A regional training course on ‘Application of Geoinformatics in Water Resources Management’ was held from 17-28 March in MENRIS with 14 participants from 7 of ICIMOD’s member countries. The course was organised under the overall framework of the HKH-FRIEND network Regional Hydrological Data Centre (RHDC) initiative and was supported by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), UK.

A half-day policy workshop on GIS for Census Mapping was held at the Central Bureau of Statistics, His Majesty’s Government of Nepal, on 17 January attended by more than 40 officials from the Department. The aim was to demonstrate the potential and use of GIS technology in census mapping applications. Basanta Shrestha, Sushil Pradhan, and Birendra Bajracharya from MENRIS gave a range of presentations on different aspects of census mapping applications and facilitated the lively discussions that followed. Six weeks later, a one-week training course on GIS for Managers was held with the objective of providing an overview of the potential of GIS technology in statistical applications. The course provided an opportunity for the twelve participants from the Department and two from Kirtipur Municipality to discover the uses themselves during sessions with hands-on exercises (3-7 March).

Municipal Level GIS in Kirtipur ICIMOD and Kirtipur Municipality jointly organised a one-day workshop on Municipal Level Planning using GIS on 27 March.

MENRIS has developed a new ArcGIS Training Manual for internal use based on ARCGIS version 8.2. Sushil Pradhan and Birendra Bajracharya, who compiled the manual, have integrated training materials with local datasets to suit the needs of the region. The manual aims to provide and update skills and knowledge in geoinformatics with the latest technology.  

The ArcGIS training manual has been also translated into Chinese with the help of Kelsang Thundrup, an intern from TAAAS, to facilitate training courses in Tibet Autonomous Region of China, in particular at Tibet University which has recently introduced a four-year GIS curriculum in its undergraduate programme. 

A new manual on Application of GIS/RS to Water Resources Management Training has been prepared to coincide with the UN declared International Year of Freshwater 2003 and to support the most recent in the series of GIS training courses offered by MENRIS in applications pertinent to the mountain environment. The manual is designed as the basis for a two-week training course and includes extensive hands-on exercises. The course is primarily based on the ArcGIS environment and includes, with special permission from ESRI, some of the pertinent materials from ArcHydro – an ESRI Press Publication edited by David Maidment of the Center for Research in Water Resources, University of Texas at Austin, USA. The training manual was compiled by Sushil Pradhan, Birendra Bajracharya, Walter Immerzeel, and Andrew Inglis and edited by Basanta Shrestha and Rupak Rajbhandari. 

A programme is underway to create a University GIS network in the HKH region. ICIMOD has joined ITC, The Netherlands, and ESRI, USA, in a partnership to promote GIS education in the academic sector in the HKH region. Recently, ICIMOD signed an MoU with ITC to promote cooperation in geoinformatics capacity building and applications, and in particular to strengthen ties in GIS education.