In the framework of the project «Supporting Sustainable Mountain Development in the Caucasus (Sustainable Caucasus)», geospatial data has been designated as a key element to support the process towards sustainable mountain development. In order to ensure the best access to and use of geospatial data for visuali­zing, monitoring and modeling specific issues, an open source geospatial data sharing platform has been set up using the Geonode application (http://geonode.org).

The platform aims at fostering a better geospatial data discovery, vizualization, access and use for sustainable development in the Caucasus region. Each participating country has designated a focal point to help populating it with relevant geospatial data. To this end, some capacity building material has been developed and adapted with specific Caucasus examples.

This capacity building material consists in a dedicated tutorial as well as a virtual machine containing all relevant data, software and exercises. The material is freely available at ftp://orion.grid.unep.ch/GEOSS_services/geonode/Geonode_Caucasus

You can see the success story here.