Geographic Mapping Data in Digital Format

The geographic data are built from the Technical Information Management System (TIMS).  TIMS consists of two separate databases: an attribute database and a spatial database.  The attribute information for offshore activities is stored in the TIMS database.  The spatial database is a combination of the ARC/INFO and FINDER databases and contains all the coordinates and topology information for geographic features.  The attribute and spatial databases are interconnected through the use of common data elements in both databases, thereby creating the spatial datasets.

The data in the mapping files are made up of straight-line segments.  If an arc existed in the original data, it has been replaced with a series of straight lines that approximate the arc.  The Gulf of Mexico OCS Region stores all its mapping data in longitude and latitude format.  All coordinates are in NAD 27.

Data can be obtained in three types of digital formats:

1. ASCII:  American Standard Code for Information Interchange is plain text format where a string of 7 binary digits represents each character.
2. E00: An ArcInfo interchange file format used for system independent exchange of geographic information system (GIS) coverages and associated data.
3. DXF: Drawing Exchange File is a two-dimensional graphics file format supported by PC-based CAD products.  DXF data includes no topology.
4. SHP: A Shapefile is a digital vector (non-topological) storage format for storing geometric location and associated attribute information. The Shapefile format is created by ArcView and can be used by ArcView, ARC/INFO, ArcGIS and other widely used GIS software. The Shapefile stores map (geographic) features and attribute data as a collection of files having the same prefix and the following file extensions. The zipped file contains the shapefile and metadata files.
   

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