Project Information
Project Background Information
In
October 2001, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) hosted a meeting,
convened by the William D. Ruckelshaus Institute of Environment and
Helga Otto Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources (RIENR), to address interagency coalbed methane data
management issues and needs. Participants included representatives from
state and federal government, private industry, and the University of
Wyoming. While recognizing that many individual efforts have been
undertaken to share data among agencies and with the public, the group
concluded that a need still exists for a centralized information
clearinghouse addressing all aspects of this important industry.
With funding from the Wyoming BLM Buffalo Field Office, RIENR and the Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center (WyGISC) developed the CBM Clearinghouse website (www.cbmclearinghouse.info), which was released to the public on the Internet in April of 2003. The CBM Clearinghouse website was designed as a “proto-type” website giving government, industry and NGO representatives and the public access to CBM-related information, data and mapping services.
In January 2006, the University of Wyoming received a congressionally directed grant through the U.S. Department of Energy for $500,000 that is being used to expand the scope of the CBM Clearinghouse to the Wyoming Energy Resources Information Clearinghouse (WERIC). The scope of WERIC will include information, data and mapping services related to all energy resources in Wyoming, including fossil fuels, renewables and alternative energy sources. WERIC is being developed at WyGISC with the assistance of RIENR. WERIC will be available in the summer of 2006 at www.weric.info.
Project Scope
The project scope consists of the creation of a centralized Internet-based clearinghouse for textual, tabular, photographic, and spatially-referenced information pertaining to energy resource development and related management issues in Wyoming.
The ultimate goal of the project will be to create and maintain a single, up-to-date, and easy-to-use entry point for accessing data and information on all aspects of energy-related issues in Wyoming. Target audiences will include resource management agencies, industry, non-governmental organizations, and the general public.
The development of an information infrastructure of this kind has the potential for quickly becoming very large in scope and difficult to manage and maintain. The proposed scope of WERIC is the state of Wyoming. This will result in a scalable Web-based product suitable for expanding coverage and an accompanying implementation plan for achieving that goal in the future.
