United Nations Economic Commission for Africa

1
CODIST.1 - Report on Executive Working Group
Activities

• United Nations Economic Commission for Africa
• ICT and Sciences Technology Division (ISTD)
• Geoinformation Systems Section (GiSS)
• Sives Govender

GeoInformation Sub-Committee - Addis Ababa, 28
April 1 May 2009
2
Outline

• Working Group on AFREF
• Working Group on Standards
• Working Group on Fundamental Datasets
• Working Group on Capacity Building
• Challenges Conclusions

3
Introduction

• The report includes actions taken as a follow-up
  to resolutions adopted by CODI.5 and other
  activities considered as being of interest to
  member States and partners.
• The implementation of the work programme was to a
  great extent focussed on promoting and
  facilitating the realization of the major aspects
  of the issues recommended during the CODI.5
  Meeting.
• The activities focused on
• Policy issues,
• Technical issues,
• Capacity building,
• International cooperation and liaison

4
Working Group on AFREF

• Compiled by Dr. Hussein Farah, RCMRD
• The activities are focused on
• Capacity Building Workshops and Training
• Implementation Plan
• Implementation Status

5
Concept

• A unified geodetic reference frame for Africa to
  be the fundamental basis for the national and
  regional three-dimensional reference networks
  fully consistent and homogeneous with the
  International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF)

6
Two Levels

• A network of Continuous Operation GNSS Reference
  Stations (CORS) spread all over Africa
• At least one in every country
• GNSS based National geodetic networks, including
  both active and passive stations

7
The International Steering Committee

• Working group on AFREF set up by Executive
  Working Group of CODIST-Geo
• Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for
  Development (RCMRD), represented by the Director
  General, Co-Chair
• African Organisation of Cartography and Remote
  Sensing (AOCRS), represented by the Secretary
  General, Co-Chair
• Regional Centre For Training In Aerospace Surveys
  (RECTAS), the Executive Director
• Representative of the North African (sub)
  Reference Frame (NAFREF) Tunisia, Head of
  National Surveys Mapping Organisation
• East African Reference Frame (EAFREF),
  represented by Tanzania, Director of Surveys
  Mapping
• West African Reference Frame (WAFREF),
  represented by Nigeria, Surveyor General of the
  Federation
• Southern African Reference Frame (SAFREF),
  represented by Namibia, Director of Surveys
  Mapping
• Central African Reference Frame (CAFREF),
  represented by Congo Republic, Directeur, Centre
  de Recherche Géographique et du Production
  Cartographique.
• This working group plus the Chair of the
  International Association of Geodesy, sub
  commission on Reference Frames, Africa (SC 1.3d),
  constitutes the International Steering Committee
  on AFREF (ISCA).

8
Achievement

• Since CODI V (2007)

9
Workshops and Training

• Two training sessions of two weeks duration on
  AFREF and GNSS data processing were held at
  Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for
  Development (RCMRD), Kenya in August 2007 and
  August 2008.
• Objective to equip geodesist with practical
  skills in the establishment and operation of
  Continuous Operating Reference Stations.
• Participants from nine countries Ethiopia,
  Malawi, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Niger, South
  Africa, Tanzania and Zambia.
• Presentations on AFREF were made during
• AARSE conference held in Ghana in October 2008
• The International Symposium on GNSS, Space-Based
  and Ground-Based Augmentation Systems and
  Applications held in Germany, November 2008
• Map Africa conference held in South Africa in
  August 2008
• Africa Array meeting held in South Africa June
  2008
• Trimble Dimensions conference held in November
  2007 in the USA.

10
Website and Newsletter

• The AFREF website was created in May 2006
  (http//geoinfo.uneca.org/afref). UNECA continues
  to maintain and update the website. All papers
  and presentations relating to AFREF and the CFP
  are available on the site.
• The quarterly AFREF newsletter continued to be
  published regularly by the AFREF secretariat at
  RCMRD. The objective of the newsletter is to
  create a forum for discussions and exchange of
  information and experiences in the implementation
  of AFREF project. Six editions of the Newsletter
  were published during the reporting period as
  follows Two editions in 2007, three editions in
  2008 and one in 2009.

