information, though some programs, use it for minimized windows. By default, this is located in the bottom-right of the primary monitor (or bottom-left on languages of Windows that use right-to-left reading order), or at the bottom of the taskbar if docked vertically.

Novetta Solutions

The consulant company that was first contracted for IMSMA software development

NTS

Non-Technical Survey, refers to the collection and analysis of data, without the use of technical interventions, about the presence, type, distribution and surrounding environment of mine/ERW contamination, in order to define better where mine/ERW contamination is present, and where it is not, and to support land release prioritisation and decision-making processes through the provision of evidence.

P

P-code 

A P-code, short for Place code, is referring to:

• a unique identifier of parts of the Country Structure defined by a governmental organization;
• a kind of addressing system used mostly by emergency response teams. It provides unique identifiers to thousands of locations and administrative units in a humanitarian operation. The p-codes are represented by combinations of letters and/or numbers to identify a specific location or feature on a map or within a database. These codes provide a systematic means of linking data to an unambiguous location. Any information that is tagged with P-codes can be combined and analyzed with any other p-coded data. The p-codes for a country can be found in the Common Operational Datasets, which are standard geographic references for the humanitarian community provided by UN OCHA.

Q

QA

Quality Assurance (QA) part of QM focused on providing confidence that quality requirements will be fulfilled. [ISO 9000:2000]

Note: The purpose of QA in humanitarian demining is to confirm that management practices and operational procedures for demining are appropriate, are being applied, and will achieve the stated requirement in a safe, effective and efficient manner. Internal QA will be conducted by demining organisations themselves, but external inspections by an external monitoring body should also be conducted.

QC

Quality Control (QC) part of QM focused on fulfilling quality requirements. [ISO 9000:2000]

Note: QC relates to the inspection of a finished product. In the case of humanitarian demining, the 'product' is safe cleared land.

QM

Quality Management(QM) coordinated activities to direct and control an organisation with regard to quality. [ISO 9000:2000]

R

Reference point

is a fixed point of reference some distance outside the hazardous area. It should be an easily recognised feature (such as a cross-roads or a bridge) which can be used to assist in navigating to one or more benchmarks.

S

SADD

Sex- and Age-Disaggregated Data

SHA

Suspected Hazardous Area. refers to an area where there is reasonable suspicion of mine/ERW contamination on the basis of indirect evidence of the presence of mines/ERW.

SOPs

Standard Operating Procedures, instructions which define the preferred or currently established method of conducting an operational task or activity. Their purpose is to promote recognisable and measurable degrees of discipline, uniformity, consistency and commonality within an organisation, with the aim of improving operational effectiveness and safety. SOPs should reflect local requirements and circumstances.

Subobject

Subobjects are subcategories within certain IMSMA items (land, activity, accident, victim, education, organisation, task). Subobjects are normally displayed in table format.

Summary Window

A Summary Window displays when you open an object from the Items Pane of the IMSMA Navigation window. The Summary Window shows the most important available fields that have been selected to be included from the Data Entry Form.

T

TS

Technical Survey, refers to the collection and analysis of data, using appropriate technical interventions, about the presence, type, distribution and surrounding environment of mine/ERW contamination, in order to define better where mine/ERW contamination is present, and where it is not, and to support land release prioritisation and decision making processes through the provision of evidence.

U

UAV

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (piloted by remote control) used for taking aerial photos of an area.

UN

United Nations

Usage point

is used for Cluster munitions and other UXO. Usage point has three main types: verified target point, intended target point and firing point (both land and air)

UXO

Unexploded Ordnance, explosive ordnance that has been primed, fuzed, armed or otherwise prepared for use or used. It may have been fired, dropped, launched or projected yet remains unexploded either through malfunction or design or for any other reason.

X

xml

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. The Mine Action sector has defined a schema, maXML, for data sharing.