Geohydrology data model design : South African boreholes
Date
2005-12
Authors
Hughes, Simon
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch
Abstract
Since mechanised borehole drilling began in South Africa in the late 1800s, over
1 100 000 boreholes have been drilled. As the country’s growing population and the
perceived impacts of climate change increase pressure on water surface supplies,
attention is turning to groundwater to meet the shortfall in water supply. This will
mean even more drilling will take place.
Until the introduction of the Standard Descriptors for Boreholes, published in 2003,
South Africa has not had a set of guidelines for borehole information capture. This
document provides a detailed description of the basic information requirements
needed to describe and characterise the process of drilling, constructing, developing,
managing and monitoring a borehole. However, this document stands alone as a
specification with little or no implementation or interpretation to date.
Following the development and publishing of the ArcHydro data model for water
resource management by the CRWR based at the University of Texas at Austin, there
has been a great deal of interest in object-oriented data modelling for natural resource
data management.
This thesis describes the utilisation of an object oriented data modelling approach
using UML CASE tools to design a data model for South African Boreholes, based on
the Standard Descriptors for Boreholes. The data model was converted to a
geodatabase schema and implemented in ArcGIS.
Description
Thesis (MSc (Geography and Environmental Studies))--University of Stellenbosch, 2005.
Keywords
Dissertations -- Geography and environmental studies, Theses -- Geography and environmental studies, Hydrologic models -- Geographic information systems -- South Africa, Geodatabases -- South Africa, Groundwater -- South Africa -- Databases