Producing Web-based Coal Industry Maps for Kentucky

Kentucky's future energy portfolio will almost certainly contain a heavy reliance on the use of coal for direct combustion or as a feedstock for coal-to-liquids or coal-to- gas initiatives. The Governor's 7-point energy policy states that "coal will remain central to Kentucky's energy needs" and itemizes CTL and CTG as two of the administration's major energy strategies. In order to effectively manage this valuable resource, stakeholders need ready access to information about the remaining coal resource, current sites of development and utilization, and routes of transportation. The former Office of Energy Policy periodically published maps for the eastern and western Kentucky coal fields that showed active coal infrastructure. The Kentucky Geological Survey maintains data and maps that characterize the natural resource. The goals of this project proposal is to develop a Web-based internet education system that has the capability to show the infrastructure data in the context of the remaining coal resource and to estimate the resources necessary to update such information. The target audience for such an education system includes policymakers, regulators, scientists, private sector entities, and the general public. KGS currently serves over 1,000 users per day using the proposed Web technology for other kinds of resource information and many of these same users would utilize the new service. KGS is uniquely positioned to carry out this project because of its mandated mission to provide resource information for the Commonwealth. KGS is a national leader among geological surveys with respect to data dissemination and Web mapping systems.