While much of the world races toward new planets among the stars, the Caribbean is turning its gaze back to Earth. Now officially operational, the Caribbean Geospatial Observation Centre (CGOC) at UWI St Augustine is revolutionising how the region monitors environmental change, manages disaster risks, and builds climate resilience, one satellite image at a time.
Born from a landmark collaboration between The UWI, the Government of Mexico, and the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) of Mexico, the centre is a data-driven response to some of the Caribbean’s most pressing challenges—from coastal erosion and urban expansion to flooding, food insecurity, and sargassum blooms.
“This centre allows us to do things that simply weren’t possible before—not just faster, but smarter,” said Professor Bheshem Ramlal, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and one of the principal architects behind the project. “It’s about empowering our region to make informed, impactful decisions, rooted in reliable geospatial data that we can now process faster than ever in history.”
At the heart of the CGOC are two high-performance servers housed in The UWI’s state-of-the-art data centre which, according to Prof Ramlal, was a decision “based on evaluations done from the [INEGI] that the best place to locate the servers would be on the campus with the most modern infrastructure”.
These machines dramatically accelerate satellite image processing, reducing hours-long analyses to mere minutes, a huge game-changer for the region. Using the Open Data Cube (ODC) platform, the centre allows researchers, policymakers, and students across Latin America and the Caribbean to easily access, process, and interpret satellite imagery.
“This is not just a technical tool - it’s a regional equaliser,” explained Dr Olabanji Aladejana, Lecturer in the Department of Geomatics Engineering and Land Management, and the centre’s current technical lead. “Whether it is flood mapping, land degradation, or water resource monitoring, anyone from a small island state to a large government agency can now tap into this power.”
Nigerian-born Dr Aladejana was a senior researcher at the Federal University of Technology, Akure, in Nigeria, and previously worked with Digital Earth Africa before bringing his experience in data processing frameworks and processing satellite imagery and geospatial data to the St Augustine Campus.
The centre supports dozens of applications, including climate change tracking, agricultural planning, mangrove loss, forest fires, illegal quarrying, and sargassum monitoring. It also enables machine learning and artificial intelligence-powered analytics, opening the door to new innovations in GeoAI.
The CGOC’s launch culminates more than a decade of international cooperation. The original momentum began with the Caribbean-Mexican Project, a US$4.5 million initiative aimed at improving geodetic infrastructure and geospatial capacity in the region. With the successful installation of that infrastructure by 2018, attention turned to sustainable, long-term access to data and training.
Prof Ramlal explained, “We were able to negotiate an agreement whereby The UWI will host all the necessary equipment and support all the capacity building training for Latin America and the Caribbean. And UWI was the best choice as we represented a stable partner given the number of years that we have been around and will still be around as many projects like this require that stability in the long term.”
A Memorandum of Understanding was signed in July 2022 between The UWI, the Government of Mexico, and INEGI. By February 2023, the centre was fully operational. Since then, hundreds of individuals across the Caribbean have received training, including 20 advanced “power users” from various UWI campuses.
Training continues to be a key focus. Through workshops hosted by INEGI and coordinated with the centre, users are taught how to retrieve, analyse, and apply data from multiple satellites—including the Sentinel series (European Space Agency) and Landsat (US Geological Survey).
As a founding member of the Latin American and Caribbean Space Agency (ALCE) and past President Pro Tempore of Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), Mexico has demonstrated a long-standing commitment to regional scientific cooperation.
“During its tenure as President of CELAC from 2020 to 2022, the Government of Mexico prioritised strengthening regional technical and scientific co-operation,” said Ambassador Víctor Hugo Morales Meléndez, Ambassador of Mexico to Trinidad and Tobago.
“This centre is unique in Latin America and the Caribbean,” said the ambassador. ”Developed to work in coordination with ALCE, the project has become a key regional initiative. It enhances access to geospatial data for sustainable development, disaster risk reduction, and environmental management. Thanks to INEGI’s training, 583 experts from several Caribbean countries are now equipped to use these tools. We are proud to advance a broader agenda of academic exchanges and scholarships that deepen our bonds of friendship and technical cooperation.”
“Success means three things,” said Dr Aladejana. “First, our countries can better manage their scarce resources. Second, our people build the skills to innovate and lead with this data. And third, we grow into a centre that not only uses data, but creates it. So, in the long run, it opens up a whole new set of possibilities for environmental management and then stability within the region. Finally, we hope that in time, we can get funding to even launch our own satellites that, once in orbit, will give us high quality data, and paired with our ability to analyse and synthesise data meaningfully, result in a more responsive approach to the challenges in the region.”
