Patrick Fitzgerald

Background

About Patrick Fitzgerald

I hold a Bachelor of Science (Geographic Information Science) completed with 1st class Honours at Curtin University of Technology. My Honours thesis investigated the use of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web services to estimate carbon stocks in forestry plantations, with real-time updates to the Western Australia Land Information Authority (Landgate) registry for use in national carbon trading. This honours thesis was awarded the 2008 Spatial Student Award at the Asia-Pacific Spatial Excellence Awards. Since this time, I have gained 12+ years experience building spatial data and reporting platforms using Open Source and Open Standards to support decision-makers in various sectors including forestry, health, humanitarian, e-commerce as well as in the establishment of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) for governmental agencies. Previous roles have included leading CDC, OFDA and WHO project teams, with implementation of health information management systems for emergency preparedness and response covering the Horn of Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo and Lake Chad regions, based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I am also the creator and lead of ReportHub, the multi-sectoral partner reporting platform that provides visibility on humanitarian projects in real-time. ReportHub is currently implemented in Colombia, Cox's Bazar, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Somalia and Ethiopia covering more than 12 sectors. I have spent the past year in Cox's Bazar as Technical Advisor to the Inter-Sector Coordination Group (ISCG), supporting the Food Security Sector and Health Sector with the implementation of geospatial reporting and locations systems covering cash distributions, food security, nutrition, health and WASH activities. This includes implementing Public Health Information Systems (PHIS) standards and enabling interoperability between government health systems such as DHIS2 and humanitarian surveillance systems of the World Health Organisation (WHO), namely the Early Warning Alert Response System (EWARS). Currently, I am in the position of MIS Database Expert supporting the Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI) Public Health Emergency Management (PHEM) Emergency Operations Centre (EOC), implementing surveillance systems for routine reporting and early warning on communicable diseases.