Event Overview:
Join us for a virtual presentation by Dr. Antarin Chakrabarty, urban and regional planner, geospatial analyst, and open-source software advocate. In this 30-minute session, he will present a systems approach to addressing the interconnected challenges of heritage conservation, balanced regional development, and post-conflict reconstruction in Tigray. Drawing on real-world insights, he will demonstrate how open-source GIS and crowd-sourced datasets can support holistic and integrated planning practices in post-crisis contexts.
Time: Friday, July 18, 2025
13:00 (CET/Berlin) / 14:00 PM (East African Time Zone) / 8:00 ድሕሪ ሰዓት / ከሰዓት በኋላ (local time)
Link: zoom link will be sent via email after registration.
Presentation abstract:
A system is typically conceptualised as a set of interconnected or interacting parts that make up a complex whole. A systems approach offers an integrating framework at various levels of analysis, which ensures that important issues are not considered in isolation. For example, it is common to ignore the relationships with surrounding villages and towns while preparing the plan for a large city and, likewise, to ignore the effects on surrounding land-use while planning the road network within that city. This tendency to emphasise certain issues and themes at the cost of others gets accentuated in times of crisis such as man-made conflicts or natural disasters. In a post-crisis situation the immediate needs of re-building basic infrastructure, social amenities and the livelihoods of affected people compel decision makers to focus all attention on these issues.
This is particularly true of situations like post-conflict Tigray, where the immediate need of restoration of lives and livelihoods, combined with limited economic resources and over-stretched organisational capacities, may over-shadow other important tasks such as at the conservation and restoration of historical sites and cultural landscapes and balanced regional development. It is not difficult to see, that, in the case of Tigray, the issue of conservation of historical sites and cultural heritage is linked to the issue of balanced regional development. The historical sites of Tigray are not concentrated in particular urban or rural centres but spread over its vast and unique landscape and often located in extremely remote areas.
The solution to this difficulty lies in choosing not to see heritage conservation; regional development; post-conflict reconstruction as separate issues requiring their own independent interventions, but as intrinsically connected and inseparable parts of the overall regional system.
The presentation shall show how the adoption of a systems approach, combined with the power of open-source Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and crowd-sourced datasets, can operationalise a planning practice that can address the needs of heritage conservation; balanced regional development and post-conflict restoration in a holistic manner.
About Dr. Antarin Chakrabarty:
Dr. Antarin Chakrabarty is an urban and regional planner, geo-spatial analyst and an open-source software enthusiast. He received his PhD in Urban Ecological Planning from the Norwegian University of Science & Technology (NTNU) in 2008. Dr. Antarin Chakrabarty worked as a State Team Lead with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Government of Odisha for the planning and implementation of the Odisha Liveable Habitat Mission (Jaga Mission), one of the largest slum land titling and upgrading initiatives in the world. Prior to that he worked with GIZ India for the development of digital geo-spatial tools for participatory planning and as Assistant Professor of Planning at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ethiopian Institute of Technology, Mekelle University. Dr. Chakrabarty’s work has focussed on issues of climate adaptation, land management, digital data, affordable housing and the use of mathematical modelling and computing for addressing complex urban planning tasks.
His current work focuses on geo-spatial modeling of urban and regional growth in disaster affected regions of India.
More about his work can be found at: www.iied.org/people/antarin-chakrabarty
