MP for Adeiso and Deputy Trade Minister, Frederick Obeng-Adom has officially inaugurated the Ghana Geospatial Society.

The GGS aimed to encourage the use of technology in strengthening government, private sector, and academia among others to keep members duly informed on global advancement in geospatial activities.

The event which took place at the 48 Engineers Regiment, Wajir Barracks Teshie, Accra brought together the Stakeholders in the sector to share ideas on the use of satellite gadgets.

Speaking on the theme: "Managing Our Natural Resources through Geospatial Intelligence", the Deputy Minister, noted that Natural resources are abundant and crucial to the survival of all life on Earth.

He said, "However, inefficient management has driven many of these resources to the point of exhaustion, whiles the nation derives low to benefit from others. We need to become more aware that some of these resources are finite and that even renewable resources need to be properly managed".

The Deputy Minister explained that the usefulness of the two main categories of natural resources renewable and non renewable resources reaches its utmost level through geospatial intelligence.

"Through geospatial intelligence, we get to understand natural resource management in a better way. It enables us to efficiently carry out most of the tasks, which would have been otherwise impossible," he said.

He continued, "It is very interesting and encouraging seeing the distinguished gathered here and your involvement in developing our dear Ghana. We would be mediocre developers of this country if we are to work without paying particular attention to Geospatial Intelligence".

He said Ghana will be proud to see the Fire Service predicting the next possible fire outbreak with enough preparedness standing by, the NADMO predicting the next flooding, its location, the possible number of people to be affected, and a scientific way to manage the disaster, as well as the Health Workers identifying diseases relative to specific people in a locality and the best cure for those people and not just generic cure across the board among others.

He concluded by stating that "Ghana needs to work hard towards developing our country by ourselves for ourselves and the only way I see this happening is through Geospatial Intelligence".

He urged the stakeholders to put their shoulders on the wheel, and encourage the young ones to do the same and posteriority will be thanking us.

Meanwhile, the Member of Parliament for Ahafo Ano South, also Chairman of the Lands and Forest Commission, Francis Manu-Adabor in his speech also noted that the use of geospatial technology and for that matter Intelligence will enable us to acquire data that is referenced to the earth with its natural resources to be used for analysis, modeling, simulation, and visualization.

According to him "this theme has come at the time when our airwaves are choked with the danger posed by illegal mining (Galamsey) on our environment and in addition to our ways of curbing the menace of illegal mining let us apply geospatial technology as well".

"In this fight, everybody has a role to play but I beg to say that, the extent and exact positions where these are taking place is critical as such decisions to control disasters must be grounded on science and true data".

He further explained that "the illegal mining fight has been on for decades and we cannot achieve better results if we do things the same way.

He added that "There is now a need to combine geospatial techniques with other advocacies already in place to curb this menace. We need to deploy manned and unmanned spatial technology using drones, satellite imagery, LiDAR, and Aerial flights to track down these damaging activities".

He, however, pleaded with the government to assist the institutions to acquire satellite data that can provide this country with 24-hour repetitive data".

"This would ensure timely provision of spatially referenced information which to a large extent, would provide data on galamsey activities, ensure good data for environment and other information that may even help us in our weather forecast for agricultural and other purposes" he added.