BALI --- West Java Provincial Government won four Bhumandala Awards 2023. The awards were handed over by the Geospatial Information Agency (BIG) of the Republic of Indonesia at the Discovery Plaza Hotel Kuta, Bali, Monday ( 6/11/2023 ).

The four awards are the Bhumandala Award Nama Rupabumi gold medal, the Bhumandala Kanaka gold medal with the Simantri Mantap innovation or Tree Care Monitoring and Planting Information System, the Bhumandala Regional Boundaries silver medal, and the Bhumandala Ariti Bronze Medal with the "GIS-Based Spatial Planning Web" innovation.

In his speech representing Acting. The Governor of West Java, Head of the West Java Community and Village Empowerment Service, Dicky Saromi, said that for Bhumandala, the name Topabumi was the second time that West Java had received it.

"We are grateful to have received these four Bhumandalas, for Bhumandala Topabumi of course the support of all parties, one of which is by providing technical guidance to districts/cities, collaborating with various parties to achieve a target of five million topographic data," said Dicky.

"Several programs, one village with a hundred names, were very effective in studying topographic names for application to SINAR (Top-up Earth Name Information System) and the culmination was an invitation to give a presentation at the UN New York headquarters to present the use of topographic names in disaster mitigation," he added.

Meanwhile, for Bhumandala Kanaka, the West Java Provincial Government has Simantri Mantap which is a system for handling critical land in West Java through monitoring planted tree seedlings, with the use of real-time visualization, the distribution of forestry production results is monitored and can be directly monitored , and the impact is reducing critical land area by 81 thousand hectares in West Java.

Then for Bhumandala Regional Boundaries, the West Java Provincial Government confirmed village boundaries in the context of village planning in West Java. This year, villages and sub-districts in West Java have finalized their village and sub-district boundaries which are useful in organizing village spatial planning.

For Bhumandala Ariti, the West Java Provincial Government has an innovation called "Wargi Jabar" which is a system to answer the need to provide geospatial data for West Java spatial planning plans while simultaneously realizing the integration of spatial planning data and information with a one stop click system.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Environment and Forestry, Siti Nurbaya, in her speech said that using geospatial can help in strategic policies.

"These strategic issues (in Indonesia) require spatial or geospatial-based analysis to determine appropriate policies and problem-solving strategies," said Siti Nurbaya.

Head of the Geospatial Information Agency (BIG), Muh Aris Marfai, in his speech said that there were 70 innovations coming this year, which would help the government's work program in basic mapping.

"The future challenge for BIG is to provide more accurate and detailed geospatial information to regional governments so that they don't have to bother compiling basic maps when they want to develop innovations or applications," said Muh Aris.

The 2023 Bhumandala Award is a form of appreciation and appreciation from the Geospatial Information Agency (BIG) to Ministries, Institutions and Regional Governments who have succeeded in developing and implementing innovations in the use of Geospatial Information (IG) in government governance.

At the event, several districts and cities in West Java received awards, including the Bandung City Regional Government receiving the Bhumandala Kanaka Gold award through the spatial data utilization program in government governance, the second best Bandung Regency Government Bhumandala Nama Rupabumi and Cianjur Regency getting the third best.

Before the award presentation ceremony, an international seminar "Asia Pacific Geospatial Forum" was held with the theme Embracing Geospatial Innovation for a Sustainable World on 6-10 November 2023 which was attended by experts from within and outside the country.