SIDON: A new Geographic Information System that allows businessmen to better locate potential investors and supplies them with marking statistics and data is soon to be put into operation in the south of Lebanon.
The Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture in Sidon and south Lebanon organized on Thursday afternoon concerning the use of the Geographic Information System (GIS) it was planning to adopt.
The conference was held at the chamber’s headquarters in Sidon and was attended by an array of mayors and merchants from various parts of the south. Chamber President Mohammad al-Zaatari explained during the gathering the importance of introducing GIS into the work of the chamber and of every merchant.
“This step will help modernize Lebanon’s economy and the activities of the Chamber. It will base our work on more realistic facts and precise planning, and will develop our economic sector,” Zaatari said.
The GIS is a modern system aimed at organizing, managing and analyzing data linked to location as to facilitate the search for precise geographic information. It serves to visualize data and the relationship between different information in the form of maps, globes, reports and charts.
The GIS helps businessmen and investors access the location and type of a company, the number of companies in a given region, the demographics of a region, commercial statistics, and analytical information.
Zaatari said that the new system had a direct connection to local development because precise and accurate information would become within the access of everyone and would allow GIS users to base their work on real data and on an international modern program.
However, he noted that the main difficulty with using GIS was to constantly update the data in accordance with changes on the ground.
Zaatari stressed the importance of modernizing the trade sector, saying that the chamber was confident that the GIS would be beneficial for the economy, adding that the decision to use the new system was not “planned lightly nor taken for the sake of experiment.”
The chamber’s director of information, Zeina Btaish, also explained the benefits of GIS, saying it allowed its users to locate any site and to find any information related to this site “with a simple click.”
She added that the new system to be adopted by the chamber would cover the southern regions of Sidon, Tyre, Nabatieh, Tariq Ansar and Zahrani and would include road maps, infrastructure maps, locations of companies and institutions, agricultural information, statistics, commercial analysis and charts.
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