UNIGIS now an Academic Member of FIG

The 35. FIG (International Federation of Surveyors) Working Week was held in Rome from the 6th to the 10th of May in 2012. The motto of Italian Working Week is "Knowing to manage the territory, protect the environment, evaluate the cultural heritage". 500+ papers have been accepted for presentation in Rome in almost 100 sessions, forums and workshops (http://www.fig.net/fig2012/downloads/tech_prog.pdf). Many of the papers are peer reviewed and published soon at the Surveyors Reference Library (http://www.fig.net/srl/). 

The FIG Council has admitted UNIGIS International Association as an academic member of FIG. The Certificate of Academic Membership was presented by FIG President, CheeHai TEO to Prof Bela MARKUS in a ceremony during the General Assembly.

Next UNIGIS course for Central Asia students

The UNIGIS study centre for Central Asia at ACA*GIScience in Bishkek has now opened the registration period for the next intake of distance learning students, starting with October 2012. Applications will be accepted until September 10, and candidates are expected to have a background in any 'spatial discipline' or experience in a GIS application domain.

UNIGIS Central Asia offers tutoring in Russian language, but as an international program requires profound English language skills for working with study materials, complete assignments and communicate within the worldwide network of UNIGIS students and alumni.

With a clear focus on continuing education for geospatial / GIS professionals, most candidates come from national and international organisations, the geospatial services industry, and academia. For the first time, candidates are offered the options of registering for a professional diploma or an MSc program of studies, with both qualifications awarded by the University of Salzburg, Austria.

Further information can be found at http://bishkek.unigis.net, email enquiries can be directed to office.bishkek@unigis.net

New students in Ecuador and Colombia

By the end of April, the UNIGIS site in Quito welcomed 70 new students from Ecuador, Colombia and other Latin American countries as new members of the UNIGIS community of learning. They will join of group of 250 active students that already are enrolled at the University San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador. Being part of an academic program that is tailored to the specific needs of GIS professionals in the emerging GIS-market between Patagonia and the Rio Grande opens up great opportunities for professional and personal development.

Welcome – Bienvenidos!

UNIGIS programmes launched in Nepal!

UNIGIS@Kathmandu (NEPAL) takes pride in announcing the first open admissions period for the UNIGIS professional diploma and UNIGIS MSc in Geographical Information Science and Systems. The two UNIGIS study programmes are being offered in Nepal by the Kathmandu Forestry College in collaboration with the Centre for Geoinformatics (Z_GIS), University of Salzburg, Austria. The academic certification / degree will be awarded by the University of Salzburg, Austria. The Ministry of Education, Govt. of Nepal has already confirmed their endorsement of UNIGIS qualifications.

This academic collaboration between Nepalese and Austrian institutions aims at providing internationally standardised high quality Geoinformatics and GIScience education to young students and active professionals within Nepal, who aspire to make a career in this vibrant field or want to enhance their capability to meet the challenges and demands of the rapidly growing international job market.

For further details: see www.unigis.net/kathmandu OR send e-mail to office.kafcol.kathmandu@unigis.net

UNIGIS Team Salzburg - Work Retreat

The UNIGIS Team Salzburg held a work retreat on April 12.-13., 2012, to discuss in depth the strategic development of two UNIGIS cornerstones:

An entire day was dedicated to reflect on the current status of UNIGIS modules and future paths to take. A particular focus was given to the alignment of content and materials between the two languages (German and English) and where adequate also between the two UNIGIS programmes (UNIGIS professional / UNIGIS MSc). To provide guidance on content development in terms of syllabi and adequate learning materials and -media several team members take a role as ‘theme lead’ for a particular subject.

The agenda for the second part of the meeting was reserved for discussing alumni-networking activities.

It was a successful and inspiring meeting in the mountainous surroundings of Salzburg. On the way home, our bagpacks were filled with fresh ideas and motivation to …educating GI-professionals worldwide.

UNIGIS participated in ASEMUNDUS Seminar!

The ASEMUNDUS Networking Seminar co-financed by the European Commission under Erasmus-Mundus programme was orgnised in Bangkok, Thailand on 2nd and 3rd April, 2012.

Dr. Shahnawaz (Director S/SE Asia, UNIGIS International) was invited to the seminar and he informed the participants about UNIGIS network in general and UNIGIS initiatives in the region in specific. The seminar participants were highly impressed with the UNIGIS philosophy of 'Educating GI-professionals Worldwide' and several institutions enquired about the possibilities of becomming a part of this excellent network offering GIScience education through online distance learning programmes.

GISopen conference in Szekesfehervar: a qualitative contribution from UNIGIS graduates.

The GISopen conference was initiated in 1997, just after the first UNIGIS intake was graduated from the University of West Hungary, Faculty of Geoinformatics. The annual GISopen conference is the longest GI related conference series in Hungary. The main aim is to involve the faculty alumni into the active lifelong learning process, to give a forum for the ex-students and to offer them an opportunity to share their experience after several years of professional activity.

From 12 to 14 of March 2012, the 16th GIS open conference was organised in Szekesfehervar. The number of participants was 200+ like in the previous years.

The motto of the conference was “answering the basic questions”

In our profession, in the recent years, a major paradigm shift was the transition from editing of maps to the development of databases. By the analysis of the databases we can provide answers to the basic questions of GIS, serve our users with value-added products and information services. The presenters were asked to speak not only about the technical aspects, but more on the economical and strategic background.

• What is this? Associated with metadata services appear geodata services. But how much does it cost? The systems often look for complex solution to a simple question. What are the issues to be related to practical solutions?

• Where is it? Many people at the land administration are working on the repartition of undivided common land property. Where are the parcel boundaries, and how do we perform it?
• Where to go? Everybody is using navigation systems. But where are we going? The new surveying law will define our tasks for years.
• What has changed? In the world, the only constant is the change itself. Let’s look in concrete! What is the building monitoring?

All the conference participants (keynote speakers, presenters of research papers, GI industry software and hardware companies) tried to answer these questions. All the attendants realized that in spite of the simplicity of the questions, the answers required much more than technical concepts and could only be answered with indirect and quite complex considerations.

8 papers were delivered by UNIGIS graduates out of the 47 presentations.

Among the keynote papers, László Gombás delivered a presentation about smart building-surveying technologies. Leica is starting a new family of custom-built solutions for building and site construction, called iCON. More than a new product line and a software package, it enables construction companies to enhance their performance, and increase their profitability through perfecting their construction workflow.

Hardware and software companies could promote their products in a forum and do presentations as well. GeoCalc GIS 2.0 software was introduced by Attila Kulcsar. He presented the main functionalities of this GIS developed on open source software.

On the afternoon of the second day a UNIGIS session was held with the following presentations:
• Quality management in iGO (http://www.nng.com/hu) navigation database development (Lukács Lilla)
• In-door data acquisition technologies (László Gombás)
• GIS use in climate modelling (Norbert Móricz)
• Run-off control for soil protection (Margit Horoszné Gulyás)
• Underground water flow monitoring as a base of remediation (Béla Finta)

Wednesday morning Tibor Márfai delivered a presentation about informatics of digital maps by introducing basic definitions.
Next year the focus will be on future cadastres. How to include the 3rd dimension into the current land administration system? How to move from static databases to dynamic cadastral modelling? How social networks will transform the cadastre? How cadastre will be part of the geospatial infrastructure and serve the society? etc.

Gregory Lucas and Bela Markus