Training and Workshop on Rural Transport Management and Financing, Yogyakarta 20 Feb – 5 Mar 2011

It has been well established that transport is vital to development. Transport provides accessibility to goods, services, jobs, educational opportunities, friends and relatives. Without viable transportation, the quality of life does not improve and poverty is only prolonged. Furthermore, rural poverty is pervasive and difficult to address. Improving mobility can reduce rural poverty by facilitating… Continue reading »

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ITC’s Rector visit

ITC’s Rector, Prof. Molenaar visited UGM at June 5, 2009. Various thing has been talked and discussed during this visit, with UGM’s Rector (Prof. Sudjarwadi) as well as with Pustral’s Director, Dr. Heru Sutomo. This visit was very important to strengthen the network between ITC and UGM for coming years, including in the preparation of… Continue reading »

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MICD’s Curriculum developed

The curriculum of the MICD program is based on the philosophy that infrastructure development is a multi-disciplinary process. It provides an innovative combination of theory, methods and techniques relevant to infrastructure development from various disciplines such as engineering, planning, social sciences, economics and geography. Another innovative element is the role of geo-information science which provides… Continue reading »

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The quality of infrastructure in Indonesia is poor. This limits the health and well being of the Indonesian population and severely restricts their potential for economic development. The infrastructure sector has difficulties getting to grips with the challenges the country is facing. To address this situation, promising policies are being developed and implemented such as… Continue reading »

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Training and Workshop on Rural Transport Management and Financing, Yogyakarta 20 Feb – 5 Mar 2011 ITC’s Rector visit MICD’s Curriculum developed

Dec
20

Training and Workshop on Rural Transport Management and Financing, Yogyakarta 20 Feb – 5 Mar 2011

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It has been well established that transport is vital to development. Transport provides accessibility to goods, services, jobs, educational opportunities, friends and relatives. Without viable transportation, the quality of life does not improve and poverty is only prolonged. Furthermore, rural poverty is pervasive and difficult to address. Improving mobility can reduce rural poverty by facilitating women, men, and children to more readily access services (education, health, finance, markets), obtain goods and income, and participate in social, political and community activities. Moreover, mobility requires a combination of appropriate transport infrastructure, improved transport services, and affordable means of transport, both motorized and non-motorized (Starkey, 2002 ) .

Investment in transport infrastructure and improved transport service are crucial for meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). There is now an increased importance attached to measures that will help to achieve the MDGs. Beside economic objectives these emphasize social consideration relating to health, education and women’s well being. In part, better road planning can be achieved through more effective public participation, including the active involvement of woman, to help identify the routes that are most wanted by the community and the engineering designs and choices that can maximizes work opportunities for local population (Forum News, 2007 ) . Therefore, road selection and designs cannot be left to engineers and planners alone.

On the other hand, the development and provision of rural transport facility and infrastructure are unique matters that cannot be generalized with that of urban transport. The general problems which may emerge when develop and provide sufficient rural transport facility and infrastructure are limited amount of fund and its financial feasibility. Providing rural transport is frequently considered as financially unfeasible as the cost/expenditure is much larger that the revenue. This is the main constraint for the operator in providing rural transport service; besides, (local) government does not have enough financial resource to provide subsidiary. In fact, the more crucial problem in providing rural transport service and infrastructure is their sustainability.

This workshop and training aims to build capacity and improve knowledge on managing and financing rural transport. Following this program, participants also can obtain several benefits such as (1) sharing information about their country’s experiences in developing and implements rural transport policies and programs, (2) expanding individual and institutional networks of knowledge on sustainable rural transport development, and (3) exposure on concept and practical experience an appropriate technology for rural transport that consider local knowledge and values.

For more information please visit RTMF 2011 website here.

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Sep
28

The first day of second batch

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Second batch of Master Program MICD started at 27 September 2010. Second batch students from various background, from social science, economy, geography and engineering. As for first batch, this second batch will have the class for the next 18 months.

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Sep
26

Visit to rural road and development in Cilacap

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Cilacap is one of the district in Central Java Province,  known for high security prison (Nusa Kambangan), oil state company (Pertamina) and a trans national cement factory. A concern about more infrastructure and community development has been arised for recent years. As a par of process to establish a tri-partit activity between MICD/PUSTRAL, Local Government of Cilacap District and Yayasan Sosial Bina Sejahtera (YSBS), Cilacap, MICD’s lecturers, student and internship student went to Cilacap District at 25 September 2010. A discussion has been conducted at local government, attended by many stakeholders from the local government (executive and legislatives).

The team also went to several projects including rural roads, bridges, school, stone mining, water transport and other projects. These project has been developed by YSBS, a major NGO in infrastructure development in Cilacap. The cooperation is expected to develop Cilacap as one of the laboratorium for MICD’s school while could contributed for the development managed by local government and development agency like the YSBS.

