National GIS Individual Consultant or Consultant Team/Firms to Provide GIS Services for Land Use Mapping

Position: National GIS Individual consultant or Consultant team/firms to provide GIS services for land use mapping

As part of the landscape component’s activities, in order to support the “Land cover and land use mapping for target provinces”, the USAID Vietnam Forest and Deltas Program is seeking qualified National GIS Individual consultant or Consultant team/firm to provide GIS services for land use mapping from period of Jul 2014 – Aug 2015.

1. Background:

The USAID Vietnam Forest and Deltas Program is embarking upon a five-year effort that will support four provinces to accelerate their transition to climate resilient, low emissions development through investments in reducing net emissions from forests, and enhancing resiliency of people, places, and livelihoods in the delta regions to short and long-term climate impacts. The USAID Vietnam Forest and Deltas Program, from 2013 to 2018, is being implemented through Winrock International, the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV), American Red Cross, Vietnam Red Cross and Centre for Sustainable Rural Development. The landscape component will work in Thanh Hoa and Nghe An provinces to support low emission development in forests and agriculture, ecosystem service management, watershed mapping and sustainable forest management.

2. Scope of Work

Objectives

The aim of consulting services (‘the Services’) include the following contents:

• to supervise contracted organizations and consultants undertaking forest and agriculture mapping to ensure data quality control of ongoing consultant missions mapping forests and agriculture in Thanh Hoa and Nghe An provinces;
• to provide technical advice and expertise to ensure the quality and effectiveness of surveys;
• to ensure that teams are working together to use similar / consistent methods, final GIS results following the database standard of VFD, to avoid conflicting data sets;
• To provide support on RS/GIS requirement in land use planning in both provinces.

Main tasks

• The consultants will be mainly responsible for the quality assurance and supervise the forest and agriculture mapping activities in Thanh Hoa and Nghe An. In principle, the consultant will
• be in-charge of following tasks:
• To provide GIS and mapping services, as appropriate, regards analysis of spatial data; remote sensing analysis;
• To provide advice on integration of forestry and non-forestry data, mapping and remote sensing to assist VFD activities;
• To provide training materials and training services in data analysis, GPS, GIS, remote sensing for local counterparts, as appropriate;
• To supervise and provide technical advice for land surveys;
• To support the GIS capacity building/training for provincial stakeholders with consultant teams;
• To work closely with GIS specialist for metadata standard development and database management;
• To provide support and analysis for various GIS duties including analysis of high conservation values, commodity mapping, climate change analysis and data downscaling and use of multi-criteria analysis (MCA) techniques;
• To undertake any other duty as requested by Line Manager (Team Leader – Sustainable Landscapes);

a) Outputs and deliverables

• Report on consultant tasks (monthly if needed)
• Softcopy of GIS database from forest and non-forest consultant teams that should meets VFD requirements; and other GIS data processed as required;
• Training guidelines on RS/GIS for local partners as appropriate;

b) Reporting – Line Manager

The GIS advisor will report to Team Leader – Sustainable Landscape component; and in consultation with VFD GIS Specialist.

c) Qualifications, Experiences of Consultant(s)

The consultant team/firms should consists of 1 team leader and at least 3-4 team member(s)

Qualification for team leader:

• Master or Doctorate degree in forestry, GIS and / or remote sensing or natural resources
• At least 10 years proven experience in forest cover and agriculture mapping, and data collection;
• Familiarity with government land use classifications and categories, forest and agriculture mapping methodologies, and links to relevant institutions is required;
• Demonstrated experience in supervision of data collection programs is advantageous;
• Expertise in database management, specifically in MS Access and MS Excel;
• Experience in radar is a plus;
• Capacity using RS and GIS software is a must, such as eCognition, ERDAS, ArcGIS and MapInfo;
• Expert in capacity building and training local partners in GIS and Remote Sensing;
• Proficient in English.

Qualification for team members:

• Master degree in forestry, GIS and/or remote sensing or natural resources. Doctor is a plus;
• At least 5-7 years proven experience in forest cover and agriculture mapping, and data collection;
• Familiarity with government land use classifications and categories, forest and agriculture mapping methodologies, and links to relevant institutions is required;
• Demonstrated experience in supervision of data collection/survey is advantageous;
• Expertise in database management, specifically in MS Access and MS Excel;
• Experience in radar is a plus;
• Capacity using RS and GIS software is a must, such as eCognition, ERDAS, ArcGIS and MapInfo;
• Strong experiences in capacity building and training local partners in GIS and Remote Sensing;
• Proficient in English.

3. Time and duration

The consultants are expected to work with an agreed detail schedule for each task from Line Manager during a period from late-July, 2014 to August 2015.

The estimated time needed to complete each requested task in each period of time, will be negotiated by both parties beforehand.

4. Contract

The USAID Vietnam Forest and Delta Program will sign a principle contract with the Individual consultant/consultant team/firm(s) in accordance with Winrock International regulations and guidelines for the contracting of consultants. The Program will ensure that all required information are made available to the consultant team/firm(s)

5. How to apply

Interested candidates should send their application(s) to the following address: [email protected] with subject line of “Application for GIS Services” no later than July 17th, 2014 with letter of interest, CV and three references.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted for interview.