Nino Kheladze
Country: Georgia
Employer: Caucasus Environmental NGO Network (CENN), Georgia
I would encourage any students who are thinking of learning more about the field of geo-information science and earth observation to stop, look no further, and apply to ITC. It is a strong educational faculty that will give them great skills – skills that will assist them in overcoming the professional challenges in their future career.
In 2009, while I was doing my MSc, ITC together with Caucasus Environmental NGO Network “CENN” started a joint project “Institutional building for natural disaster risk reduction (DRR) in Georgia” financially supported by the Social Transformation Programme (Matra). Thus, I did a research in the scope of the Matra project. This fact facilitated to find a job at CENN directly after I finished the MSc and came back to Georgia. At the beginning, I got involved with the Matra project, which was still on-going but was successfully finalised in April 2012, producing several useful results, from where I was mostly involved in the process of the development of the “Atlas of Natural Hazards and Risks of Georgia”. Working at CENN is very challenging and interesting as it always offers the opportunity to get involved in the new disciplinary field.
Currently, I am still working at CENN and my main tasks are: researching, reporting and implementing practical works, cooperating with different institutions at central and local level regarding various topics, coordinating and managing the project activities and what is the most enjoyable, - working with spatial information in GIS environment.