In Bhutan, the recent spate of large-scale weather disasters has become a major risk to the lives and livelihoods of the people. In addition, Bhutan faces the challenge of managing water resources to cope with the depletion of water sources due to climate change and water shortages caused by increased demand for water for daily use in urban areas. The government of Japan has set “development resilient to climate change and disasters” and “sustainable water” as urgent performance goals, and reliable topographic maps are needed to serve as a foundation for various analyses for policy making.
Japan has supported the development of a high precision digital topographic map with a scale of 1/25,000 in the southern region of Bhutan through the National Geospatial Information Project (2015-2017), but the remaining north-central inland region has not yet been developed. The government of Bhutan requires the urgent development of digital topographic maps for use in planning and analysis of disaster prevention and water resource management.
This cooperation will develop digital topographic maps of the north-central interior region of Bhutan and major urban areas of Bhutan, which will provide geospatial information that will serve as the basis for various development plans for disaster prevention and promotion of water resource management, and will contribute to reducing vulnerability to urban environmental degradation.
© Source JICA