On 8 October 2010 the University of the West Indies (UWI) and the UN Office of Outer Space Affairs signed the cooperation agreement that established the tenth UN-SPIDER Regional Support Office (RSO). UWI is the first university to host an RSO and to contribute its experience and capabilities to the UN-SPIDER programme by doing so.
The Disaster Risk Reduction Centre at the University of the West Indies, which hosts UN-SPIDER RSO, reports to the Department of Geomatics Engineering and Land. It is a multi disciplinary Centre of Excellence in the field of disaster risk reduction and disaster management in the Caribbean and globally, especially in Small Island States. The particular strength of the Centre and its new role as an RSO lies it its capacity-building facilities, namely its GIS and photogrammetry laboratory and its short-courses in all areas of geoinformatics. The university also offers a BSc in Geomatics and an MSc in Geoinformatics. It has faculty members and technical staff in remote sensing, GIS, and GPS, and disposes of the respective soft- and hardware infrastructure, and of base data, DEM, and Landsat imagery of most of the Caribbean countries.
Disaster Risk Reduction Centre at the University of the West Indies: http://www.uwi.edu/drrc/default.aspx
