USING GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION-SYSTEMS IN A WELL PERMITTING PROGRAM

The need to keep track of the geographic and attribute data of well locations is very important. The number of abandoned wells in Florida is testament to this fact. Thus, a method needs to be developed to address this problem. In this study, a geographic information systems (GIS), specifically pc Arc/Info, has been used to accomplish this task in St. Lucie County, Florida. Permitted well sites and their attributes were located and stored in the GIS. The results showed that the GIS is an extremely powerful and useful tool, which can be used not only in well-data storage and retrieval operations, but also in well permitting management. The coordinate data stored in the spreadsheet were extracted with minor modification and used to determine well locations from the GIS. However, the attribute data stored in the spreadsheet had to be extensively manipulated before input into the GIS. Thus, to make well-attribute data more manipulatable for improving the well-permitting program in the future, planning ahead with a system that also uses a GIS database would be better.