Geopositioning Laboratory at Zarzal: an academic bridge to the northern region of Valle del Cauca

From Left to Right: EICG, Albert Ortiz, Professor Jorge Vélez, Professor Francisco Hernández, Research Vice Dean Carlos Madera, Zalzal’s Sectional Director Antonio Echeverry, Dean Fiderman Machuca, Professor César García, Academic Vice Dean Jackeline Murillo, Engineers Daniel Ortiz and Diego Romero, Laboratory Support Professional Paola Gómez, Laboratory Coordinator Jhon Jairo Barona. Credit: Valenttinne Acosta, Georeferencing Laboratory’s Communication Professional.

On April 26, at the Zarzal Branch of the Universidad del Valle, professors from the School of Civil Engineering and Geomatics and the Remote Sensing Research Group inaugurated the Geopositioning, Metrology and Geomatics Instrumentation Laboratory. This space is the result of a program that seeks to provide high quality training to communities in municipalities near Cali, framed in an initiative that promotes academic decentralization. 

A program that seeks to educate the community: 

As part of the strategic development plan for the period 2021-2025, the School of Civil and Geomatics Engineering set a series of objectives and milestones to be achieved in order to guarantee its growth in the region. Among them, one of the most important, due to its relationship with the communities surrounding the Cali headquarters, was the "Support to Municipalities in Multipurpose Cadastre", in partnership with the Agustín Codazzi Geographic Institute, which aimed to provide technical training to the municipalities of Valle del Cauca in four lines: cadastral training, focused on municipalities that do not have a cadastre; cadastral updating, focused on those that do have one, but whose data is outdated; cadastral conservation, related to all the processes and procedures that people carry out in this area; and cadastral dissemination, which responds to the uses the community can give to such information and the relationships that this community can establish with both institutional and community actors.  

The program plans to create 100 jobs, distributed among 3 regional offices and the Cali office. The objective is to have sufficient capacity, in terms of infrastructure and manpower, to respond to future requirements related to the Multipurpose Cadastre, so that the demand for information can be met autonomously from the regions.  

"The idea is to have these jobs in the regional offices, and thus generate employment in the region, increase capacities, and have the possibility of offering the surrounding municipalities the appropriate training, in addition to expanding our academic programs, postgraduate offerings and continuing education courses," says Professor Jhon Jairo Barona, assigned to the School of Civil Engineering and Geomatics and Coordinator of the Geopositioning, Instrumentation and Geomatic Metrology Laboratory of the Universidad del Valle. According to him, this program and the laboratory presented to the university community of the Zarzal’s Branch will generate a completely different dynamic of interaction to the one that has been taking place between the main campus of the Universidad del Valle and its Regionalization System. 

The launch of the Laboratory, presented during the meeting held on April 26, represents the first step on the road to decentralization that will be made possible within the framework of this program. 

Decentralization and the Georeferencing Laboratory: 

For Jorge Andrés Vélez Correa, Professor and researcher in Integral Risk Management, everything which happens in the territories, whether in the environmental, special and risk management fields, demands a large amount of cartographic inputs, satellite images, data capture, and other related information. This demand has allowed the Remote Sensing Research Group to build bridges with strategic institutions, such as the Corporación Autónoma Regional del Valle del Cauca (CVC), the Colombian Geological Service, the National Land Agency and the Agustín Codazzi Geographic Institute. These ties have paved the way for the "Support to Municipalities in Multipurpose Cadastre" program, as a bid to decentralize the functions of these institutions and give their communities the opportunity to carry out these tasks. 

"It is necessary to strengthen the training of public officials, and generate skilled labor within the municipalities to achieve the processes. In that sense, our presence here in Zarzal seeks to generate the resources required for this region of the Valle del Cauca and the surrounding departments", says Professor Jorge Andrés Vélez Correa. 

With the objective of generating technological and human capital muscle, the Laboratory offers services such as Development of georeferenced solutions, Specialized GNSS data processing, GNSS community base service, Development of measurements by topobathymetry, Monitoring of external solar activity and generation of alert bulletins, and Development of sensors and instruments for the measurement of atmospheric variables. In addition, it has a base infrastructure, with specialized software, space for robust hardware, along with equipment and floating technology (drones).  

For this year the investment in the Laboratory will be $516,938,853.00, a little more than double that of the previous year, when $237,275,020 was allocated, which is also a sign of the growing interest on the part of the School of Engineering to have a presence in the region.

Georeferencing Laboratory's facilities, Zarzal Branch. Credit: Valenttinne Acosta, Georeferencing Laboratory’s Communication Professional.

A first step towards decentralization: 

The launch of the Geopositioning Laboratory at the Zarzal’s Branch is especially important for Professor Jhon Jairo Barona, who during the event received a commemorative plaque from the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Fiderman Machuca, as well as the research group for the work done and the management as leader of the laboratory.  

After graduating from high school in the city of Cali, Professor Barona enrolled in the regionalization program and won a place to study at the Zarzal’s Branch. He had to move there to pursue his studies, and it was then that he met a group of people who made him feel at home. From the family that welcomed him, where he was one of the children, to his classmates, many of whom came from other regions of Valle del Cauca, such as La Victoria, Roldanillo, La Unión. "I got a very special affection for the municipality", he says, and adds that the Laboratory is an unbeatable opportunity to give back to Zarzal everything it gave him.  

Something similar is felt by Antonio José Echeverri Vélez, Director of the Zarzal Sectional. According to him, this is the first experience of laboratories in sectional/branch, which makes it an important approach to connect research in Cali with the other regions of Valle del Cauca. "A good experience here opens the possibility for the other sites, for sure," he says. 

Professor Jorge Vélez also believes that this is a good opportunity to put knowledge at the service of communities with different social, economic and environmental contexts. "We believe it is important to provide this transfer of knowledge from Cali to the regional headquarters, and obviously generate a great formation of human capital so that in all these issues that are being worked on, and that are a concern today (such as climate change, Multipurpose Cadastre, risk management) we can have trained human resources, with all the potential of knowledge and the teams of experts that we have." 

"It seems to me that Zarzal is one of the key municipalities in the region. Zarzal is a meeting point for practically the entire northern part of the Valle del Cauca. Here we have access to the department of Risaralda, Quindío, and all the municipalities in the north (of the country), which gives Zarzal a privileged position and allows it to be a focus of development at regional level", says Professor Barona, regarding the future that the Geopositioning Laboratory and the other academic programs that will be opened in the coming months will bring to the community of Zarzal. "I believe that, if we make this kind of effort, we will expand our expectations and build a much more technified society here in the north of the Valle, which can optimize its processes and decision making", are his words. 

The event, which was well attended by the community, including representatives of academy, military forces and civil society, concluded with a flight demonstration of one of the drones belonging to the Laboratory, manned by local staff.

Attendees at the opening of the Georreferencing Laboratory observing the flight sample of one of the drones. Credit: Valenttinne Acosta, Georeferencing Laboratory’s Communication Professional.

If interested in being in touch with the researchers or any further information about the Geopositioning Laboratory at Zarzal, please write the Faculty of Engineering Communications Office: comunicaingenieria@correounivalle.edu.co