The GIEWS Workstation

Purpose

The GIEWS Workstation is a web-based GIS mapping tool for managing national food security and early warning data. It aims at standardizing food security information to facilitate exchange at both the national and international levels.

Target Audience

National Early Warning Units, Donors providing food security assistance, Other International and UN agencies, NGO’s

Details

The GIEWS workstation is a comprehensive tool for food security analysis which includes Remote Sensing data, GIS maps, cereal balance sheets, food security related databases, statistics and a news service. It aims at bringing together a wide variety of information and data from different sources and at streamlining them to facilitate integration and exchange.

Data flows in two directions: countries provide FAO with detailed food security information at the sub-national level while FAO supplies information that may not be easily available in beneficiary countries (satellite images, GIS data, long time series data, internationally available statistics, etc.).

The GIEWS workstation is modular so that it can easily be adapted to suit countries’ specific data needs. It uses open source software and non-commercial databases to make sure costs are sustainable. Training in the use of the GIEWS Workstation’s tools will help build national capacity in managing, analysing and disseminating food security related information.

Hardware and Software Requirements

The application supports any Java based operating system, Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris, and databases with JDBC drivers like MySQL, MS-SQL Server or Oracle.

A 1 Terabyte Hard Disk for storing data such as data sets GIS layers, satellite images, raster layers, etc. is necessary. A dedicated server is required for hosting both the application and the MySQL database.

Data Requirements

Languages

Estimated Training Time

Training Materials

Contact Information