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Implementation Plan

• An implementation plan for the AFREF project was
  completed and sent to donors for funding.
• The proposal was endorsed for support by the
  AU-EC 8th Priority Action and Joint Strategy.
  Implementation is expected to start in the next
  one year. The main goals associated with the
  project are to
• Establish a network of permanent GPS reference
  stations that will define the African Reference
  Frame for practitioners to use for position
  determination, and forming part of the global
  geodetic infrastgructure. The stations will
  conform to IGS standards, continuously collecting
  data and transmitting same to relevant data
  processing centres.
• Establish a network of regional data processing
  centres to receive data from stations in their
  respective regions, process them and transmit the
  processed data to a designated main data
  processing and archiving facility.
• Establish a data archiving and dissemination
  facility to compute parameters for the African
  reference frame and disseminate same continuously
  to users.
• Compute the parameters of the African Reference
  Frame.
• Support Countries to align national coordinate
  systems. to AFREF
• Establish a network of Geodesists sharing lessons
  and working together to realize the objectives of
  the AFREF project, extend and densify the
  network, and continuously compute and disseminate
  improvements and corrections to the parameters of
  the African reference frame.

12
Implementation Status

• The demonstration phase of AFREF has started in
  2007.
• The objective of this phase is to show the
  installation, operation, data dissemination and
  analysis capabilities.
• The following countries have already established
  at least one Continuous Operation GNSS Reference
  Stations (CORS)
• Algeria, Egypt, Mozambique, Ghana, Kenya, Benin,
  Morocco, South Africa, Namibia, Zambia, Ivory
  Coast, Uganda, Malawi, Ethiopia, Mozambique,
  Nigeria, Mauritius, Tanzania, Cameroon.
• Two CORS were donated by Leica Geosystems and
  were installed in Kenya and Nigeria.
• Trimble Navigations donated five CORS and have
  been installed in Tanzania, Niger, DRCongo and
  Ethiopia.
• Some data from the established CORS is already
  being received by HartRAO data Centre in South
  Africa and the International GNSS Service (IGS).
• The next phase is to densify the CORS and
  realize the Africa Reference Frame that can be
  adapted by African Countries.
• Methodologies and strategies for computing the
  Africa Reference Frame were discussed during the
  pre-CODIST Workshop on AFREF Implementation Plan.

13
AFREF Workshop Outcomes

• Held on 28 April 2009
• Recommendations will be presented by Chair of WG

14
Working Group on Fundamental Datasets

• Compiled by Dr. D. Clarke, Chief Directorate
  (South Africa)
• The activities are focused on
• Capacity Building Workshops and Training
• Implementation Plan
• Implementation Status

15
Catalogue of Fundamental Geospatial Datasets

• At the previous CODI-Geo meeting held in April
  2007 the WG on Fundamental Datasets submitted a
  draft report on the Catalogue of Fundamental
  Geo-spatial Datasets for Africa.
• It was requested that comments be provided on the
  draft report.
• No subsequent comments were received

16
Meetings and Collaboration

• The WG held a joint meeting with the ICA WG on
  Mapping Africa for Africa on 27 August 2008, in
  Cape Town. At this meeting
• The report on the Catalogue of Fundamental
  Geo-spatial Datasets for Africa was reviewed and
  approved.
• The catalogue of fundamental geo-spatial datasets
  had been loaded on the geo-portal of UNECA. But
  the UNECA geo-portal was not working.
• It was decided that the Country Gap Analysis
  reports, should be sent out to each country.
• The next phase of work in terms of the project
  plan, namely the best practices guidelines,
  should be commenced. The first task will be to
  describe the framework for the guideline

