Fay­ola Fras­er

Grow­ing up in a small, peace­ful vil­lage in cen­tral Trinidad, Can­dice Dookree nev­er imag­ined that her love for the out­doors and nat­ur­al cu­rios­i­ty would one day lead her in­to the world of geospa­tial sci­ence. What be­gan as a child­hood shaped by com­mu­ni­ty and crick­et grad­u­al­ly evolved in­to a deep in­ter­est in how places grow, change, and con­nect. To­day, that jour­ney has po­si­tioned her at the fore­front of re­search that could trans­form how Trinidad and To­ba­go plans its ur­ban fu­ture.

Dookree at­tend­ed Preysal Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry and lat­er Cou­va East Sec­ondary, de­scrib­ing her­self dur­ing those years as “ad­ven­tur­ous and out­doorsy.” Crick­et be­came her first out­let for that en­er­gy. She played through­out pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school, even­tu­al­ly earn­ing a place on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Un­der-16 team and even trav­el­ling to Guyana to com­pete in match­es.

By her lat­er sec­ondary school years, Dookree made a de­lib­er­ate de­ci­sion to step away from crick­et and in­vest more heav­i­ly in aca­d­e­mics. Ge­og­ra­phy quick­ly be­came one of her strengths, shap­ing the ear­ly di­rec­tion of her am­bi­tions. Ini­tial­ly plan­ning to study civ­il en­gi­neer­ing, she was in­stead placed in­to the Ge­o­mat­ics En­gi­neer­ing pro­gramme at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, de­spite hav­ing lit­tle un­der­stand­ing of the field. What be­gan as an un­ex­pect­ed de­tour soon ig­nit­ed a cu­rios­i­ty that would de­fine her pur­pose for years to come.

Im­mers­ing her­self in the de­gree, Dookree be­came fas­ci­nat­ed by the role ge­o­mat­ics played in na­tion­al plan­ning across both gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tors. She re­alised that map­ping, spa­tial da­ta, and land mea­sure­ment were pow­er­ful tools in­flu­enc­ing near­ly every as­pect of ur­ban plan­ning in a coun­try. Her en­thu­si­asm trans­lat­ed in­to ex­cep­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance; she grad­u­at­ed with First Class Ho­n­ours in Ge­o­mat­ics En­gi­neer­ing and went on to pur­sue post­grad­u­ate re­search.

Her MPhil jour­ney in­tro­duced her to the world of re­search and sci­en­tif­ic in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Dur­ing this pe­ri­od, she pub­lished three ar­ti­cles fo­cused on Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS), par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Caribbean. One of her works, “Mod­el­ling the Dy­nam­ics of Ur­ban Growth in Caribbean SIDS Us­ing Re­mote Sens­ing and GIS: A Case Study of San Fer­nan­do, Trinidad and To­ba­go”, fo­cused on mon­i­tor­ing, quan­ti­fy­ing, and mod­el­ling ur­ban growth in San Fer­nan­do.

The strength and rel­e­vance of her work led to her MPhil be­ing up­grad­ed to a PhD in Geoin­for­mat­ics. She spe­cialised in Ge­o­graph­ic In­for­ma­tion Sys­tems (GIS) and re­mote sens­ing, core tech­niques in geoin­for­mat­ics. Through her doc­tor­al re­search on San Fer­nan­do, Dookree iden­ti­fied dis­tinct spa­tial trends that re­vealed how cities ac­tu­al­ly grow.

From more than 20 po­ten­tial fac­tors, she nar­rowed her study to 12, find­ing strong ev­i­dence that ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and trans­porta­tion net­works heav­i­ly in­flu­ence the di­rec­tion and pace of de­vel­op­ment and ur­ban ex­pan­sion. She ar­gues that these pat­terns of­ten go un­no­ticed, even though in­fra­struc­ture de­ci­sions di­rect­ly shape de­vel­op­ment out­comes. Her re­search aims to give pol­i­cy­mak­ers across Trinidad and To­ba­go the tools to make more in­formed, da­ta-dri­ven choic­es.

