July 19, 2017- The team of Geo-SAFER Mindanao (Geo-Informatics for Systematic Assessment of Flood Effects and Risks towards a Resilient Mindanao) Program conducted a benchmarking visit to the COARE (Computing and Archiving Research Environment) Facility of the Department of Science and Technology-Advanced Science and Technology Institute (DOST-ASTI), wherein six (6) representatives of the Geo-SAFER Mindanao Program, together with one (1) representative of Phil-LiDAR, met up with the key people behind the CoARE Project and discussed the specifications, requirements, and services of the  CoARE Facility.

The Geo-SAFER Mindanao Program, which intends to continue the Phil-LiDAR 1 Program through the coverage of the remaining flood hazard maps in the country using the LiDAR technology, is implemented by (five) 5 Higher Educational Institutions in Mindanao and is funded by the DOST-PCIEERD (Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development). The said program aims to establish the MinDSET Center (Mindanao Data Science, Engineering, and Technology Center), an online facility meant for the collaboration and access of scientific data among stakeholders and end-users of the program. Thus, the purpose of the benchmarking visit by the Geo-SAFER Mindanao-MinDSET team to CoARE’s facility was to learn and observe the structure, set-up, and maintenance of CoARE in order to provide guidance to the team in the establishment of their own data center.

The CoARE team discusses the specifications, requirements, and services of the CoARE Facility

The CoARE team hopes for more fruitful collaborations with the GEO-Safer Mindanao Program and other research and development programs in the future.