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Apr
02

Short Course: Spatial Decision Support System

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At March 3 until April 1, 2010, MICD organized the short course in the topic of spatial decision support system. More than 20 participants, including 8 student from MICD joint this program. The participants came from various organization: local government, mining company, students, and NGO. Dr. Johannes Flacke (ITC) was the main lecturer,  supporting by Ir. Arif Wismadi, M.Sc from Pustral UGM.

Participants learnt about how the SDSS can help their works to be more efficient using this technology. Not only learning about the SDSS principal, concept and methodology, but also the student use the software to work with case studies. A sertificate was given at the end of the course. Most participants hightlighted the importance of availability of this type of course, that provided them with very useful tool in a short period of time.

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Oct
05

Site Visit to Infrastructures in Yogyakarta

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At Oct 3rd, 2009, all students (including 3 internship student from Netherlands) and some lecturers in MICD visited several infrastructures offices and site. Firstly, the visit to public works office gave students and lectures general problems in infrastructure development and community development in Yogyakarta. The local government already had some program on relating community development into infrastructure program, but not yet in more integrated way.

The other office and site visited was the waste water treatment facility in southern part of Yogyakarta. This facility has capacity that able to treat up to 15% of all waste from Yogyakarta city. The problem is more on the network from the city to this area is not yet complete. For last place student brought to underground water facility in Bantul Region (southern part of Yogyakarta). This water facility was located inside underground cave and need to be pumped out using several mechanism including solar system energy.

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Sep
11

Guest lecture series: Prof. Martin van Marseveen

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Prof. Martin van Marseveen is professor in Management of Urban-Regional Dynamics at ITC (since 2008) and professor in Strategic Transport Planning and Sustainable Development at the University of Twente (since 1995). Holds a Ph.D degree in Applied Mathematics in the field of Stochastic Systems and Control Theory from the University of Twente, Professor Marseveen now is head of the Department Urban and Regional Planning and Geo-Information Management of ITC, The Netherlands.

Prof. Martin van Marseveen gave presentation about benefit and challenges of multidisciplinary education at 7,9 and 10 September 2009. As a founding father of one of the first multidisciplinary course in The Netherlands (School of Engineering and Management of ITC), Prof. Marseveen highlighted the importance of this kind of course for the next coming years.

Multidisciplinarity is a non-integrative mixture of disciplines in that each discipline retains its methodologies and assumptions without change or development from other disciplines within the multidisciplinary relationship. In a multi-disciplinary course, students are exposed to selected key theories, methods and techniques of different scientific disciplines that are jointly applied to a field of study or professional practice.

The multidisciplinary approach is considered particularly useful in the field of infrastructure and community development, because such development is by definition multi-disciplinary in nature. Without planning, engineering, sociological, economic and environmental knowledge and understanding, no infrastructure project can be successfully developed, implemented and sustained.

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Sep
07

MICD opening

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Today, 7 September 2009, MICD start its first class. Prof. Irwan Abdullah, the director of Graduate School UGM, will welcome all students and Prof. Sunyoto Usman, the director of MICD will give the overview of course concept and summary module per blocks. In the following session, Dr. Heru Sutomo will guide the discussion session in experiences of participants in infrastructure and community development and what is the expectation from the course program. In the afternoon session, Prof. Martin van Maarseven of ITC will give the overview of first block (Block A) with emphasize on benefits and challenges of multidisciplinary education, examples of the UPM programme at ITC and the CT&M programme at University of Twente.

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Jun
06

ITC’s Rector visit

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ITC’s Rector, Prof. Molenaar visited UGM at June 5, 2009. Various thing has been talked and discussed during this visit, with UGM’s Rector (Prof. Sudjarwadi) as well as with Pustral’s Director, Dr. Heru Sutomo. This visit was very important to strengthen the network between ITC and UGM for coming years, including in the preparation of master programme of Management of Infrastructure and Community Development as part of the result of this INDF project.

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Jun
01

MICD’s Curriculum developed

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The curriculum of the MICD program is based on the philosophy that infrastructure development is a multi-disciplinary process. It provides an innovative combination of theory, methods and techniques relevant to infrastructure development from various disciplines such as engineering, planning, social sciences, economics and geography. Another innovative element is the role of geo-information science which provides an umbrella of concepts, methods and tools to help analyze, plan, design, optimize and visualize infrastructure systems in their local geographical, social and physical (thus environmental) context and support decision making in infrastructure planning and management.

The 18 months curriculum is built up of 10 blocks (of varying duration):

Block A introduces theoretical perspectives on Management of Infrastructure and Community Development against the background of the sustainable development paradigm. The main scientific disciplines involved are introduced.

