Meet UNIGIS at IGF'2015 in Hyderabad!

UNIGIS is coordinating the 'Geospatial' capacity building sessions as a 'Youth Forum' at the India Geospatial Forum' 2015 organised at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre from 10th to 12th February. The sessions focus on generating a significant impetus to building capacity of teachers, strengthening and stimulate the youth community to become successful entrepreneurs, and on providing students a platform for sharing their research with the wider Geospatial communities.

The event will also provide a platform for a 'UNIGIS Students & Alumni Meet' and the UNIGIS Team will be available for any discussions and information sharing at 'Booth No. 13 C'. in the exhibit area! We'd be glad to meet alumni, colleagues and prospective students alike!

UNIGIS is offering a highly regarded international distance learning program on postgraduate level, leading to certificate and MSc qualifications awarded by the University of Salzburg (Austria) jointly with partner universities in India. These qualifications are considered optimal milestones towards advancing careers in geospatial industry, administration and academia alike.

UNIGIS Professional Intro-Workshop: Space as Common Denominator

There is probably rarely any domain that does not work spatially, either implicitly or explicitly. Need a proof for this hypothesis? Visit a UNIGIS Professional introductory workshop such as the one that took place last weekend in Salzburg.
We welcomed students from Germany, Switzerland and Austria who all want to enhance their geospatial knowledge and skills in order to gain benefits in their respective domains and take the next step in their career.

Once again it was fascinating to witness the key role of spatial information in very different application contexts. From facility planning to archeology, from urban development to natural hazard prevention, from academia to public administration - these are in fact disciplines that rely on strong methodological competence and practical skills.
Within the next months we will equip our new students with up-to-date insights into geoinformatics and guide them through the most important concepts of spatial modeling and analysis. Finally we expect to release them as active and competent GIS users and contributors to our highly active alumni network.
For now, we all wish a great start into the first module!

Upcoming: UNIGIS online u_Lecture January 27th: A Joint presentation of MSc research by Heidi El-Hosaini and Emma Lewison, UNIGIS uk

The seminar comprises two short presentations by recent MSc graduates of the UNIGIS programme in the UK. 

Join us for this webinar on Jan 27, 2015 at 5:00 PM GMT. Register now! 

Heidi El-Hosaini, Freelance GIS Consultant
Locating and positioning solar panels in a 3D city model - a case study of Newcastle, UK

The recent advent of high quality, realistic 3D city models is creating new possibilities for 3D visualisations and analyses to be realised. These models present considerable potential to support urban planning processes and their range of applications is rapidly expanding. The analysis of solar irradiance and photovoltaic (PV) potential at an urban level is one field that can greatly benefit from their use. This project demonstrates potential applications of a 3D city model of Newcastle (UK) for solar panel locating and positioning. A 3D geometric validation program is created to validate the city model’s surfaces according to a defined set of axioms. A 3D photovoltaic (PV) assessment tool is developed that can be used for multi-criteria analyses to locate suitable surfaces for PV installations. This accounts for the 3D surface area, slope and aspect of surfaces, as well as monthly and annual clear-sky solar irradiance estimates and respective monthly and annual PV estimates.

Emma Lewison, GIS and Data Manager at the Forestry Commission
Analysing British wildlife distributions using a mobile GIS app for data capture

The effect of climate change and increasing human populations on ecosystems is an ongoing area of study. With Smartphone ownership globally on the increase, an Android Smartphone app was developed which enables users to collect wildlife sightings data whilst on the move. The whole development process was completed using free and open source programmes. The app allowed species, counts and user confidence data to be collected whilst automatically creating the GPS data of the sighting location. The captured data was then analysed within GIS. This Smartphone app was then qualitatively compared to more traditional wildlife data capture techniques.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Advancing UNIGIS Latin America

The past months marked an intensive period of outreach activities carried out by the UNIGIS program established at the University San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) and several partner universities in Latin America. For the first time, the annual UNIGIS-symposium ForoMundoUNIGIS was not only held at USFQ, Ecuador and ICESI, Cali but also at our new partner sites at University Belgrano (UB), Argentina, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), Brasil and the National University Federico Villareal (UNFV), Perú. These events were addressed especially to the growing community of UNIGIS students and alumni in these countries aiming at giving them a platform for presenting their thesis and professional projects as well as building sustainable personal and institutional networks.

The third anniversary of the ForoMundoUNIGIS at USFQ, taking place on October 22/23, gave reason for the UNGIS Team Latin America and the associated colleagues from our regional study sites to gather in an 10-days work shop where internal procedures were discussed and refined in order to providing a high-quality service to all of our students in the future.

UNIGIS at Asia Geospatial Forum' 2014 Jakarta

UNIGIS was invited to contribute to the Asia Geospatial Forum 2014 (AGF) held in Jakarta, Indonesia from 25th to 27th November, 2014 and to conduct the 'GeoCapacity Forum' - bringing together academia, industry, organisations and students on a common education-oriented platform for face-to-face interaction. The AGF is one of the biggest regional conferences focussed on Geospatial themes in S/E Asia and has been organised in a different country every year since 2003. UNIGIS has been entrusted with a prominent role of conducting Geospatial Capacity Building sessions at the event since 2005.

Dr. Shahnawaz (Director, UNIGIS S/E Asia) represented UNIGIS and gave the lead presentation setting-up the overall framework as well as moderating the forum involving about 30 participants from Indonesia, Iran, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand. The first session was dedicated to presentations from students, organisations and industry followed by a second session devoted to plenary discussion.

The forum concluded with a vibrant open-floor discussion where a majority of students expressed that most of the educational institutions in the region offer geospatial study programmes at undergraduate levels and the GIS skills attained at this level are not sufficient to secure them good jobs. On the other side, the representatives of organisations and industry expressed that they are not finding the 'ready-to-deliver' job-seekers, which is hampering the growth of geospatial projects in the affected  regions.

Two distinguished panalists, Prof. Mastura Mahmud (Deputy Dean of Research, National University of Malaysia) and Dr. Chawee Busayat (Director of ITarch, Thammasat University, Thailand) exchanged their experiences about Geospatial Education in the SE Asia region as well as their visionary ideas for expanding it across the ASEAN space and enhancing its status to meet the challenges of the Job market. They also suggested that universities should offer geospatial education as a blend of online distance learning and classroom based residential periods. This will help not only current students, but also shall provide opportunities for in-service professionals to enhance their competences.

The attendees largely agreed that there is a need of exploring alternative modes of delivering geospatial education in the region serving the needs of current students as well as in-service professionals; all agreed that online distance learning programmes will serve these Needs best!