Webinars
Next Webinar
To be announced.
For more information related to the series of online webinars and hands-on workshops please contact Elena Bakhanova Elena.Bakhanova@uts.edu.au.
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Past webinars
Natural Resources Accounting using Participatory Mapping (Hands-on workshop)
This time you could get hands-on experience with using some of GIS tools, when Nagesh Kolagani (Professor, Centurion University, India) showed how we can use Google Earth Engine to look at particular areas of interest and find useful spatial features related to your projects.
See recording
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Natural Resources Accounting using Participatory Mapping
Participatory Modeling Community of Practice (PM-CoP) with the support of the Dutch Institute for water and subsurface research (Deltares) presents a series of online webinars and hands- on workshops on the use of Participatory Modeling for Environmental and Natural Resources Management. We invite you to our first webinar and hand-on workshop on ‘Natural Resources Accounting using Participatory Mapping’.
Geospatial data is an essential source for analysis in planning and decision-making of sustainable farming systems. Farmers can contribute significantly to the quality of this data as well as deci- sions made. Then the question is how we can effectively engage them in this collaborative process of data collection and learning about the larger interconnected water-food-soil systems. Participatory rural appraisal with use of modern GIS technologies is one of the tools that can be used in this case. In this webinar you will be introduced to the main tools in the field and get hands-on experience of using them in the context of your work with rural communities. This webinar targets those practitioners, community managers, governmental authorities, development and humanitarian agencies, researchers and consultants interested in bottom-up approaches that aim at empowering local communities in the management of their natural resources. Interest in GIS/Remote Sensing, Google Earth Engine, System Dynamics, Agent Based Modeling is considered a plus.
Main outcomes:
- Understanding the advantages and challenges of using modern GIS tools in community-related work
- Understanding how to facilitate community engagement in Participatory Rural Appraisal using Participatory Modeling
- Hands-on experience in Google Earth Pro, Quantum GIS and Google Earth Engine for Participatory Rural Appraisal
The Speaker
Nagesh Kolagani (Professor, Centurion University, India)
Prof. Nagesh Kolagani is a software engineer by training, interested in simplifying and customizing mobile and web-based free mapping software for use by farmers and NGO field staff in improving natural resource management of their villages. Prof. Kolagani studied engineering at IIT Madras (India) and in the USA. He worked for a few years as a software engineer developing Windows based consumer software products in California (USA). He then returned to India, where he settled down in a rural village and pursued his PhD on participatory GIS. For more than 15 years, Prof. Kolagani is practicing and promoting organic farming, rainwater harvesting and social forestry using participatory mapping while being a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at a rural agricultural university in Odisha, India. With this session and hands-on training, Prof. Kolagani looks forward to promoting extensive use of free GIS maps and satellite imagery in rural (and even urban) development activities.
See recording
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Our first webinar was on 7th of September, 8 a.m. UTC. This was an informal ‘experience exchange’ meeting where CoP members shared their insights from their PM practice and asked for suggestions from the community. We had 7-10 min introductory talks from our two speakers and continued with extended discussion with all the other attendees.
Our first speaker Nagesh Kolagani (Centurion University, India) elaborated on his experience of using participatory mapping with farming communities in rural India.
Our second speaker Peter Dupen (University of Technology Sydney, H2Onestly Consultancy, Australia) shared his understanding of what should be considered in designing records for engagement and decision-making in a participatory context. There are a range of objectives for such records, but the central one is to allow learnings from each engagement to be systematically captured for later reuse and/or evaluation.
This webinar was a starting point for fruitful discussions and exchange of expertise among PM CoP members. If you have any questions or suggestions, please send to pm.community.general@gmail.com.