The Consortium for Spatial Information Team

Robert Zomer
Coordinator

The users of geo-spatial data are usually hungry for more, just ask landscape ecologist Dr Robert Zomer.

“With any Geographic Information System (GIS), the more data you put in, the better off you are,” he explains. “But getting that data is rarely trivial.”

In common with other scientists working with geo-spatial information, Robert feels there is much to be gained from improved collaboration and the sharing of research.

“Within the CGIAR, research is often duplicated. The first thing researchers usually do when they gather geo-spatial information is to incorporate it in a digitized map – a map that might already exist at a different location. So it’s obvious that we can benefit from knowing what others are doing. Towards this end, the main objective of the CGIAR Consortium for Spatial Information (CSI) is to facilitate the sharing of knowledge, with the focus on sustainable development and poverty alleviation.” 

Robert, who is the Global Coordinator of the CSI, talks enthusiastically about the work carried out by the endeavor. “The Consortium is a decentralized organization that was started in 1999 as a grassroots initiative of CGIAR scientists working with geo-spatial information. The scope of this information is wide, covering biophysical land use and land cover, and socio-economics, to name just a few. The CSI’s most recent venture, the Poverty Mapping project, can be viewed at <http://povertymap.net/>.”

The ICT-KM CSI project, which is also headed by Robert, uses the existing CGIAR-CSI network to facilitate increased networking and collaboration across the CGIAR System. And now that the Consortium’s website is up and running, the project’s next goal is to create a metadata inventory of spatial data resources at each of the CGIAR’s fifteen Centers, and to develop a system-wide metadata search engine.

“I’m very excited about this project,” says Robert. “It will strengthen our network and help establish the CSI as a global platform for the dissemination of geo-spatial data. It’s also great to work with different scientists from different Centers and disciplines and to have everyone focused on the same goal. It’s been fun.”

Robert is kept busy juggling the demands of the project and the responsibilities that come with his post as a senior scientist with the Global Research Division of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in Colombo , Sri Lanka . Of course, when things get a little too hectic, it often pays to have a sense of humor. “I can’t neglect anything,” he says, “except sleep.”

In the past, the CSI has not had the attention it deserves, but it is now coming to the fore, something that Robert attributes to teamwork and the input of certain key players.

He elaborates, “Glenn Hyman from CIAT, the former chairman of the CSI, was a core activist in getting the project started and has been instrumental in promoting the Consortium, along with Dave Hodson at CYMMIT and Kam Suan Pheng at the WorldFish Center. Then there’s Dr Andrew Jarvis at IPGRI, who provided the digital elevation data that is now available for download at <srtm.csi.cgiar.org>.”

Prior to joining IWMI in 2002, Robert was the Coordinator of the Decision Support Systems Laboratory at the World AgroForestry Center (ICRAF) in Nairobi , Kenya . And before commencing his two-year stint at this African Center , he was a research fellow at the Center for Spatial Technologies and Remote Sensing at his alma mater, the University of California , Davis .

He holds a BSc in International Agricultural Development, an MSc in Agricultural Ecology, and a PhD in Landscape and Systems Ecology. Over the years, his teaching career has extended beyond the walls of UC-Davis to places like Nepal , Fiji , and Micronesia .

For now, though, Robert is enjoying life in Colombo with his wife Deborah Bossio (a fellow scientist at IWMI) and their two children, Maya and Satya.

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More members of the Consortium for Spatial Information Team coming soon...