About Ermis 
PGIS Training 2006
VIEW Pictures
Introduction:
Early this year, ERMIS Africa organized, hosted and facilitated a training workshop for GIS practitioners on GIS-based watershed management.
Concept and GIS Relevance:
Looking at water as a precious natural resource provokes the thought of protecting its sources to ensure their continuity and sustainability for development. Watersheds are therefore the life-vein of our societies. They provide a wide range of products and services from whence our livelihoods are derived from and which our economies depend on. In the developing world water and land resources are limited hence competition among various stakeholders such as agriculture and industry is bound to increase.
There are a number of stakeholders within a watershed, each relying on this natural resource. Their activities have direct influence on water quality and quantity. The needs and impacts of each stakeholder on the natural functions of a watershed need to be clearly understood while making decisions regarding resource management and sustainable development. This also calls for a clear identification of the steps involved and the detailing of the requirements that adhere to specific legislation, regulation, and policy — all which are requirements of an effective management plan.
The emerging participatory GIS Technology offers a unique approach to watershed management enabling room for generation, analysis, documentation, and sharing of information necessary in watershed management.
Participants:
The GIS-based Watershed Management training drew participants from government ministries and community representative. Learning and research institution were well represented by senior lectures and masters students from Egerton and Moi Universities in attendance.
Course Contents:
GIS-based Watershed Management course critically looked at:
- Setting up of watershed monitoring stations and points for meteorological and hydrologic datasets.
- Setting up a GIS-based watershed decision support systems.
- Integration of meteorological and hydrologic datasets.
- GIS-based data capture, analysis, modelling, visualisation, and presentation.
- Application of spatial information in watershed management.
Target Audience:
ERMIS Africa trainings are deigned to cater for development practitioners from NGOs, research and education institutions, government ministries and private organizations in GIS related profession.
This course was designed to cater for people with little or no GIS skills.
Facilitators:
All course facilitators were drawn from ERMIS Africa. They were:
— Mr. J.G. Muchemi
— Dr. Lewis Njeru
— Prof. Francis Wegulo
Caribbean Real Estate