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First FIG and GSDI Joint Conference, Cairo

From Pharaohs to GeoinformaticsThc FIG Worlcing Week 2005 {Ind thc Sih lnternational Conjerencc on GlobalSpatinl Data lnjraetruaurc toere held in thc Egyptian metropolis of Cairojrom16th to 21 st April 2005. This maior eoent in ilu: geo-spatiai arena uxis wellprepa)'ed and organiseo under tnc lcitmotii 'From Phnraohs to Geomatics'.

By JacouesSipkes and Chnsuaan Lemmen. contriouting edrtors. GIM lnternanonal

Thc chairs of fileNetherlands

Cadastre, MrsDorine Burmarucnnd the Egyptial1

JLlrvcy Authority,Gcn. Hesham Nas/'iphoto: John Horn).

GI/v'! Inrernotiona:

Whilst FIG and GSDI representedthe international angle, the con-ference was organised by theEgyptian Committee for Survey-ing and Mapping (ECSM) and theEgyptian Survey Authority (ESA)taking a leitmotif inspired byEgyptian survey and land admin-istration traditions built up overmore than four thousand years.Opening speeches reflected adrni-ration for this history. More thannine hundred delegates repre-senting eighty countries met infive plenary sessions, 51 technicalsessions and workshops andmore than four hundred papersand posters were presented.

Have and Have-nots

Mrs Dl' Dalal Alnaggar welcomeddelegates an behalf of the localorganising committee. Confer-ence then heard FIG presidentProf. Holger Magel and GSDI

president Ml' Mukund Rao, Prof.Hoda Barka representing theEgyptian Ministrv of Cornmuni-ca tion and Information Technolo-gy and Prof. Muhmud Abu Zeid,Minister of Water Resources andlrrigation. Speakers emphasisedthe essentia I of equal sharing ofresources amongst the worldpopulation, which naturally in-cluded equal sharing of geospa-tial information. Without thisthere was no future for the world;the underlying thought was'Share the Earth, knowledge andtile future'. Mr Mukund Rao list-ed many CSD1-sponsored pro-jects in the world, stressing theneed for geo-information disas-ter-management support. He toourged bridging of "the divide be-tween the have and the havc-nots.' Prof. Dr Holger Magel inhis own impressive openingspeech discussed better help forcountries hit by natutal disaster,

The FIG OrganisationFIG is the only internotionol orqon.-satian representing 011surveyingdiscipline s. including codostre ondland management, spatiol informa-tion monagement, positioning andmeasurement, hydrography, engi-neering survey, spefiol planning,evaluation and real estare manage-ment, construction economics andmanagement. With member ossoci-ations and indiviciuals in more thanl 10 countries, it reoresenrs morethan 230,000 survey professionals

security af tenure. and the role ol'civil society and NCOs in El

changing world. "lf we do norsucceed in improving living con-ditions in developing countries.developed countries will have nofuture either."

Narrow the Gap

Rich countries devotcd 220 timesmore money to research than didpoor co'untries, said Dr lsrnailSerageldin, director af the Biblio-theca Alexandris in Egypt. Thcreal chalJenge in thc (§!.cospaticil)information revolution w as tonarrow the research gaF' bctweenrich and poor countries: thercshould be no scicntific apartheid.Jack Dangermond, ESRI, clabo-rated on the fast incrcasing im-portance of internct CIS portal"for SOL These should be geo-op en interoperable serverswhereby metadata catalogs ru-elled CIS por tals. resul ting inhundreds of geo-portals becorn-ing part af a gen-vision: a geospa-tial ene-stop USA portal thaleliminated redundancv, The riewtechnology needed for this hadnothing to do with GIS, but muchmore with vveb technologv:"Google your geo-spatial require-ments." he reiterated. That waswhat ESRl had done in joiningforces with Google to create aCeospatial One Stop (COS) (fordetails see ESRl item on GOS in

june 2005 - 49

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The promotion campaign to bring FIG 2010 to Sidney provedsuccessful ,

our Business News pages thismonth). These geo-enabled web-servers would increase nationalawareness of geo-spatial ele-ments, creating new communitiesand urging the need for e-govern-ment. Mapping organisationswould not take the lead in devel-oping these applications, hewarned.Ms Preetha Pulusani of Inter-graph seemed to agree on allthese points, mentioning anotheradditional phenomenon: "TheWar of the (exchange) Formats."Paul Murtro-Faure of the UNFood and Agriculture Organiza-tion (FAO) identified his organi-sation as a substantial player in

SDI in relation to food insecurity,climatic change, harvest forecast-ing and disaster management.

Land rights, land-use regula-tions, land valuation and

taxation were grouped" under land administra-

tions, had a spatialcomponent and were akey component of SDI;access to land was cru-

:}!J ;i~~~ ~~~~C:rti~~!~~;:i§ landlessness was often the

best predictor for this. Well-integrated spatial data in-

creased speed of action and re-duced costs.The need for implementation ofpro-poor land administrationtools for secure ten ure was fur-ther under line d by Dr ClarissaAugustinus, UN Habitat. Givenglobal slum statistics - two billionslum dwellers by 2030 - this wasan urgent matter; there was toomuch current focus on the devel-opment of land policies. MrsDorine Burmanje, chair, Nether-lands Cadastre, Public Regis-ters and Mapping Agency,highlighted the importance ofdata sharing, data-integrationand interoperability standardsfor reorganisation of governmentdatasets into authentic registra-tions; duplication would be avoi-ded by forcing government or-ganisations to use source datafrom these. In common withmany other congress speakersshe recognised land administra-tion as a key building block in na-tional spatial data infrastructure.Mohamed Mosaad Ibrahim, ex-

Prof. Mass!!? signshis new book

tphoto: John Horn).

