In accordance with its 2015 Annual Work Plan and within the framework of the Statistical Capacity Building (StatCaB) Programme, SESRIC organised the training course on 'Geographic Information Systems' at the National Institute of Statistics and Demography (INSD) in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso on 3-5 February 2015. The course was conducted by Ms. Marie-Antoinette Ouattara, Chief of Cartography Division at the National Institute of Statistics (INS) of Cote d’Ivoire, with the participation of 17 officials of the INSD.

As defined in the VSS eLearning website, a geographic information system (GIS) is the system that captures, stores, analyzes, manages, and presents data with reference to geographic location data. Therefore, in a general sense, the term describes any information system that integrates, stores, edits, analyzes, shares, and displays geographic information for informing decision making. GIS applications are tools that allow users to create interactive queries (user-created searches), analyze spatial information, edit data, maps, and present the results of all these operations.

The training course on 'Geographic Information Systems' included practical case studies and focused on the following topics:

• Introduction to ArcGIS
• Display and Manipulation of Layers
• Integrating Data
• Spatial Analysis
• Map Creation
• Layouting

Sign up for an account at OIC-StatCom Forum (http://forum.sesric.org/) to join the group discussion on the training course on 'Geographic Information Systems' in Burkina Faso available at http://forum.sesric.org/?p=12

For other activities of the Statistics and Information Department within the Statistical Capacity Building (StatCaB) Programme, please visit: http://www.oicstatcom.org/statcab.php

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