About spOke

spOKe (sustainable planning for the Okanagan environment) is an information portal that facilitates sharing and access to watershed-scale land and water information and knowledge. It acts as a catalogue for data, interpreted information, tools and services in order to facilitate the interconnection of land/water data from distributed sources for the Okanagan. The key goal is to improve access to information from the many stakeholders in the expectation that it will lead to a greater understanding of the complex land/water issues we are facing, and support effective decision making.

The Okanagan River Basin is under pressure to accommodate the fastest growing population among Canada’s 23 major watersheds. Water supplies and infrastructure are strained to capacity, threatening more frequent and severe water shortages; climate trends indicate current water supply is likely to decline; and landscape disturbances, including expanding viticulture, forestry and real estate development are fragmenting already highly endangered ecosystems.

Providing access to consolidated science-based information to support better decision making has been identified by community leaders in the Okanagan as a top priority needed to support development in a sustainable way. spOKe is a pilot project that builds upon existing efforts in order to yield measurable benefits from the integration and access of land and water information.

spOKe allows sharing of the results of research and monitoring taking place in the Okanagan Basin, while ensuring the quality of the information being shared. Contributors adhere to the same standards and principles in their data and information storage, cataloguing, and access methods to ensure measurable and comparable data is accessible by all. The scientific authority of the information is well documented, and the data and information rests at the source, meaning that the information is stored and managed only once, but is accessible by everyone through the spOKe portal. This approach effectively reduces duplication and ensures the most current information is available. This environmental information model easily allows for continual contribution of information and ease of access for decision-making application development.

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spOKe Principles:

• Sharing - to promote and facilitate data and information sharing across distributed sources.
• Discovery - to enable data discovery by using metadata and geospatial standards in an open, interoperable architecture.
• Access - to provide direct access to integrated data and information where desirable.
• Use - to demonstrate the use of science-based tools for analysis, reporting, and decision support.