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Director General,KISR
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Environmental protection has been of global importance since the early 1960's. Many
countries have amended their agenda to accommodate the urgency of sustaining and
protecting the environment. Kuwait, being one of the leading countries in environmental
protection, has endeavored to establish, through its Supreme Council for Planning
and Development, the Kuwait Integrated Environmental Information Network (KIEIN).
The KIEIN project was developed at Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR),
under the support of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
Phase one of the project covered the marine and coastal environment, whereas phase
two focused on the terrestrial and atmospheric environment. Under the current third
phase of the KIEIN project, all the Geographic Information System (GIS) datasets
of the previous two phases were completed and incorporated in the comprehensive
“Geo-Environmental” database.
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All applications and tools were enhanced and incorporated,
as well as several new functions in the KIEIN desktop application. Moreover, two
new major components were introduced in the current phase of KIEIN; namely the socio-economic
and demographic indicators module, and the KIEIN web-based application.
The geoenvironmental database of the KIEIN project will act as an information dissemination
tool inside and outside Kuwait. It will support the decision and policy makers as
well as researchers with the required geoenvironmental information. Currently, KIEIN
provides KISR projects with the required geospatial data sets. It also provides
under-graduate and post-graduate students, concerned organizations and the private
sector with the available geospatial information related to environmental issues.
In the future, the geoenvironmental database of the KIEIN project will be used as
a base for any disaster management and early warning systems. I
would like to thank the Supreme Council for Planning and Development and UNDP in
Kuwait for their support of the different phases of the KIEIN project.
Dr. Naji Al-Mutairi
Director General,
Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research
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