Engineers and planners will welcome the announcement of free online access to the National Geotechnical Borehole Database.

Eamon Ryan, Irish Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources said: "In light of the ongoing rapid expansion of Ireland’s economy it is imperative that accurate information informs the decision-making processes for the siting of important development and infrastructural projects. The National Geotechnical Borehole Database provides this kind of information for key urban locations including Greater Dublin."

The database contains the reports of site investigation work undertaken to determine the ground conditions at the location of proposed development projects. The reports typically detail boreholes and probes that are interpreted by a mixture of report logs, text descriptions, field test notes and laboratory sample analyses. The database contains data collected over the course of several decades from many large infrastructure projects in both the private and public sectors. The majority of the data are taken from investigations in the main cities and towns where most development occurs, but there are also reports on investigations in rural areas for national road and gas pipeline construction, and other linear projects such as water/sewerage pipelines.

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Dr Ronnie Creighton, Senior Geologist at GSI, explains that engineers regularly consult the database during the desk study stage in site selection and the planning of ground investigation design. “The data are used to create subsurface maps of the depth to bedrock for Dublin city centre, for instance, as well as 3D visualisation of the subsurface bedrock topography. These are vital tools in construction and major infrastructure planning,” he said.

Access to the database is free and is now online, via a specially designed web map viewer, accessible from the following GSI web page www.gsi.ie/Mapping.html The map viewer currently provides public and professional users free access to over 12,200 digitised boreholes and trial pits from the database via an easy to use map-based interface. Users are able to navigate a map to their area, highlight their place of interest and retrieve detailed information on site reports, boreholes and trial pits that have been undertaken there. GSI also provides any required digital data free of charge. According to Dr. Creighton: "The Oracle database itself provides access to data from more than 35,000 investigations and there are a similar number currently in the process of being uploaded." Even if the online database shows no data he said that customers should contact GSI for data which might not be yet digitised in the viewer.

Whilst GSI provides a national repository for these reports, their submission to GSI is not compulsory.

(JM)