A 2-day long Training Course on “Introduction to GIS Programming and Algorithm” was held on December 22-23, 2017 at BUET-Japan Institute of Disaster Prevention and Urban Safety (BUET-JIDPUS), organized by BUET-JIDPUS. The training course was conducted by Md. Shahinoor Rahman, Assistant Professor (On leave), BUET-JIDPUS, who is currently pursuing his Ph.D. at George Mason University, USA. Multi-disciplinary participations attended the course, including faculty members from DU, DUET, BUP, MIST, IUB, Sonargaon University, BAU, BUET as well as professionals from RAJUK and IWFM.
The training course consisted of eight 1.45-hour long sessions to cover fundamentals of Python programming language, basic GIS data operations and geometric algorithms. Emergency management in recent days is highly dependent on information technologies with faster data gathering and analytics. Geospatial information is playing a vital role in emergency situations. Therefore, skills to handle geospatial information management might be helpful in managing disasters.
The training program ended on December 23 with a closing ceremony and certificate awarding. Prof. Dr. Sk. Sekender Ali, Dean, Faculty of Civil Engineering was present on the ceremony as the chief guest. He distributed certificates among the participants and recognized the significance of the training course to effectively deal with emergent disaster-related challenges of the country. Later at the ceremony, participants shared their valuable feedback regarding the course and encouraged future occurrences of such initiatives. Prof. Dr. Raquib Ahsan, Director, BUET-JIDPUS; Md. Shahinoor Rahman, as well as other faculty members of BUET-JIDPUS were also present during the closing ceremony.