L-R: Aiden Harrigan, Roger Bellers, Miguel Garriga and Elizabeth Klute

The Valley, Anguillia, April 20, 2007 (The Anguillian) - Twelve persons from the Disaster Management Committee and Government personnel who may serve in the National Emergency Operations Centre, last week attended a three day training course in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). It was held at the University of the West Indies School of Continuing Studies and conducted by Miguel Garriga, President of the GIS Consulting and Training for the Enterprise, based in Florida. The course is sponsored by the Department for International Development in London with the software and manuals being supplied by Environmental Systems Research International.

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, Aidan Harrigan speaking at the opening of the course described it as important as Anguilla is trying to vamp up all disaster arrangements on the island. He noted that mitigation is one thing but after a disaster the response is important and it is necessary to use all technology that is available to be able to have all the information ready. He thanked Garriga for conducting the course and the Department of Disaster Management for making all the arrangements.

Disaster Manager, Elizabeth Klute, spoke of the course as very important as there is a need to have information readily available following a disaster. The first day involved the concepts of intelligent mapping. The second day was a smaller group of persons who took the technical training while on the third day the main group learnt how to use the mapping techniques to support a disaster and an exercise was held on damage assessment mapping. 

 Source: http://www.anguillian.com/article/view/4616/1/140/