Sunday, April 24, 2016

U_lecture April 25 6-7pm CET: Mapping Wilderness by Dr Steve Carver

GIS approaches to mapping wilderness: quantifying the qualitative 
Monday 25 April 2016, 6-7 PM (CET)
Dr Steve Carver, Senior Lecturer, University of Leeds
Free web lecture Register here

Throughout early human history, wilderness has been a place of fear and dread, of wild beast and wilder people, often shown on old maps as “Parts Unknown” or “Hic Svnt Dracones” (Here be dragons). More recently these blank spots have acquired a certain romance and the word wilderness has become more closely associated with unspoilt nature and the sublime. In the modern world there are no remaining blank spots on our maps as satellites have surveyed every last inch of the earth’s surface so that all is now “known”. 

This webinar will consider the questions of what is wilderness and how we can map this largely qualitative concept to ensure its protection from the worst excesses of human development, and even identify areas that may be returned to the wild through habitat restoration and reintroductions of missing species. 

This is a journey that takes us from “parts unknown” through to modern high resolution datasets and complex spatial modelling tools informing policy development and the physical and ethical challenges of rewilding. Examples will be given from global to local including institutional mapping exercises in Scotland, Europe and the US followed by some thoughts on where we go next.

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

2nd International QGIS User and Developer Conference Girona (Spain) 24-29 May

This year, the Spanish FOSS4G (Jornadas de SIG Libre) organized by SIGTE (University of Girona) will held the 2nd edition of the International QGIS User and Developer Conference, as well as a QGIS Hack Fest. The conference will take place in May 2016 (24th-29th). During a whole week Girona (Spain) will be the capital of the Free and Open Source Geospatial Technologies.

The International QGIS User and Developer Conference wants to be the referential conference, and a meeting point for the family of users and developers orbiting around the QGIS project, in order to gather experiences and sharing knowledge about QGIS. The language of the Conference is English. 

The Spanish FOSS4G (Jornadas de SIG Libre) is an event of reference in the field of the free and open source technologies in the geospatial domain. They are a meeting point where to share knowledge, experiences and create synergies. The language of the Conference is Spanish.

During the weekend, the event will held a QGIS Hackfest where QGIS developers, translators, documentation writers, testers and enthusiasts can share ideas about the project.

This is the general program of the event:
  • May, 24th: Jornadas SIG Libre - Keynotes and presentations (Spanish)
  • May, 25th: Jornadas SIG Libre workshops (spanish) and QGIS Workshops (English) 
  • May, 26th: Internacional QGIS Conference (English)
  • May, 27th-29th: QGIS Hackfest (English)

UNIGIS Portugal / NOVA IMS First International GEOINT Program to Achieve USGIF Accreditation


NOVA Information Management School of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (NOVA IMS), located in Lisbon, Portugal, has been added to the growing list of USGIF-accredited GEOINT programs.
Through the USGIF Academic Accreditation program, colleges and universities around the globe have the opportunity to receive accreditation of their geospatial intelligence programs accompanying a college degree. Students who meet high academic standards and graduate from accredited programs receive USGIF’s GEOINT Certificate, which helps ensure the GEOINT Community has a robust workforce now and in the future. To date, nearly 600 students have graduated with USGIF GEOINT Certificates.
NOVA IMS is the first non-U.S. school to receive USGIF academic accreditation. The inclusion of NOVA IMS represents a major step for USGIF and signals the broadening of GEOINT as a globally recognized professional discipline. NOVA IMS’s GEOINT curriculumwas developed collaboratively across its federated university structure and is truly interdisciplinary in its design.
“We at NOVA IMS are proud to be the first non-U.S. University to achieve USGIFaccreditation,” said Dr. Marco Painho, NOVA IMS program coordinator.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Summer School opportunity: Smart Cities


21 - 29 August 2016 at TU Wien

The concept of Smart City is promising: The European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities highlights the opportunities to link and upgrade infrastructures, technologies and services in key urban sectors (transport, buildings, energy, ICT) in a smart way [that] will improve quality of life, economic competitiveness and sustainability of cities. Such conceptions present Smart City-solutions as mainly technology driven utopian visions of societal transformation while blurring the multitude of social decisions made in technology development which fundamentally shape the kinds of social transformations possible in urban life.

The Summer School brings together scholars from diverse disciplines including technical, economic, political, environmental and social disciplines to explore new sets of relationships between (a) society and technology and (b) people and data entailed in the Smart City vision and to contribute to a better understanding of processes transforming urban spaces

More information: http://summerschool2016-smartcity.tuwien.ac.at

Target group:
The Summer School invites excellent and interested advanced Master and PhD-students working in the field of Smart City. We seek participation from diverse disciplines including Urban Studies, Urban Planning, Sociology, Innovation Studies, informatics and other ICT/urban Informatics related areas.

Upon the successful completion of summer schools ECTS could be awarded towards the Elective subject, both for MSc and UNIGIS professional study programmes.
How to apply:
a) Letter of motivation with a brief description of the research topic, max. 3 pages;
b) Comprehensive CV; 
c) Letter of recommendation from supervisor.

Please send the application until May 31th to summerschool2016@tuwien.ac.at  

GI Forum 2016 Call for Posters Deadline May 1st

This year’s GI_Forum motto is “open : spatial : interfaces”. Take the opportunity to actively shape the program of the GI_Forum by presenting your work as part of our poster session. A poster presentation is a great way to present your work to a broad audience of professionals from different fields. For details see http://gi-forum.org/poster.

SPECIAL RATE of € 220,- for active UNIGIS Students

The special rate includes all events of the GI_Forum and the German-language counterpart, AGIT. Registration is open until June 25, 2016! Follow this link to register: http://gi-forum.org/registration.

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Enter your Hexagon Smart M.App in the IGNITE competition!

The deadline for the Hexagon IGNITE Challenge is May 1st. We encourage our students to participate in this contest and create the M.App of the future. Please contact your local UNIGIS Coordinator about this challenge if you are looking for partners and ideas.

More information