NWT Cumulative Impact Monitoring Program (NWT CIMP)

NWT Discovery Portal

What is the NWT Discovery Portal?

The NWT Discovery Portal is the most comprehensive online source for environmental monitoring knowledge in the Northwest Territories. The Portal is a search tool you can use to access data, metadata and reports. You can also use it to share your findings by uploading research and monitoring information.

NWT Discovery Portal

What can I do on the Portal?

  • Search – discover geospatial data, documents and metadata
  • Share – create metadata, and upload data and documents
  • Link – visit other data sharing sites and applications

What types of files can I upload?

You can upload a variety of file types, including .doc, .xls, .pdf, .xml, .kml, .rtf, .txt, .docx, and .xlsx. 

You can upload other file types such as .shp and .dbf by using a zip file.

What type of information is in the Portal?

The NWT Discovery Portal includes qualitative and quantitative information, traditional knowledge, baseline studies and monitoring, as well as scientific research. The Portal may also contain monitoring information generated through land-use planning, project-specific environmental impact assessments, and regulatory processes.

The collection of monitoring knowledge is sourced, researched, and contributed to by communities, industry proponents, environmental non-government organizations, interveners in regulatory processes, project review processes, academics, and government departments and agencies.

Metadata standards

The NWT Discovery Portal promotes and uses standards for metadata to ensure compatibility and sharing of environmental information.

What is metadata?

Metadata is information about data. Metadata provides the what, where, when of data and by whom it was collected, as well as its location. Metadata facilitates the understanding, use, and management of data and is a tool for networking and collaboration. Standardized metadata allows interoperability between metadata management facilities such as the NWT Discovery Portal and the Polar Data Catalog. 

Who manages the NWT Discovery Portal?

The NWT Discovery Portal is operated by the Government of the Northwest Territories, Centre for Geomatics and NWT CIMP.

NWT CIMP uses the NWT Discovery Portal, because sharing environmental observations and data is a cornerstone to understanding cumulative impacts. NWT CIMP works to analyze environmental data and establish trends that are needed to support informed decision-making about northern development. Results of all NWT CIMP-funded research and monitoring projects are located in the NWT Discovery Portal.