Speakers Bio & Abstract

BiographyBasanta Shrestha, Director of Strategic Cooperation works at the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) with the key portfolio to provide strategic leadership and partnership development to bring about transformative change on ICIMOD’s operations. Mr Shrestha has a Masters in Engineering in Computer Science from the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand in 1989 and a Bachelors in Electrical and Electronic Engineering in 1985 from Madras University, India.
Mr Shrestha is well-known for his outstanding strategic leadership quality, an experienced manager and team builder, and proven track-record of excellent networking in the ICIMOD region and around the world. Under his leadership, he has developed highly successful partnerships with the national institutions and strategic cooperation with key international agencies towards sustainable mountain development in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region. Mr Shrestha has been instrumental in developing highly innovative technology programems and mobilizing resources to support mountain development policies and practices. Mr Shrestha has been granted a Presidential Award (2001) and Special Achievement Award (2014), Humanitarian GIS Award (2015) by Environmental System Research Institute, USA, the award was given to his leadership and in recognition of ICIMOD’s contributions towards promotion of GIS technology and applications in the Himalayan region. Abstract Geospatial Technology - Taking the Pulse of the Himalayas The inherent geographical impediments of mountain landscape combined with growing vulnerability of mountain communities due to climate change in the Himalayas pose a very high strain on sustainable development agenda. The Himalayas is particularly sensitive to pronounced temperature rise in comparison to plane areas, resulting into serious impacts of climate change in the form of - rapid melting of glaciers and loss of snow cover, changes in vegetation cover and biodiversity loss, erratic weather patterns and increasing number of frequency and magnitude of natural disasters and even given rise to migration. Unprecedented development in GIS, earth observation, Internet and convergence of myriad of technologies including social media, crowd sourcing, cloud computing, spatial visualization are providing enormous opportunities to gain comprehensive understanding of the state of the mountain system and ongoing change processes. Effective monitoring and assessment of these changes are imperative to provide scientific basis for informed decision making for sustainable development. There is an urgent need to develop actionable information services and knowledge on climate change to be used by scientific communities for research, development practitioners, policy makers, and the public at large. To this effect, GIS provides a unifying framework to advance our understanding of risks and causes of climate change, thus guide our actions on adaptation and mitigation to these changes. The International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) is working on strengthening existing partnerships and developing new partnerships to take advantage with rapidly changing technological advancements in order to provide innovative solutions to address the impending climate change in the Himalayas.