50 -June 2005

chair af the Egyptian Su: JAuthority, gave an impressiveoverview of the history and de-velopments within the EgyptianCadastre.

Parallel Sessions

The congress began with so-calledpre-congress workshop s caveringstandards, virtual academy andthe surveying/ geoinformatics com-munity, history of surveying, mo-bile mapping and e-governmentfor e-citizens, The two gold spon-sors of the congress held an 'ESRISeminar, GIS: The Business of Na-tional Mapping' and 'An Inter-graph vision, technology andimplementation seminar.' Bothcompanies demonstrated com+-e-hensive technical capabilitie., ~1

support of development and im-plementation of SD!, bridgingsurveying and SDI. SDI was prob-lematic and there was a need forbusiness and marketing modeishere, but the professionals wereso busy that the importance afcommunicating its relevance wasnot optimally covered.Prof. Ian Masser/s book, GISWorlds, Creating Spatial Data lnfra-structures was launched duringthe conference (ESRI Press, 2005Redlands. California, USA; ISBN1-58948-122-4).

ATREF Meeting

An ATREF steering committeemeeting chaired by Dr Wilber '-tichilo was held on 18th Aplil2005 (An article by Richard Won-nacott on this initiative appearedin GIM Intemationa, May 2005,

Global Spatial Data InfrastruetureGSDI supports ready global accessto geographic information achievedthrough co-ordinated action bynations and organisations. Thesepromote awareness and irnplernen-tation of complementary policies,com mon standards and effectivemechanisms for development andavailability of interoperable digitalgeographic data and technologiesto support decision-making at allscoles, for multiple purposes. Overfifty nations have participated in.•

previous GSDI conferences. afwhich the Cairo conference is theeighth.

GIM International

pp -')-37). AFREF is a plannedsurv~ying reference system for all53 African countries, the princi-ples of which were presented andadopted by all African nationsduring the United Nations Eco-nomic Commission on Africa (UNECA-CODI) meeting at AddisAbaba, Ethiopia in May 2003. Or-ganisations supporting this initia-rive are NEPAD, UN ECA-CODI,the United Nations Office ofOuter Space and the UN Milleni-um Goals for Africa. Anothermeeting is planned for 2006 in theRepublic of South Africa to for-mulate an AFREF action plan. Theaim is to set up data holdingcentres in five regians coveringthe whole continent: North, West,Central, East, and SouthernA l, and invitations will be sentto all mapping (related) organisa-tions. The EUREF system in Eu-rape and the SURDAS system inSouth America will serve as ex-amples. According to Dr Ottichiloa good geodetic network formedthe basis of GSDI, since all otherapplications were based an it.AFREF will also be very impor-tant for civil aviation. The bigquestion is now how to get theinitiative up and running andkeep it going? A sound cost esti-mate should be produced and agood spacing of receiving stationswill have to be established; distri-bution of data should be fast inorder to be useful. Some docu-ments in PDF file will soon be-co+-e available dealing withIT. f of these issues; check UNECA-CODI and the Regional Cen-tre in Nairobi, Kenya websites.

Trade Exhibition

About two dozen exhibitors dis-played products and services,ranging from foreign ESRI, Feder-al Geographic Data CommitteeFDDC USA and Trimble, toEgyptian Gavernment authoritiesand private firms. One such well-positioned private company isGEOMAP Consultants of Cairo(Heliopolis). established in 1994to work in the fjelds of mapping,remote sensing (PCI Geomatics)and GIS and now an experiencedproducer of topographic and the-matic maps. The company is alsoinvolved in capacity building,technical support and technolo-gy-transfer within Egypt andother Arab and African regions.Anether Egyptian firm presentwas the 1990-founded SurveySystems, selling survey, GPS,

Discussions at the ESRl stand.

GIM International

hydro-survey equipment and ser-vices. The Egyptian geospatialcommunity is now reaching ma-turity.

Joint Meetings

A joint meeting of FIG and GSDImakes sense. During the dosingceremony Prof. Magel highlightedhow developed countries musthelp the developing. Surveyorsand the geo-spatial communityhad to ensure engagement withthe information society, indudingin the World Summit on the Infor-mation Society (WSIS) to be heldin November 2005 in Tunisia. Col-laboration with sister organisa-tions had to be further intensifiedvia the Joint Board of Spatial In-formation Societies.

The next, 23rd International FIGCongress will be held in Munich,Germany, from 8th to 13th Octo-ber 2006, whilst the eSDI dele-gates elected Santiago de Chile inChili for their GSDI-9 conferencein 2006, to be jointly organisedwith the local IGM, the ChileanMilitary Mapping Authority (seewebsites).

Websites

www.fig.net/cairowww.gsdi.orgwww.iscgm.orgwww.ungiwg.orgwww.digitalearth.net.cnwww.gdin.orgwww.icaci.orgwww.geomap.com.egwww.igm.c1/gsdi9+

REVIEW

The exhibitionarea.

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