Day 5 – Standards To Be Measured

It was another glorious day in Ethiopia today. The sun was shining and a warm 70 degrees was filling the capital city.  Our day began with an amazing discussion around a conversation of current levels of geospatial data. The day before I did a survey with our technicians and it was a telling result.We learned the gaps in data and the real felt needs for collaboration of data and the establishment of a national clearinghouse online. Geospatial Data Poverty is a real issue in Ethiopia and we took some steps forward as we examined the results of the survey.

After our discussion and a lecture on standards, we began an exercise on establishing geospatial standards for the National Park System in Ethiopia as a practice exercise. It was wonderful to engage with my fellow GIS experts in this exercise and see their presentations. Their levels of collaboration and discussion were impressive. At the end they each presented their group work and I led them down various paths of thinking as I evaluated each of their presentations and work. Here are the different groups hard at work and one group presenting.

After lunch Johnathan engaged them in another collaboration game and they worked together to put images in the right sequence. He reward the winning time with some Toblerone chocolate. 

We finished our day with a small GIS demonstration of geocoding in the context of a national road network with standards.

I am thankful to work along-side my fellow geospatial experts as they continue to inform their country with more and better geospatial organization and application.