Regional technical workshops being held in SVG

Engineers, town planners, geospatial experts and other technocrats are meeting here this week in two regional workshops hosted by the Government of St Vincent and the Grenadines and the World Bank.{{more}}

The OECS Regional Engineering Workshop, which is being hosted by the Regional Disaster Vulnerability Reduction Project and the Ministry of Transport, Works, Urban Development, and Local Government, began yesterday at the NIS training room.

The Caribbean Handbook on Risk Information Management Workshop is being hosted by the Ministry of Housing, Informal Human Settlements, Land and Surveys, and Physical Planning, the World Bank, the ACP-EU Natural Disaster Risk Reduction Program, and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery. That workshop began at the NIS conference room yesterday afternoon.

Today, September 30, from 8:30 a.m., both are meeting to discuss risk assessment and risk reduction, and will hear welcome remarks from Senator Julian Francis, who is representing Minister of Transport, Works, Urban Development, and Local Government, Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves.

The OECS Regional Engineering Workshop builds upon ongoing disaster risk reduction activities in the region, namely through the Regional Disaster Vulnerability Reduction Program (RDVRP) and the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR).

The objective of this workshop is to finalize the framework for a sub-regional, engineering association of public works engineers, including development of a formal constitution and memorandum of understanding (MOU); share knowledge and build capacity in areas such as coastal protection, river embankment protection, procurement issues and risk analysis; collaborate on and develop a knowledge sharing platform for resources such as terms of reference, technical documents and other tools to facilitate project implementation and engineering analysis; develop next steps and recommendations for continued collaboration, roles and responsibilities, and funding mechanisms to support short to medium terms goals of the Association.

The OECS Regional Engineering Workshop is being held in parallel with the Caribbean Handbook for Risk Information Management (CHaRIM) Workshop. The CHaRIM Workshop, as part of the Caribbean Risk Information Program, seeks to build capacity on natural hazard risk and risk assessment methodologies, provide training on several components of the handbook and obtain feedback from participants on the handbook’s content and applications.