Members of the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH, founded as OIE) attended an Advanced Geographic Information System (GIS) virtual training course held from 27 July to 30 August 2021 to improve animal disease surveillance and control capacity via GIS tools. The training course was organised by the WOAH Sub Regional Representation for South-East Asia in partnership with The EpiCentre, Massey University, New Zealand.
The training focused on the application of Spatial Risk Assessments (SRA), facilitating an informed appraisal of disease risk and prioritisation of areas to concentrate control activities. This enables decision-makers to develop risk management strategies. Mapping spatial risk patterns into regions is expected to enhance communication with stakeholders and facilitates the prioritisation of surveillance and vaccination to increase the cost-effective use of these limited resources.
The 2-week training was delivered using a combined self-paced training module of the Massey University’s online Moodle platform (Stream) and group training using Zoom. This was followed by the country project assignments (9 – 30 August) with specific deliverables and a timeline to apply GIS training skills and knowledge obtained during the course, using training participants own country data and local contexts.
The objectives of the training were:
