Bangladesh: The Election Commission (EC) will strive to digitise database of all polling centres throughout the country in a bid to eliminate complexities over gathering relevant statistics ahead of the next general elections.
At a recent meeting, the EC expressed its intention to enrich its database by inserting geographical locations, photos and other relevant information of all polling stations into a map using the GIS process.
The EC biennial schedule (2012-13) included the task of collecting information and incorporating it into software called ”delimitation tool”.
EC Secretary Mohammad Sadique put forward the proposal, which was approved by Chief Election Commissioner Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad.
The CEC issued directives to immediately start work with Dhaka Metropolitan that houses almost 2,000 centres as part of the primary experimental installations.
The EC under former CEC ATM Shamsul huda exercised ”GIS” technology while redefining electoral boundaries. The Centre for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS) of the Ministry of Water Resources had taken up the responsibility of carrying out the work.
They used ”delimitation tools” and produced the ”most acceptable” results considering the population according to geographical locations with help of a computer. The procedure gave output very fast.
According to the EC, the location of a polling station in the map after the procedure is complete would be specifically identified, as it includes both road routes and river networks, thus facilitating centre-to-centre calls.
The installations would require photos, global positioning, and record of latitude and longitude of each centre for incorporation into the database to create a’re-projection” into the map of Bangladesh.
Source: BD News
