Training on Geospatial Decision Support System Applications for Climate Resilience in Fiji
UNOSAT is implementing The project “Strengthening Capacities in the Use of Geospatial Information for Improved Resilience in Asia-Pacific and Africa.” (2021-2024) intends to develop sustainable capacities and implement ad-hoc and tailored geospatial solutions. These can help to improve existing policy and decision-making processes to solve priority issues in the fields of Disaster Risk Reduction. Partnership with the government is crucial to the success of the project. UNOSAT aims to develop innovative capacity development solutions and geospatial services by integrating data, technology, knowledge, and people - custom-tailored to the country's needs. This 3-year long project builds on previous experiences and aims to further enhance capacities by leveraging technological advances and innovation and providing integrated geospatial solutions for improved decision making in the fields of Disaster Risk Reduction, Climate Resilience, and Environmental Preservation in the eight target countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Fiji, Lao PDR, Nigeria, Solomon Islands, Uganda, and Vanuatu.
Climate change is no longer a possibility but a harsh reality for the Pacific Island Countries. In recent years, Fiji has faced an increasing array of natural hazards, such as tropical cyclones, more frequent earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. These hazards, exacerbated by climate change, pose significant risks to the nation's limited infrastructure and vulnerable population. Impacts such as rising sea levels, coastal erosion, and flooding further threaten coastal communities and critical infrastructure, creating an urgent need for effective solutions.
Given these vulnerabilities, robust tools for identifying and mitigating risks are crucial. Geospatial technology provides a critical means of mapping hazards, assessing exposure, and understanding vulnerability, enabling informed decision-making and proactive disaster preparedness efforts to enhance climate resilience. Recognizing this need, the UNOSAT project team collaborated with Fijian government stakeholders to develop Geospatial Decision Support System. These applications are aimed at strategic decision-making for climate resilience. Through these technical training sessions, participants were introduced to various Geospatial Decision Support System applications, which demonstrated how these tools could be utilized in real-life scenarios. This training aimed at equipping participants with the knowledge and resources necessary to better protect their communities and infrastructure from the growing threats posed by climate change
At the end of the course, participants should be able to:
- Recall guiding principles for Geospatial Decision Support Systems.
- Utilise the Geospatial Decision Support Systems for problem-solving related to various disaster risk and climate change scenarios.
In this day-long training, participants will gain hands-on experience with the Geospatial decision support system application, enabling them to extract valuable insights from geospatial information technology that can support informed decision-making for disaster risk reduction in the context of issues faced in Fiji.
This is a full-time, face-to-face course with lectures and group exercises real case scenarios (60% lab exercises, 40% lectures and discussions). This course is divided into 2 modules with group activity with expected workload of 8 hours.
The course is designed in a way to have a balanced approach between theoretical and practical teaching methods consisting of presentations, live demos, interactive sessions, and lab exercises. At the end of the course, UNITAR-UNOSAT will set up a community of practice platform to maximise the learning experience of participants and to provide all required technical backstopping and assistance to training participants during and after the training.
The course is designed to accommodate selected participants by the Climate Change Division (CCD) and other relevant stakeholders. Since the main purpose of the training is to introduce the Geospatial Decision Support Sysstem, some of the requirements would be, to ensure that
- Staff who have the commitment and mandate to use the knowledge and skills acquired to support climate change resilience ;
- Basic computer literacy is required.
The course will be delivered in English