17
Next Steps

• Guidelines of Best Practice
• In an effort to start the process of defining
  what the content of the Guidelines of Best
  Practice should be, an assessment of the various
  challenges facing countries in the acquisition,
  maintenance and dissemination of fundamental
  geo-spatial datasets was undertaken. A
  questionnaire survey was used for this purpose.
  The initial response to the questionnaire was
  very low and no significant results can be drawn
  from the responses. The questionnaire was
  circulated to all African mapping organisations
  and through the Global Spatial Data
  Infrastructure. It is hoped that further
  responses will be obtained during this CODIST-Geo
  meeting.
• A first draft of the contents of the Guidelines
  of Best Practice has been prepared and will be
  presented for discussion and comments during
  CODIST.
• The WG on Fundamental Datasets and the ICAs WG
  on Mapping Africa for Africa continue to work
  well together, having joint meetings whenever
  possible.
• The next meeting of the WG will be on 29 April
  2009 in Addis Ababa, with the following meeting
  to take place in November in Santiago, Chile
  coinciding with the ICAs International
  Cartographic Conference.

18
Working Group on Standards

• Compiled by Dr. Sives Govender, Executive
  Director, EIS-AFRICA and Antony Cooper, Operating
  Unit Fellow, CSIR (South Africa)
• The activities are focused on
• African metadata profile of ISO 19115
• Participation in international standards
  activitie
• Key standards for future consideration support
  the Mapping Africa for Africa Initiative (MAfA)

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African metadata profile of ISO 19115

• The starting point for the African metadata
  profile is the set of core metadata elements in
  ISO 19115, whether they are mandatory,
  conditional or optional. All the entities in the
  core have been unravelled to identify what the
  actual metadata elements were
• These core metadata elements have been included
  in a matrix to illustrate the structure of the
  core
• All the metadata elements in the matrix have been
  illustrated using the metadata for South Africa's
  150 000 national mapping series
• All the metadata elements in the matrix have been
  illustrated using the metadata for South Africa's
  150 000 national mapping series, as the metadata
  was readily available, provided metadata for most
  of the metadata elements (there was not metadata
  for some of the optional elements), and was for
  an African dataset series that should be familiar
  to most geoinformation experts in Africa..

20
Metadata tools

• A review committee was formed during CODI V to
  evaluate tools currently available for compiling
  and viewing metadata, with the aim of having an
  open source tool readily available that supports
  the African metadata profile.
• UN ECA has acquired, tested and deployed
  GeoNetwork opensource, a standards-based, free
  and open source catalogue application developed
  initially by FAO.
• It provides metadata editing and search
  functions, and an embedded interactive web map
  viewer.
• GeoNetwork opensource provides a decentralized
  environment enabling access to geo-referenced
  data bases, cartographic products and related
  metadata from a variety of sources.
• See http//geonetwork-opensource.org/
• UN ECA has used GeoNetwork opensource to deliver
  a short course in Sierra Leone on metadata
  creation, dissemination and discovery.
• However, more experience is required with
  GeoNetwork opensource before definitively
  recommending it as a suitable metadata tool for
  Member States.
• As GeoNetwork opensource supports ISO 19115, it
  will support the African metadata profile of ISO
  19115.
• However, GeoNetwork opensource will not yet have
  a template that will allow the user to restrict
  the metadata fields they see to just those of the
  African metadata profile of ISO 19115.

21
Participation in international standards
activities

• ISO/TC 211
• The Technical Committee within the International
  Organization for Standardization (ISO) developing
  standards for geographical information, in the
  ISO 19100 series.
• ISO/TC 211 has published 29 International
  Standards, 5 Technical Specifications and 3
  Technical Reports. It also has 16 active
  projects developing new standards or
  specifications, and a further 7 amending or
  revising existing standards and specifications.
• ISO/TC 211 is a very active committee, with 31
  Participating Members (P-members) and 31
  Observing Members (O-members).
• Members from Africa are
• P-members Morocco and South Africa.
• O-members Kenya, Mauritius, Tanzania and
  Zimbabwe.
• South Africa has been the only really active
  African country participating in ISO/TC 211,
  attending all the Plenaries since 1998 (with over
  25 delegates over the years), contributing to the
  development of standards.
• ISO/TC 211 also has 28 Class A Liaisons these
  are international organizations that also
  participate in ISO/TC 211. They include agencies
  of the United Nations, international scientific
  unions and industry organizations.
• The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa
  (UN ECA) became a Class A Liaison in 2005. The
  current liaisons from UN ECA are Chukwudozie
  Ezigbalike, Paul Belanger, and Antony Cooper.
• ISO/TC 211 meetings enjoy very good participation
  and hopefully, participation by African experts
  will increase in the near future. The 28th
  Plenary of ISO/TC 211 is scheduled for Molde,
  Norway, on 28 and 29 May 2009.

