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ADEC Wins ESRI Award for Contributions to Geographic Science
Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) has won the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) Award for Contributions to Geographic Science in the education sector at the ESRI Education User Conference held in the United States.
The award, which honours outstanding performers in the area of Geographical Information Systems, comes as recognition for ADEC's efforts towards the advanced application of GIS in the education sector.
The conference provided ADEC with an ideal opportunity to showcase it achievements in the GIS arena to serve the education sector in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.
At the conference, ADEC presented a paper on the application of GIS to allow users of the ADEC website to find the location of both public and private schools based on a set of criteria such as location, grade level, curriculum, statistics and school performance, among others. The application helps to generate dynamic reports to profile a specific school or a collection of schools using the statistical information on the numbers of students and teachers. It also enables school administrators and teachers to view the performance of their schools and compare it with other schools in the vicinity.
ADEC also utilises GIS to help fulfil the objectives outlined by it strategic plan in making optimal use of existing school buildings as well as in future planning for new school sites. It also addresses the imbalance in performance levels of students in different regions of Abu Dhabi as well as the distribution of teachers across the Emirate.
ADEC also presented other GIS applications, including Mobile GIS, a Blackberry-based software which help managers to obtain key information on schools and assist inspectors in creating reports and taking photographs.
The Council is also planning to introduce Geographic Information Systems in the school curriculum as the first step towards enabling students to deal with GIS and use multiple layer maps.
The ESRI Education User Conference was held this year in San Diego, California from 12 to 16 July, 2010 and included a special conference on education and Geographic Information Systems held from 10 to 12 July. It was attended by 14,000 visitors from all over the world who took part in hundreds of workshops that discussed various issues related to GIS.
The conference, which selected the Emirate of Abu Dhabi as a special guest, honoured the Government of Abu Dhabi with the prestigious Making a Difference Award for its efforts towards the government-wide application of advanced GIS programmes.
The conference also provided an excellent opportunity for cooperation among international companies to launch new joint ventures.
Abu Dhabi Systems & Information Centre, which is spearheading the eGovernment programme of Abu Dhabi, has been providing ADEC with the support to implement a number of projects since 2008.
Source:
WAM