Project Holds Capacity-Building Workshop for GIS Officials

Pacific Community’s (SPC) Nicholas Metherall (far right) demonstrates to participants how to capture data using the QField application

3 December 2024 - Over 20 Geographic Information System (GIS) professionals from across the Pacific participated in a capacity-building workshop focused on cloud-native computing for supervised classification of coastal ecosystems.

The event took place on November 29 during the Pacific GIS and Remote Sensing User Conference.

The workshop, hosted by the Management and Conservation of Blue Carbon Ecosystems (MACBLUE) project, covered a range of topics including the basics of Python coding, field data collection using QField, and the supervised classification of Earth observation data.

It also introduced participants to Digital Earth Pacific (DEP) products, which can be transferrable on different topics such as forestry, agriculture and disaster response.

Kasaqa Tora, Spatial Analysis Specialist for Protected Areas at the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), commended the workshop for its relevance and usefulness to her work.

"I was particularly interested in collecting data using QField, and also in applying image classification techniques to the collected data," Tora said.

She also highlighted the value of accessing the Digital Earth Pacific image platform, which provided insights into how machine learning can be used for land use and land cover mapping—a new approach she discovered during the training.

"I hope to apply this knowledge to my work, particularly in projects across the Pacific Island Countries," Tora added.

By combining cutting-edge tools like Digital Earth Pacific (DEP) with field expertise, the MACBLUE project showcases the transformative potential of technology in addressing global environmental challenges.

This integrated approach paves the way for informed decision-making and the effective conservation of vital coastal ecosystems across the Pacific.