An open data culture and a strong coordinated national spatial data infrastructure among the HKH countries can assist informed decision-making by ensuring that government data is discoverable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.

In 2020, our Regional Database System (RDS) Initiative extended technical support to Bhutan’s
Centre for GIS Coordination (CGISC) and National Land Commission Secretariat (NLCS) to review and update the Bhutan Geospatial Portal, enhancing discoverability of data hosted on the portal and making data accessible to a wider userbase. The portal – the country’s first national portal for geospatial information – was jointly developed in 2014 by our SERVIR-HKH Initiative with Bhutan’s CGISC and NLCS. This portal is now linked to our RDS, and data hosted on it can be discovered from our RDS Portal.

We also extended technical support to Bhutan’s National Center for Hydrology and Meteorology (NCHM) for data management and information cataloguing. The NCHM’s Cryosphere Information Hub now hosts its data and information assets on a searchable Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)compliant data catalogue.

The Bhutan Geospatial Portal and Cryosphere Information Hub – both web-based data catalogues – are built on free and open-source software and are OGC compliant. Data hosted on CGISC/ NCHM servers can be readily shared with other OGC-compliant services, further aiding data discoverability and interoperability. This also supports Bhutan’s vision of a coordinated national spatial data infrastructure.