Census workers this year will be using technical devices for the 2009 National Population Census.
Solomon Islands is one of few Pacific Island countries to start using the new device.The Secretariat of the Pacific Community, SPC, is providing the technologies through its technical support programs.
SPC's Geographical Information Systems Programmer, Scott Pontifex, says the work includes using geographical positioning systems to locate household, settlement or village and digital scanning to process census questionnaires.
He says in situations where streets have no names and numbers means that no address list exists or a location database of dwelling for census project use are unavailable.
Mr. Pontifex says this results in enumerators charged with finding each household, settlement or village facing difficulties locating where all people are.
He says in such situations, hand-held geographical positioning systems can increase the accuracy of residence locations especially in rural areas where settlements are harder to find.
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