Geospatial Applications for Assessing the Potential of Commercial Plantations in Southeast Asia

The Department of Geoinformatics of the University of Salzburg, Austria, concluded a week-long international capacity building workshop on ‚Assessing the Suitability of Commercial Plantations in Southeast Asia (comm-PLAN)‚ at Chiang Mai University (CMU), Chiang Mai, Thailand. The workshop was organised jointly by Z_GIS with the Department of Geography (D-of-Geog), CMU from October 3-7, 2016 and also included a field excursion for ground truthing on October 7. The comm-PLAN project was co-funded by ASEA Uninet Austria.

Dr. Shahnawaz (Z_GIS) and Dr. Chanida Suwanprasit (D-of-Geog) conducted the workshop at CMU and trained the participants in using various spatial analysis methods related to suitability assessment.

Focusing on an interdisciplinary approach, 27 teachers and postgraduate students from 10 universities located in 4 countries (i.e. Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand) participated in the workshop. The trainees worked on individual projects assessing the suitability of a range of commercial plantations in Southeast Asia using ArcGIS Desktop and MaxEnt software. All of them presented interesting outcomes in the concluding session.

Asso. Prof. Dr. Ajchara Wattanapinyo (Head, D-of-Geog) conferred the certificates of successful completion on the workshop participants and congratulated them for having benefited from this international workshop. She also conveyed her gratitude to Z_GIS as well as to ASEA Uninet and expressed their willingness to host more such workshops in the near future.

The list of participating institutions and number of participants is following:

• Udayana University, Denpasar, Indonesia: 1 participant
• University of Diponegoro, Semarang, Indonesia: 1 participant
• University of Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia: 1 participant
• National University of Malaysia, Bangi, Malaysia: 1 participant
• University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: 3 participants
• University of the Philippines, Mindnao, Philippines: 1 participant
• Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand: 9 participants
• Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand: 2 participants
• Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand: 2 participants
• Prince of Songkla University, Phuket, Thailand: 3 participants

The Coordinating Team acknowledges and highly appreciates various types of contributions provided by the following:

• ASEA Uninet, Austria
• Interfaculty Department of Geoinformatics – ZGIS, University of Salzburg, Austria
• Department of Geography, Chiang Mai University, Thailand (the host institution)
• The participating ASEA Uninet member institutions from Southeast Asia

The details of the workshop have been submitted with the Financial Report to the OeAD Office located in Salzburg.

The details are also available on the project website.