Geospatial Technology
Vihiga Wednesday 10th
March 2021.
Geospatial Technology Services (GTS) in designing county projects
Vihiga is one of the few counties to come up with a geospatial information system (GIS) laboratory after the mandate passed by the national government for all counties to do so.
Speaking to KNA, the director of GIS Vihiga, Washington Olando said that the laboratory has enabled the county make decisions, plan and distribute projects.
“The lab was established in May 2019 and has from then, helped in planning, resource allocation, project implementation and decision making,” Olando said.
According to Olando, they work hand in hand with all the departments in the county to obtain their data.
The GIS laboratory helps to know the exact number of households in a region and also enables the county government to fairly distribute projects in the county.
Vihiga has become a pace setter on the use of technology in development planning thus attracting other counties for bench marking.
Some of the counties that have visited Vihiga geospatial laboratory include; West Pokot, Marsabit, Nandi, Turkana, Tana River, Samburu and Makueni.
GIS uses location-based data collected via satellite, paper maps and information direct from the field to map out resources for analysis and decision making.
Olando hopes that all the 47 counties shall adopt this geospatial technology so that in future it may help during census, since its data is more accurate than the physical counting.
“The country uses almost 4 billion shillings to conduct census, money that can be used to do other projects, if the whole country adopts geospatial technology services,” Olando said.
