The aim of the summer school was to enhance geospatial competences of postgraduate level students. The Summer School was organized in July 2018 within the GeoServices-4-Sustainability project and took place at Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development in Germany. 48 participants, from 18 different countries, studying or working at the 10 partner universities of the consortium in Europe, China and Thailand were selected.
Sheilon learned how to practically use and apply geographic information system (GIS) models for sustainable development. One was a commercial plantation model, which consists of creating a model for suitable areas for any type of plantation. The second model was a spatial analysis for health using GIS as well, including the data of locations, which describe the expansion of a disease and possible outbreak areas. According to Sheilon the summer school was very productive. He could strengthen his knowledge and acquire new skills and techniques such as Multi-criteria Decision Analysis. This method involves an Analytical Hierarchy Process, which can be used in various fields, e.g. suitability mapping studies or risk assessment by incorporating as many factors as necessary.
Example 1: Commercial Plantation Modelling
This module focused on the creation of a map to determine the areas that are suitable for the production of rice. The study area is the region of Omkoi, Thailand. For this purpose, Multicriteria Decision Analysis was combined with the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), considering the following criteria: soil-ph, type of water stream, rainfall, temperature, slope, elevation and land cover data.
Example 2: Diarrhea Risk Map
Another practical example was the visualization of a diarrhea risk map for the region of Phayao, Thailand. By taking into consideration data of the population distribution, water bodies, rainfall, land use and the elevation a risk map was created in order to visualize the zones that are more likely to be affected by the diarrhea disease. Besides, it shows the location of the cases of diarrhea for a more accurate assessment of the current situation.
Sheilon Lopez Zenon has a Degree in System Engineering from the Bluefield Indian and Caribbean University (BICU), Nicaragua. In 2014 he began working as technical support and server administration at the Department of Information Technology at the Bluefield Indian and Caribbean University. In this position he worked closely with the Institute of Biodiversity and Environmental Studies, which implements together with the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU) the APPEAR project on Strengthening of local Research Capacities at the Bluefields Indian and Caribbean University, Nicaragua to confront the effects of Climate Change. Sheilon got involved in the project and was nominated for a scholarship to complete the Master Programme in Applied Geoinformatics at the University of Salzburg. Geoinformatic systems based on geospatial data are important tools in many disciplines, namely ecology and conservation, agriculture and forestry, planning and zoning and risk and disaster management. In his master thesis Sheilon develops a web tool for the assessment of flood vulnerability for Austria. The model used in this thesis can be implemented in a wide variety of topics in his home country.