Abstract

Using RAFT-MAP to Determine Safe Shellfish Growing Areas
Track: Water Resources
Authors: Kathleen Cheeseman, Gregory Goblick

To ensure that Consumers eat safe shellfish (e.g., oysters, mussels, and clams), FDA's Division of Seafood Safety developed a Real-Time Application for Tracking and Mapping (RAFT-MAP) to ensure the shellfish is grown in clean, not polluted, water. RAFT-MAP is a custom mobile Geographic Information System (GIS) application to gather information from a variety of scientific instruments and create a map of dye-tagged sewage in real-time and perform shellfish growing area evaluations. As a prototype, it replaced a manual business process that collected ASCII data on a GPS data-logger without mapping capabilities. The old business process timeframe from data collection to map production often lasted several months. As a production real-time application, RAFT-MAP eliminates the majority of post collection data steps and the time required to complete them. FDA will be sharing this application with our State and Foreign Government Partners and may modify and expand RAFT-MAP to protect land-based foods.