Her work ad­dress­es a crit­i­cal gap: the Caribbean has his­tor­i­cal­ly lacked long-term, spa­tial­ly in­formed ur­ban plan­ning mod­els. De­ci­sions were typ­i­cal­ly short-term, pro­ject­ing on­ly a few years ahead. Dookree’s spa­tial mod­el­ling al­lows plan­ners to look a decade or more in­to the fu­ture, an­tic­i­pat­ing how cities might evolve. She hopes her re­search will guide ur­ban plan­ners to­wards smarter, long-range strate­gies that avoid the pit­falls of re­ac­tive de­vel­op­ment.

While still work­ing to­wards broad­er pub­lic adop­tion of her find­ings, Dookree con­tin­ues to pub­lish. Col­lab­o­rat­ing with UWI and the West In­di­an Jour­nal, she ad­vo­cates for greater use of geospa­tial tech­nol­o­gy in na­tion­al plan­ning in her ar­ti­cle, “In­te­grat­ing Drone Tech­nol­o­gy for En­hanced Prop­er­ty Val­u­a­tion and GIS As­sess­ments in Trinidad and To­ba­go”.

Trinidad and To­ba­go, like many small is­land de­vel­op­ing states, faces unique spa­tial chal­lenges, in­clud­ing lim­it­ed land avail­abil­i­ty, rapid ur­ban­i­sa­tion, and in­creas­ing cli­mate volatil­i­ty. Ev­i­dence-based plan­ning, Dookree be­lieves, is es­sen­tial for steer­ing sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment in small is­lands.

Her aca­d­e­m­ic jour­ney was not easy. Com­plet­ing her PhD took six years filled with mo­ments of doubt, soft­ware crash­es, failed pro­cess­ing, tight dead­lines, and the over­whelm­ing chal­lenge of bal­anc­ing full-time work with full-time re­search. She of­ten felt like giv­ing up and en­dured count­less nights be­liev­ing she might not grad­u­ate as planned. But with en­cour­age­ment from her par­ents, friends, su­per­vi­sor, and faith, she per­se­vered.

When she fi­nal­ly grad­u­at­ed this year, she cel­e­brat­ed with loved ones, writ­ing: “I’m liv­ing in an­swered prayers I once prayed for.”

That mo­ment crys­tallised the les­son she learned: con­sis­ten­cy, per­sis­tence, and break­ing big goals in­to small­er steps can car­ry any­one through what feels im­pos­si­ble.

At present, Dookree works at the Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs—for­mer­ly un­der the Min­istry of Fi­nance—where she ap­plies geospa­tial tech­nolo­gies to mod­ernise prop­er­ty val­u­a­tion process­es. His­tor­i­cal­ly de­pen­dent on pa­per-based sys­tems, the di­vi­sion now us­es GIS and mo­bile tools to col­lect, process, and analyse da­ta more ef­fi­cient­ly. This trans­for­ma­tion not on­ly speeds up de­ci­sion-mak­ing but en­ables deep­er, more com­plex analy­sis, sup­port­ing bet­ter pub­lic-sec­tor man­age­ment.

As a woman in STEM, and par­tic­u­lar­ly in the male-dom­i­nat­ed field of ge­o­mat­ics en­gi­neer­ing, Dookree is proud of the space she has carved out. She cred­its a col­lab­o­ra­tive work en­vi­ron­ment where men and women sup­port each oth­er rather than com­pete, while al­so recog­nis­ing that her pres­ence adds to a body of knowl­edge long dom­i­nat­ed by male voic­es. She hopes to tran­si­tion in­to lec­tur­ing at a uni­ver­si­ty, shar­ing her ex­per­tise and in­spir­ing younger women to en­ter the field with con­fi­dence.

Look­ing ahead, Dookree aims to bring her ideas in­to acad­e­mia and help the Caribbean har­ness the full po­ten­tial of geospa­tial sci­ence. For her, the jour­ney has been worth­while—an ad­ven­ture that be­gan in a qui­et vil­lage in Preysal and grew in­to a mis­sion to map a bet­ter fu­ture for small is­lands like her own.