Training for specialists on effective use of the Environmental Information System for Uzbekistan (EIS-UZ) was organized recently at the Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Melioration EcoGIS Centre.

The system is capable of processing and analyzing the data of environmental monitoring, revealing the tendencies appeared in the environment through certain periods of time and determining the main environmental problems.

The EIS-UZ includes the Environmental Information Database (EIDB), its website, and the Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The system was developed by the joint project of the government of the Republic of Uzbekistan and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) "Enhancement of the environmental indicators database with GIS application to monitor the state of the environment in Uzbekistan".

Representatives of ministries and state agencies dealing with the issues of monitoring and assessment of the state of environment and management of the natural resources took part in the training, a press release of the UNDP said.

The main aim of the training was to instruct the specialist-users to effectively manage the EIS integrated into the GIS since by the end of this year the Project will pass the system to the State Nature Protection Committee. In its turn the committee together with other state agencies will be responsible for the maintenance of the system including updating the environmental data and base map data, to manage and create new supplementary software and scenarios to interpret the data as well as to put these data analysis results onto maps.

The theoretical part of the training programme consisted of such main chapters as "Technical description of the system", "Functions and capabilities of the system", "What is GIS and does it work?", "Using the EIDB-ArcGIS interface", and "Using the Metadatabase".

Each theoretical lecture was supplemented by practical work, where more than 30 training participants studied how to manage data bases and use the modern geo-information technologies.

As a result, the training participants have studied the structure and components of the EIS-UZ, EIDB and with its functionality; they have learned how to work with the EIDB implementing various result formats of a search. They also have studied the principles of GIS and learned to create modern chronological maps on the state of the environment using the environmental indicators data.

At the end of the training programme the participants have received special certificates.