I am forester and currently working for the German cooperation (GIZ) in the Dominican Republic. My job is to support the Dominican environment ministry, more precisely the Reforestation Department, in a reforestation and soil restoration project in a strategic watershed for water supply. The project is executed in partnership between GIZ (German BMZ and European funding) and the Dominican government.

I must also help the ministry to map all the plots reforested in recent years at the national level. The problem is that they waste a lot of time and generate a lot of errors with their traditional method of collecting field data. This is why I am interested in ODK which seems to me the right tool for that.

If this works well with reforested plots whose data base will have to be continuously updated because they reforest nearly 10,000 ha every year, the ministry could use ODK to continuously update other databases under their responsibility such as REDD +, logging data from managed forests, etc.