Block B deals with Spatial Planning and Development. The theoretical foundations will be provided to understand the spatial aspects of infrastructure planning for community development, while addressing how infrastructure planning is practiced in different contexts and thematic domains. A lot of attention is placed on theory and applications of Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing within the infrastructure domain.

Block C addresses Community Development. Attention is placed on understanding theory, concepts, and methodologies on the inclusion of social and economic aspects and impacts in integrated infrastructure development. To do so, a thorough theoretical background on interrelations between infrastructure and socio-economic development challenges is provided. The participants will learn to understand social and economic impacts and associated issues like equity, gender, health, participation, and empowerment.

Block D covers Impact Analysis. This block examines impacts of infrastructure networks particularly in relation to the tension and possible trade offs between natural resources and infrastructure development, with case examples for Indonesia.

Block E addresses Governance of Infrastructure Development. This block discusses the policy and decision making context in land and infrastructure planning in general and in Indonesia in particular. Central is the discussion about the role of different parties in the integrated infrastructure development process (the public and private sector, the beneficiaries and the affected, the influencers), how the public policy process operates, and the involvement of stakeholders. Issues of transparency and accountability will be addressed. The basics of project appraisal and project management are discussed.

Block F deals with Integrated Infrastructure Systems. This block provides a basic understanding of infrastructure systems and their design process. The infrastructure system will be divided into its composing elements. The functional relationships between these elements will be developed both at the infrastructure system level as well as the level of the composing elements. Four important infrastructure domains will be covered in more detail, these are: Roads and transport, Water Supply and Sanitation, Energy and Telecommunication.

Block G is on Methods and Techniques. This block offers a variety of methods and techniques that are essential for infrastructure planners, analysts and managers. Methods covered include: Spatial Statistics, Physical Surveys, Cost-Benefit Analysis, Social Surveys, Social Statistics, Social and Environmental Impact Assessment, Stakeholder Analysis, Needs Assessment, Participatory GIS, Collaborative Decision Making and Modelling & Scenario Development.

Block H covers Academic, Communication and Management Skills. This block provides a set of generic skills to improve performance in doing academic research In addition, this block covers communication skills (presentation, negotiation, arguing etc) and basic management skills like project planning, resource allocation, basic estimating, quality and risk management.

Block I is the Multidisciplinary Studio Project. In this project students should be able to identify the important issues and problems related with infrastructure and community development in a fully equipped studio setting of an actual infrastructure project. In order to do so, a combination of approaches that have been learnt earlier in the programme will need to be used. These include the analysis of development policies, the evaluation of policy goals, the different approaches of community development, the appropriate engineering options and the expected social, economic and environmental impacts of proposed interventions.

Block J is a six months M.Sc. thesis research project that deals with multi-disciplinary aspects of MICD in one of the infrastructure domains. Thesis topics are in line with an academic research program that complements the course program.

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Aug
01

(No title)

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The quality of infrastructure in Indonesia is poor. This limits the health and well being of the Indonesian population and severely restricts their potential for economic development. The infrastructure sector has difficulties getting to grips with the challenges the country is facing. To address this situation, promising policies are being developed and implemented such as the policy on decentralization that mandates local government agencies to play a leading role in infrastructure planning, construction and operation at the local level. Additionally, a policy is being implemented to relax the past rigid planning procedures and come to a more community centered planning and development of infrastructure systems.

It is recognised by national level agencies in Indonesia that the successful implementation of these policies is frustrated by the severe capacity limitations that exist with various local level stakeholders. In order to address these, the Centre for Transportation and Logistics Studies (PUSTRAL) of the University of Gadjah Mada (UGM) has been requested by the National Planning Development Agency Bappenas, to prepare a postgraduate programme in Infrastructure and Community Development. In its turn, PUSTRAL has approached ITC to assist in the development of this programme. To be able to respond to this request the current project is proposed.

The long-term objective of the project is to contribute to the establishment of a critical mass of multidisciplinary professionals that are able to apply innovative approaches to the complexities of integrated and community centered planning and management of infrastructure. This will be achieved through supporting the design and implementation of an academic programme in community infrastructure development consisting of a M.Sc., short courses and a PhD research programme developed and executed by the involved partners.

These activities are already under development by the Indonesia partner and are foreseen to continue beyond the duration of the project. The activities to be executed within the project will have a supporting role in the development of this programme, and are meant to improve thematic coverage and scientific quality to international standards and increase societal relevance. Important short term objectives of the project are the development of the curriculum for the MSc and short course activities, a substantial amount of teaching material (including an extensive integrated infrastructure project), the training of local staff, the development of a regional training and marketing plan, the initiation of a join research programme, the implementation and evaluation of 1 cycle of the MSc programme and the short courses.

Under the project an estimated 110 participants will be trained yearly through the various course programmes. During the project such course cycle will be realized once. After the termination of the project the same output is foreseen on a yearly basis.

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