Cave Hill doctoral student Kim Baldwin brought glory to herself and The University of the West Indies last September by winning the best student paper prize at the prestigious Coast GIS Conference held in Belgium.

The Centre for Resource Management (CERMES) enrollee, submitted a paper entitled A Geospatial Framework to Support Ecosystem Based Management and Marine Spatial Planning for the Trans-Boundary Grenadine Islands.

The presentation was taken from the first chapter of Baldwin’s PhD thesis – the culmination of six years of research. The GIS chapter introduced the unique application of geographical information systems (GIS) technology, usually associated with creating 3D land maps (like Google Earth), for the purpose of mapping various aspects of marine topography in the Grenadines Bank, an area of the Caribbean Sea used by both St. Vincent and Grenada. She said the use of the technology to map the sea is still new, having been applied only within the last 15 years.

Baldwin chose the biennial Coast GIS conference because “it is the largest marine or coastal GIS conference that’s out there.”

Reaction to her submission was extremely favourable.

“People at the conference were really impressed with what we integrated, and this was very new… . It’s called participatory GIS, which is what I do.”

Participatory GIS integrates conventional science with local knowledge.  She explained this new approach is essential to further development in the field, adding that “environmental management (is) about people; people are the ones that have an effect on the environment, so you need to understand their perceptions, what their objectives and their priorities are and bring that into science.” 

This impressive approach also colligated with one of her goals, which is to present this paper to international audiences, thereby validating local knowledge and empowering various people working in the communities where she conducted her research – namely fishermen – to assist scientists, and subsequently local government and shareholders in planning for sustainable development within their areas.

“I wanted to show in this project how merging local knowledge and scientific knowledge can provide – especially using GIS – insight that you would not see by analyzing information independently,” Baldwin said.