Source: EE Publishers, Artivle PositionIT
Three top international keynote speakers will be sharing their extensive expertise with delegates at Geomatics Indaba 2015: Dr. Carl Reed, former Chief Technology Officer at the Open Geospatial Consortium; Dorota Grejner-Brzezinska, President of the Institute of Navigation; and Kees de Zeeuw from the Cadastre, the Dutch Land Registry and Mapping Agency (Kadaster). In addition Dr. Charles Toth, President of Commission 1 of ISPRS and an expert in lidar and imaging systems, will be presenting a workshop entitled “State-of-the-art in remote sensing: sensors and platforms”.
Carl Reed recently retired as chief technology officer and executive director of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). He is currently consulting with a focus on supporting the IT community in the effective use of geospatial standards. Reed was responsible for facilitating the OGC standards development process, chairing the OGC Architecture Board, and chairing the OGC Planning Committee. He participates in and collaborates with other standards organisations, including OASIS, NENA, W3C, ISO, and the IETF. As a result, he has contributed to numerous internet and web standards.
Dorota Grejner-Brzezinska is president of the Institute of Navigation, and president of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG) Commission 4, Positioning and applications, and IAG Fellow. She is a professor and chair of the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering, and Director of the Satellite Positioning and Inertial Navigation (SPIN) Laboratory at Ohio State University. Her research interests cover GPS/GNSS algorithms, GPS/inertial and other sensor integration for navigation in GPS-challenged environments, sensors and algorithms for indoor and personal navigation, and mobile mapping.
Kees de Zeeuw is the director of Kadaster International at the Cadastre, Land Registry and Mapping Agency (Kadaster) of The Netherlands. Kadaster International provides worldwide advisory services in the domain of land administration, e-governance, geo-information services and SDI. De Zeeuw is a member of the NGII sub commission of the Netherlands Commission of Geodesy (NCG) and represents the Netherlands in UN GGIM and Commission 7 (Cadastre and Land Management) of the FIG.
These international experts as well as high level representatives from the Ministry of Rural Development and Land Reform, the Department of Science and Technology, the South African National Space Agency, the Department of Finance, Statistics South Africa, the Departments of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, SALGA, MISA, and the South African Civil Aviation Authority amongst others will be joining delegates at Geomatics Indaba 2015 to focus on the conference theme of “Developing spatial technologies and skills for strategic infrastructure planning”.
Geomatics Indaba 2015, South Africa’s foremost surveying, geospatial and mapping conference, is taking place from 11 to 13 August 2015 at Emperors Palace in Johannesburg. The indaba is organised by South Africa’s professional geospatial organisations, the Geo-Information Society of South Africa (GISSA), the South African Geomatics Institute (SAGI), and the Institute of Mine Surveyors of Southern Africa (IMSSA), in partnership with EE Publishers. The Geomatics Indaba 2015 UAV Airshow will be held on 10 August 2015, prior to the start of main conference programme.
This is the first time that all three geospatial bodies are working together on a joint conference, (aside from the AfricaGEO event which is held every three years). Previous event collaborations have included GISSA Ukubuzana 2012 (hosted by GISSA) and the South African Surveying and Geomatics Indaba (SASGI) 2013 (hosted by SAGI). Both of these conferences featured an illustrious line-up of speakers and an extensive geospatial exhibition drawing 600 delegates each. The funds raised by these conferences have been used to sustain South Africa’s geospatial organisations so that they can continue their work to ensure that South Africa’s geomatics sector grows from strength to strength.
By combining forces, GISSA, IMSSA and SAGI, intend to ensure that the South African geomatics community acts together as one to demonstrate the skills and technologies wielded by this sector in the service of South Africa, and to provide a collaborative networking platform to facilitate this aim.