22
Key standards for future consideration support
the Mapping Africa for Africa Initiative (MAfA)

• ISO/TC 211 has begun developing standards for
  application domains, which will touch directly on
  the work of users, as these standards deal more
  with data issues than system issues.
• In considering the fundamental data sets for
  Africa, the following are key standards
• The Metadata The best known ISO/TC 211 standard
  is ISO 191152003, Geographic information
  Metadata
• Quality There are three standards from ISO/TC
  211 dealing with quality ISO 19113 2002,
  Geographic information Quality principles, ISO
  191142003, Geographic information Quality
  evaluation procedures, and ISO/TS 191382006,
  Geographic information Data quality measures.
• Cataloguing or classification The two relevant
  standards are ISO 191102005, Geographic
  information Methodology for feature
  cataloguing, and ISO 19126, Geographic
  information Feature concept dictionaries and
  registers
• Essential climate variables (ECVs) ISO 19144-1,
  Geographic information Classification systems
  Part 1 Classification system structure. ISO
  19144-2, Geographic information Classification
  Systems Part 2 Land Cover Classification
  System LCCS.
• Land administration A new ISO/TC 211 project is
  ISO 19152, Geographic information Land
  Administration Domain Model (LADM), which is
  developing common terminology and a framework
  model for land administration, bridging the
  cadastre, deeds, land ownership and land tenure,
  both formal and informal.

23
Outlook

• For the working group on Standards to
  realistically deliver on its mandate it is
  imperative that dedicated funding be sourced to
  cover the costs in attending Standards meeting as
  well as to develop African profiles of the ISO
  standards to support MAfA.

24
Working Group on Capacity Building

• Compiled by Dr. Isi Ikhuoria, RECTAS
• The activities are focused on
• Education and Training
• Research and Development
• Conferences and Workshops

25
Education and Training

• Diploma Courses
• Diploma programmes in Geoinformation Production
  and Management are run at three levels
  Technician (18 months), Technologist (18 months)
  and Postgraduate (12 months).
• Joint RECTAS-ITC M.Sc. in Geoinformatics
• The ITC-RECTAS joint education programme is one
  of the active nodes of the International Capacity
  Building Network on Geo-information Science and
  Earth Observation code-named GI-NET involving
  some 43 partner-tertiary institutions
• Other Joint Programmes
• RECTAS-Obafemi Awolowo University M.Sc. in Remote
  Sensing/GIS
• RECTAS/University of Abomey-Calvi MSc
• RECTAS/University of Benin MSc Programme

26
Research and Development

• Consultancy Projects
• Several consultancy services in the application
  of GIS in any field of endeavour (
• Short courses
• RECTAS organises various short courses in
  Geoinformation science applications in
• Advisory Services
• RECTAS renders advisory services in the areas of
  maintenance and installation of computers and
  software, and Photogrammetric instrument
  maintenance and installations.

27
Conferences and Workshops

• Accra, Ghana Capacity building session during
  AARSE 2008
• AOCRS Workshop on Geographic Names
• Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
• May 2009, Nairobi, Kenya
• Other workshops and training activities organized
  by RECTAS and RCMRD are reported in the Regional
  Centres report

28
Recommendations of Pre-CODIST Events

• AFREF Workshop
• Call on Chair to present recommendations
• Workshop on HIV.AIDS NMA
• Call on Chair to present recommendations

29
Contacting Us

• ICT, Science Technolgy Division
• Aida Opoku-Mensah, Director
• aopoku-mensah_at_uneca.org
• Geoinformation Systems Section
• Andre Nonguierma, OIC
• ANonguierma_at_uneca.org
• Paul Belanger, GIS Officer
• paul.belanger_at_un.org
• http//geoinfo.uneca.org/sdiafrica/
• http//www.uneca.org