11th Meeting of Arab Committee of UN-GGIM Begins

Doha, February 06 (QNA) – The 11th meeting of the Arab Committee of the United Nations Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) began Tuesday.

The meeting is being hosted by Qatar represented by the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Center at the Ministry of Municipality.

Held from Feb. 4 to 8 at Expo 2023 Doha, the 11th meeting brought together a number of international experts in the field of geospatial information management as well as officials from the Ministry of Municipality.

The meeting aims to enhance the development of geospatial information infrastructure for Arab countries and enhance coordination among Arab countries to develop and implement policies and strategies for geospatial information management.

Director of the GIS Center at the Ministry of Municipality Manaf Al Sada stressed the importance of building the geospatial capabilities of Arab countries by benefiting from these meetings and their outcomes.

The integrated framework for geospatial information is one of the important tools that enable countries to build and implement action plans that suit their needs with the aim of benefiting from it to introduce new and innovative working methods for managing national geospatial information and applying integrated solutions based on accurate data that help decision-making, in addition to fully benefiting from national GIS suitable to the conditions of each country.

He explained that one of the main goals of the GIS Center in Qatar lies in integrating knowledge and techniques of GIS and sharing them with government institutions and members of society as a whole in Qatar. This had a clear positive impact on the development of geospatial techniques and achieved success for many institutions in Qatar.

The GIS Center at the Ministry of Municipality was keen over the past years to develop its own capabilities in aerial surveying and processing and extracting the resulting data through owning and operating a system of aerial surveys and remote sensing as well as preparing its own capabilities to produce digital spatial data and developing remote sensing and 3D modeling services, Al Sada added.

Al Sada noted that the integrated framework for geospatial information plays an effective role for countries in helping them transition towards the digital economy, providing various electronic services to improve services offered to citizens, building capabilities in the field of using geospatial technologies and enhancing government decision-making procedures based on information that matches reality, thus contributing to the implementation of strategic priorities at the national level for sustainable development.

The Director of the GIS Center underlined that work is underway to develop applications and solutions that include artificial intelligence (AI) in geospatial information technologies and machine learning solutions to help extract spatial patterns and relationships between data elements to achieve more efficient and accurate processing of large amounts of data and conducting spatial analysis on it and coming up with new digital spatial products that help decision makers in many institutions achieve strategic goals.

Al Sada also explained that this development and distinguished achievement of the GIS Center will not only lead to improved business performance but also lead to a push towards digital transformation, which contributes to the institutions’ achievement of Qatar’s economic and social sustainable development goals in line with the Qatar National Vision 2030 as the country is moving towards adopting digital technology in various fields to achieve comprehensive digital transformation of all its procedures.

He stressed the importance of benefiting from the workshops and meetings of the Arab Committee of UN-GGIM, as well as sharing data and experiences in the field of integrating geospatial and statistical information, overviewing global experiences and following up on the implementation of recommendations and results that benefits the public of Arab countries.

HE Secretary-General of the Arab Committee of UN-GGIM Eng. Asim Al Ghamdi praised Qatar’s effective role in the Committee. As a founding member, Qatar has had an impactful participation in all of the Committee’s initiatives since its establishment as well as its work to achieve the goals of the technical work teams, in addition to Qatar hosting the Arab Committee meetings twice in Feb. 2017 and Feb. 2024. (QNA)