In 2011 and 2012 GeoWel Research undertook a research training project to try and enhance the in-house capacities of four municipalities of Shida Kartli and the Governor’s office to collect and analyze data for economic development planning on local and regional level. The project included:

• Familiarise trainees with existing sources of data including GeoStat and existing reports by international organisations. Work with them to help extract information in the reports that is specific to their municipality
• Training for municipal staff economic data collection, aggregation and analysis
• Design of a platform for allowing the collection and presentation of data on the region
• Design and field test a simple survey to provide the municipality with basic local economic data that is not provided by GeoStat
• Publish a short report pulling together all of the research done in the course of the training.