A student of the Bandung Institute of Technology  (ITB) is set to attend the Esri User Conference  (Esri UC) in San Diego, California, US, on July 10 to 14 after winning the Esri Young Scholars Award (EYSA) 2017.

Dirga Imam Gozali Sumantri, who is a student at ITB's school of geodesy and geomathics engineering, was given the award for his project, the Bandung Reliable Geospatial App (BRaGA), an crowdsourcing app that enables residents to report their issues directly to the local administration.

EYSA is an international geospatial competition for students, including postgraduates, that is locally managed by Esri Indonesia and focuses on creative applications of the Geographic Information System (GIS) technology to tackle business and community issues.

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According to a press release, Dirga will have the opportunity to present his work in San Diego in front of more than 16,000 GIS experts from 140 countries.

"Bandung has led the development of smart cities in Indonesia. The smart city concept itself highlights the people as an important data source that is critical to increase public services. Providing them with a platform to report incidents happening in the community means supporting them to make change and help the government understand the public more and provide a better service," said Dirga.

The app is also designed to educate the users about nearby public facilities and historic places. "I believe that, after getting to know these historic places, people will have more appreciation of them and want to help preserve them," he added. (kes)