UNIGIS Day - Osnabrück, Germany

On February 23rd, 2008 a UNIGIS information day will be hosted by the Department of Geoinformatics and Remote Sensing at Osnabrück University. The event is dedicated to UNIGIS graduates (mainly from northern Germany) as well as to prospective UNIGIS students. A detailed program will be available soon under
http://www.unigis.uni-osnabrueck.de/unigistag.html

The next German language UNIGIS information day will take place on May 29th in Rapperswil, Switzerland.

Registration open for 2008 intake in Poland

The UNIGIS site in Poland, at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, has started enrolment of candidates for the Postgraduate Studies in Geographic Information Systems beginning in 2008. For further information please visit http://www.unigis.uj.edu.pl/ or send an e-mail to unigis@gis.geo.uj.edu.pl.

Symposium: GIS Education in Latin America

The UNIGIS centre at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) in Ecuador has announced a Symposium on GIS Education in Latin America to be held on March 26/27, 2008, followed by opportunities for field trips and a visit to an ecology research station in the Amazon.

For further information and registration please contact Richard Resl or Leo Zurita, UNIGIS-USFQ, América Latina, unigis.admin@usfq.edu.ec , ++593-2-2971743.

UNIGIS International Meeting

The UNIGIS International Association gathered in November in Amsterdam for their 12th yearly conference. Representatives from South Africa, the USA, India, and Europe (U.K., Austria, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Spain) met to discuss the current developments in GIScience education, research and innovative ways for distance education. The international business partners of the UNIGIS network were invited as well, to present their views on future directions of GIS education, research and applications. Johannes Kebeck and Jos Bakker of Microsoft presented Virtual Earth using oblique aerial photographs, and demonstrated impressive 3D models of European cities; a model building application for architects; and a demo of an Hurricane Management System; With little additional development or third party tools you can use this approach to integrate OGC-compliant Web Mapping Services or other spatial-data-formats like ESRI-Shape-files. This all left us very impressed and full of ideas on how to incorporate this in current GIS education.
The ongoing collaboration between Oracle Academy and UNIGIS will result soon in a common module on Spatial Databases. Dr. Martin Huber from Condesys Consulting, Switzerland, presented a new UNIGIS module on OpenGIS and Interoperability and the development of a book on this issue. We thank Dutch Directorate for Public Works and Water Management (Rijkswaterstaat) for the courtesy to welcome us at their traffic control centre in the province North Holland, were we could see an impressive real-time application of location information availability in transport and future developments in this area. In style, we has a diner in IJmuiden during the Strom with the highest water levels since the 1953 disaster (316 cm above average sea level).

Asian Institute of Technology - UNIGIS site

After a launch event in September 2007, the UNIGIS distance learning program at AIT in Bangkok is now actively getting underway. The course director Dr Nitin Tripathi from AIT's School of Engineering and Technology is prepared to discuss this new educational offering with prospective students, and he emphasizes: "AIT now has an opportunity to reach out to a new audience through UNIGIS@AIT".

The UNIGIS program at AIT is a joint academic initiative with Salzburg University, Austria. Supported by the Salzburg University Center for Geoinformatics, depending on the program track chosen successful students will be awarded either a European MSc degree, or an academic certificate.

UNIGIS @ MapAfrica

UNIGIS is organising a GIS education workshop at the 2007 MapAfrica conference in Cape Town. Speakers from a range of institutions and countries are contributing with their views on curriculum development, building of GIS awareness and didactics of GIS learning environments.
In line with the conference motto of 'Building Geospatial Capacity and Infrastructure in Africa' Josef Strobl from UNIGIS Salzburg has set the stage with a plenary keynote on 'Geospatial Awareness, Skills and Knowledge - Managing our Future'.