Geospatial Tools on Demarcation and Management of Guinea Bissau Boundary

According to the African Union (AU) border declaration established during the African Conference of African Ministers of Border Issues

at Addis Abeba, in 2007, the delimitation and demarcation of African boundaries, where such an exercise has not yet taken place,

essentially because the new African countries do not have all the information about their frontiers. In Durban in 2002, the AU

Assembly of Heads of State and Government ratified the Resolution on the Inalienability of Colonial Boundaries, assumed in Cairo, in

1964, by the Organization of African Unity (OAU).

For historical reasons IICT concentrates an unique, vast and diverse amount of information concerning CPLP boundaries including

official and diplomatic documents, correspondence, proceedings of meetings related to delimitation and definition of border lines,

technical reports, detailed accounts of fieldwork, detailed description and geographic coordinates of the beacons, topographic and

geodesic field work and sketch maps. This information was never studied in a geographical context, nor prepared to achieve its great

potential, to prevent conflicts and support the sustainable development of those countries.

This project will investigate appropriate and innovative methodologies and technologies to organize and to obtain a Boundary

Information System (BGIS) for Guinea-Bissau. This is a little country with about 700km of land boundaries, with the Senegal, by the

north, and Guinea, by the south and east, with a history of disputes. Official delegations from CPLP included Guinea Bissau have been

visited IICT to consult documentation about their boundaries to clarify doubts particularly concerning some segments.

The proposed system will provide authorities and general public with reliable information and facilitate the management of the

boundary. It will be mainly based on studies involving geographical data and associated historical documentation, existing at IICT.

We intend to integrate several data to analyze examples of long historical disputes of territorial claims, to be addressed by using

complete historical records of boundaries, in Guinea Bissau. This pilot project will be a prototype for apply to other countries providing

an important tool, and presser a fundamental information in a digital platform. It takes advantages of navigation technology (GPS or

GNSS) to produce and validate precise localization of boundary beacons, and of GIS ability to integrate disparate data sets.

Recent very high resolution satellite imagery will be compared with ancient aerial photography, to perform multitemporal studies to

understand land surface changes in physical limits of defined boundaries. The outputs can be directly used for security research by

decision makers and other studies such as demography, migrations, ethnical, socio-cultural, land management etc.

The main objectives of this project are (a) to grant an internationally recognized reliable basis for Guinea-Bissau to accomplish the

demarcation of its boundaries and (b) to provide a system to assure the continuous characterization of the boundary.

To fulfill the general aims of the project consists of:

- digitalization of geographical and historical data concerning its boundaries (terrestrial and maritime) to produce high quality of

images, texts, maps, for purchase public documents to be available online;

- develop a geodatabase with the demarcation of boundaries, defining the metadata, to cataloging purposes and to represent

geographical and territorial concepts with a GIS for security issues.

This multidisciplinary and innovative approach using advanced of geospatial technologies (GIS, Remote Sensing imagery, Differential

GPS), and developing new methodologies to give a pertinent actual purpose to historical documentation will be a relevant contribution

to Millennium Development Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development.