April 12th, 2011 marked a new milestone in the history of the cooperation between UNITAR and the Municipality of Plock Poland. On this date, Mr. Carlos Lopes, UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNITAR Executive Director, and Mr. Andrzej Nowakowski, Mayor of Plock, signed a new partnership agreement which further strengthens ties between the two entities through the activities delivered by CIFAL Plock, the International Taining enter for Local actors located in Plock.

CIFAL Plock is coordinated locally under a partnership between the City of Plock and UNITAR. It started its capacity-building activities in 2004 and hosted since then a series over 20 events which benefited over 600 local actors from Central and Eastern Europe. The mission of CIFAL Płock is to promote cooperation, knowledge sharing and experience exchange between actors in Central and Eastern Europe to enhance the Region’s potential and activeness in area of local sustainable development. CIFAL Plock also aims to reinforce city-to-city cooperation in Central and Eastern Europe in the above-mentioned fields.

The next day, on 13th April 2011, the Executive Director of UNITAR participated in a Scientific Conference on floods, jointly organized by the Governor of the Mazovian Province and the City of Plock. In 2010, the whole region was affected by this wrenching phenomenon which caused heavy human and financial losses. On this occasion, Mr. Lopes addressed the audience - representatives of municipalities, regions and ministers, as well as representatives of the civil society - on the potential benefit of UNOSAT - UNITAR’S operational satellite applications programme – expertise in the field of natural disaster-related imagery and capacity development for local actors in communities at risk from floods. Indeed, UNOSAT assists authorities in combining geophysical and geological parameters such as land-cover, elevation, slope, and hydrographic network with socio-economic parameters in practical GIS applications. These can generate information and maps that can be updated more easily and more frequently than standard survey documents and have the advantage of being directly usable at local and national levels. This community-based approach using detailed local knowledge of the territory in combination with GIS solutions has already proven a winning decision support tool in several contexts in Central America, northern Africa and Asia.