Kingston University London

Congratulations to Svetlana Ghenciu who has been awarded the ESRI Development Center Best Student for Kingston University (pictured receiving her award from Professor Gavin Gilmore). An exemplary performance on the programme was completed with her thesis titled “Using GIS to Visualise Dimensions and Temporal Evolution of Human Development in Asian and Pacific Region.” She demonstrated how techniques of spatial analysis and geovisualisation can be used to highlight the issues of human development and poverty. She applied GIS mapping and animation technologies to visualize and compare human development over a period of 28 years (1980-2008) in 22 countries across Asia-Pacific: a global region that includes the countries of Nepal and Singapore lying at opposite ends of the development spectrum. She employed multivariate statistical techniques to calculate a composite human development index from 32 variables grouped into seven domains: economic strength, education, health, infrastructure, population dynamics, employment and governance. A particularly innovative aspect of the work was the development of temporal choropleth mapping animations to visualize this index.