CH&PA, partners celebrate GIS Day with workshop on geospatial information
DPI, GUYANA, Wednesday, November 15, 2017
The Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) in collaboration with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), University of Guyana’s (UG’s) Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are teaming up in observance of Geography Awareness Week to build awareness and capacity in geospatial information.
Some of the participants at the workshop.
Today, the team hosted an OpenStreetMap (OSM) workshop, which also coincided with GIS Day, at UG’s Centre for Technology. The event brought together secondary school students, interested members of the public and students from Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences.
According to GIS Analyst at the Ministry of Communities, Malini Jaikaran, “We are mapping key features and landmarks in the communities where the participants live. The main aim of the GIS and OSM day is basically to develop more geospatial information that can be used by government agencies and the public and to teach basic mapping skills to the persons participating.”
Head of the Department of Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Dina Benn, said the university facilitated the resources to conduct the GIS awareness day programme.
Head of the Department of Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Dina Benn.
Benn was appreciative of the participation especially by secondary school students who were exposed to the OSM platform as well as the specific tools and mobile data collection apps they can access from their smartphones. She said the expectation is “for students to be more involved on how we go about mapping and how they can contribute to these activities.” Participants were also taught digital and open street mapping.
IDB’s Consultant and Facilitator of the workshop Edgar Lemus said the organisation is keen to assist in the development of capacity building in the GIS. He disclosed that participants will also be taught digital and open street mapping.
“That basically means that we’re using satellite maps to trace the location of roads and buildings and that produces digital information that anyone can use. As we have students from different levels of education like Bachelor Degree and secondary education we are just aiming to produce local capacity building in the use and generation of open generation data,” Lemus explained.
Geography Awareness Week is celebrated in the third week of November.
By: Ranetta La Fleur
Consultant, Inter-American Development Bank, Edgar Lemus.
GIS Analyst, Ministry of Communities, Malini Jaikaran.
-for more photographs go to dpi flickr