ORIGINS

The project arose out of the adoption of the UK Conservation Management System (CMS) as a management tool for operating the biodiversity action plan of the city of Lincoln. The information comes from the the City of Lincoln Local Plan adopted in1998. This plan describes the biodiversity and landscape value of 65 sites that have been selected as the strategic and local stock of natural assetsn for conservation management at community level.  The role of the CMS is to record what has to be done to meet operational objectives and report the outcomes of year on year ooperations to a strategic level.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

'Managing Biodiversity at Lincoln'  has two aims.

1  Mapping

One aim is to model Lincoln's strategic plan for integrating biodiversity and landscape.  The plan is essentially a text- based conceptual presentation contained within the Local Plan adopted by the City Council in 1998..   The model sets out the connections between strategic thinking and operations at community level in order to address issues associated with the making, packaging, and communication of biodiversity action within and between communities.  Information set out in the Local Plan forms the basis for a conceptual map comprising sets of nested topics related to the Ordnance Survey grid covering the city. This is a community information system as a resource to focus informal and formal education on biodiversity action plans in the community.

The Community Information System is constructed with MindManager software.  MindManager is a document processor, where individual features, or points of focus, are traced through linked sets of standard branched diagrams.  The end points of the branches are neighbourhood action plans within communities. 

The objective is to develop and test a portable conceptual environmental information system for intra- and inter- community communication of progress in local conservation management.

2 Making, and operating neighbourhood action plans.

The second aim of the project is to test a simple relational database (Soft Key Project Manager) in conjunction with the conceptual map as a simple community IT system for managing a neighbourhood action plan.  The objective is to evaluate the use of computer databases at community level as a means of involving local residents in the long- term management of their 'green' assets, with regular reporting to the strategic level of the city's plans for sustainable development.

PROGRESS

Jan 2003

This set of web pages has been created as the basic conceptual map. 

It has been created with connections to the site information in Lincoln's Local Plan.

A start has been made on an interactive map of the communities. 

Discussions are underway regarding the production of local biodiversity action plans at community level, and ways in which the project could link schools with the communities they serve within elements of the national curriculum devoted to education for sustainability.