Data poverty and the unwillingness to share available data are two of the major issues in the region.
This was one area of discussion on the first day of a Regional Surveying Conference being held at the Centre of Excellence in Macoya.
The aim of this year’s Regional Surveying Conference is to transform property management by navigating trends and challenges in surveying for a resilient Caribbean.
Dean of The University of the West Indies, St Augustine’s Department of Geospatial Information Engineering, Professor Bheshem Ramlal, put this into context, saying the Caribbean region has several issues when it comes to being prepared to have functional systems.
“We are the data producers, the data users, perhaps even the data funders. Our clients are the funders, especially if you think in terms of a government agency. We have what is called data poverty as a major issue. If you don’t have data, how can you generate information? How can you get knowledge and therefore, wisdom? So if your fundamental need in terms of data isn’t there, then you are data poor.”
He said in addition to that issue, the region has limited data capacity and also lacks metadata and data quality standards.
“A big issue, though, is that of data sharing, and data sharing doesn’t mean that you have to give it away. But just in terms of how, what arrangements you make to share data amongst government agencies, for example, that’s a little bit of the focus of this. But certainly in terms of making it available to our stakeholders.”
Head of UWI’s Department of Geomatics Engineering and Land Management, Dr. Dexter Davis, gave a local perspective on some of the challenges.
“As a small island state, what we find is that our resources can be very limited, and in particular, what we consider as our ‘where’ resources. You know, where, where do we build houses for people to live? Where do we plant food for people to eat? Where do we explore for the minerals that turn over our economy?”
Professor Ramlal and Dr. Davis were addressing the biennial Institute of Surveyors of Trinidad and Tobago’s Regional Surveying Conference on Thursday.
The two-day conference will also address topics such as using drones to identify tree crowns for carbon sequestration and alternatives to the property tax.