Page 9 - Service Delivery Review

News in Brief

The Western Cape is committed to the

mainstreaming of GIS Technology

“The Western Cape Department of Agriculture’s natural resources, and support management of natural
(WCDoA) Cape Farm Mapper (CFM) application disasters. In addition, GIS helps us understand how
has become synonymous with evidence-based and climate change will affect our world and keep tabs on
spatially informed decision-making in the Western agriculture’s dynamic ‘footprint’ in our province.”
Cape Department of Agriculture,” said the Western
Cape Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Ivan Meyer, as the The footprint is supported by a 4-yearly airborne
world celebrated Geographic Information Systems census of agriculture (the so-called “Flyover”) which
(GIS) Day mid-November 2022. places a wealth of information at the fingertips of our
administrators, regional planners, agribusinesses,
GIS Day is an annual event held worldwide to celebrate researchers and producers.
the rapidly evolving technology of GIS. Initiated by
spatial analytics world leader, the Environmental Dr. Wallace highlighted the popularity of the WCDoA’s
Systems Research Institute (Esri), the first GIS Day innovative web application, CFM. The application
took place in 1999. allows free access to local data to non-specialist
users – even facilitating production of report-quality
According to Dr. Irvin Meyer, the Western Cape maps.
Department of Agriculture has been active in GIS for
several years. According to Dr. Wallace, “GIS technology helps
organisations track and visualise data in a way
Dr. Meyer said, “During that time, we have developed that has never been done before. As a result, it has
a vast resource of spatial information related to become much more integrated into the mainstream IT
agriculture in the province. Analysis of the data infrastructure and architecture of many organisations
regularly helps provide information to support – including the WCG”.
decision-making amongst stakeholders.
“Our department is committed to mainstreaming GIS.
According to the WCDoA’s GIS specialist scientist, We recognised the value of recording geographic
Dr. Mike Wallace, GIS allows us to integrate various location for its activities to facilitate spatial analysis
data types from multiple sources. and decision-making, “concluded Dr. Meyer.

Dr. Wallace said, “GIS is used in almost every sector Western Cape Agriculture and Rural Development
of the economy, science and Government. But, more
specifically in agriculture, it can be used for many
applications. These range from simple farm mapping
to monitoring agricultural production with the aid of
satellites, complex modelling of crops in response to

SERVICE DELIVERY REVIEW | Volume 15 • No. 2 of 2022/2023 9