Bahrain will host the inaugural PetroGIS conference, formulated with the assistance of the PetroGIS Advisory Board, from March 28 to April 1.

PetroGIS is the GCC’s first-ever GIS for the oil and gas industry, said IIR Middle East, the organisers of the event.

The director of GIS for the Central Informatics Organisation (CIO) in Bahrain Dr Khalid Al-Haidan will deliver the opening keynote address at the conference which will be held at the Crowne Plaza in Manama.

Al Haidan, responsible for establishing the National Geodetic Network and the “Geoids Model” for Bahrain, will be presenting a paper on the “Implementation of National Spatial Data Infrastructure – NSDI in the Kingdom Of Bahrain.”

Throughout his tenure at the CIO, Dr Al-Haidan has worked on developing a portfolio of strategy, innovation and research projects.

These include the National Spatial Database Infrastructure (NSDI) project for Bahrain, the signage project, and the land information system project for the real estate Sector, as well as establishing the Bahrain Petroleum Company’s infrastructure database.

PetroGIS Advisory Board’s Principle, Imtiaz Ahmed, GIS Group Leader, Petroleum Engineering Application Services Department (PEASD), Saudi Aramco, will be exploring how his division has developed GIS within the E&P department and how to integrate E&P data and application.

The other members of the PetroGIS Advisory Board include Associate  Professor Dr Mohammed Aziz, director of Master Program in Applied Geosciences & GIS Full Professor of Applied GIS & RS, Kuwait, Dr M. Yagoub, Associate Professor of Remote Sensing and GIS Geography Program, UAE, Krishna Kumar, senior GIS Analyst, Wire line Access Network, GIS Section, Q-TEL, Qatar and Dr. Peter Petrov, remote sensing expert, Kuwait.-TradeArabia News Service