Happy GIS Day, Western Cape

Yesterday, the 25th October I led my task team from our organisation to host what became a successful GIS Day event. Every year during November, all over the world, most GIS (Geographic Information Systems) users and vendors open up their doors to schools, businesses, and the general public to showcase real-world applications of this important technology.

The International GIS Day 2007 will be celebrated on Wednesday, 14 November during Geography Awareness Week.

Our organisation hosted the Departmental GIS Day event whose theme was "GIS Mapping 4 Climate Change" , in October, to kickstart the Climate Change Education and Awareness Programme to 109 target Schools in the Western Cape Province, South Africa.

16 of the 109 Schools attended. Members of various Environmental NGO’s and CBO’s as well as officials from all the Provincial Government Departments attended. CapeNature and the Western Cape Branch of the Geo-information Society of South Africa (WC GISSA) partook in the GIS Day event.

The event started by Drama, Dance and Poetry performance by a Time Theatre Group, followed by the Opening Address by MEC of Environment, Planning and Economic Development, Ms Tasneem Essop. Presentations were made on the Western Cape Climate Change Response Strategy and Action Plan, GIS application on Disaster Management.

The School learners afterwards participated in interactive activities with Maptrix, MapAware, GPS Treasure Hunt, and the GIS touchscreen kiosk.

Woolworths and Africon sponsored the catering for the event!

Kiosk with GIS and Climate Change

For the last 12 months I have been motivating to my managers to acquire an information kiosk for branding the Government Department. Today I finally received the kiosk from Dicoll Interactive (service provider based in Johannesburg).

I personally created with the structure and the content for the kiosk which includes the GIS Viewer Map, Climate change Quiz, Videos, Powerpoint presentation, and other text information.

See the kiosk pic...

My article on SDI-Africa newsletter

I have recently submitted an article about "The Sustainability Atlas of the Western Cape 2006" (a project that I co-facilitated)on the SDI-Africa newsletter. You can download the October newsletter at

http://www.gsdi.org/newsletters.asp

Short course: Sustainable Development and Climate Change, 25-28 September

There is no place where one can say "I know it all". That is why I have motivated to attend this free course, sponsored by C3D, at the Energy Research Centre at UCT (University of Cape Town), South Africa.

This course is being facilitated by Professor Mohan Munasinghe, who is a Vice Chairperson of the UN's InterGovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Mohan is the founder of an NGO called MIND (Munasinghe Institute of Development). Himself, together with the UCT Professors, have facilited the various sesssions. The course was focusing on applying a sustainable development framework to the problem of Climate Change. We also learnt a brilliant model/matrix called AIM (Action Impact Matrix) which was used in Climate Change application.

The course is worth attending...

See the picture of the class group together with Professor Mohan Munasinghe...