INTERGEO 2009 Leads the Way Out from the Economic Crisis –
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INTERGEO 2009 exceeded the expectations of the organisers. INTERGEO, the leading trade fair in geo business, attracted over 16,000 visitors including a further rise in the proportion of international visitors to a total of 22 per cent, and 1,450 congress participants. The congress and the trade fair did far more than the expectations of DVW (Deutsche Verein für Vermessungswesen e.V. – Gesellschaft für Geodäsie, Geoinformation und Landmanagement; the German Association of Surveying – German Society for Geodesy, Geoinformation and Land Management). According to comments from the exhibitors the sales and business contacts were in increase compared to last year’s show.
According to Dr. Karl-Friedrich Thöne, President of DVW, the result was extremely good in the current economic situation. President Thöne was especially happy that participant figures to the conference increased compared to previous years. He considered that this was due to the refreshed concept of the conference.
Themes of the conference were early warning systems in risk and disaster management; sustainable construction in finance and bank crisis; and energy and environment issues with a view in the European environment policies.
The main keynote presentation was made by Willi Zimmermann who in his presentation “Land resources in the context of political and ecological crossroads” emphasized the interdependency between climate change, population growth, financial crisis, the global economy (globalisation) and political security on land resources. He pointed out that 40 countries can be considered fragile in relation to political instability which also closely relates to conflicts on land. He made an interesting comparison on unacceptable divide in professional capacities: Germany for example has six times more surveyors with academic background than the 52 African states (around 26,000 compared to 4,500 in Africa). And even more: the six leading countries with long-standing professional educational infrastructure in Africa (Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Morocco and Egypt) make up 90 % of all surveyors in Africa. What about the rest? Willi Zimmermann estimated that the absolute minimum number of professional surveyors in developing countries should be one surveyor to serve 100,000 people. He further challenged DVW and FIG to find a strategy in the geodetic world for fighting the reality of the global geodetic divide between those who have (100 nations) and those who do not have the surveying infrastructure and capacity (Zimmermann’s estimated that this is the case in the remaining 95 countries). He also called for geodetic contributions for building global governance by providing global public goods such as GNSS and GEOSS as well as FAO Voluntary Guidelines for Responsible Management of Land.
FIG had a visible role at the INTERGEO exhibition when FIG 2010 organisers were invited to exhibit and promote in Karlsruhe the next FIG Congress in Sydney. The FIG Congress booth hosted by Congress Director Paul Harcombe and his team was visited by more than 2,000 visitors who were interested to visit “downunder” in April 2010.
FIG Director and Vice President Matt Higgins met also with representatives of main FIG corporate members and discussed the co-operation between FIG and its corporate members as well as the programme of FIG 2010. These meetings included discussions with Leica Geosystems, ESRI, Trimble, Topcon, Bentley, Topcon-Sokkia, Blom International, Grontmij and several media partners that are FIG corporate members (GIM International, Geo:connexion and Geoinformatics). Contacts to new potential corporate members were also made. INTERGEO 2009 also offered a good opportunity to meet with FIG members from Austria, Denmark, Germany, Russia, Ukraine and others.
IINTERGEO 2010 will be held in Cologne 5-7 October 2010.
Read more:
 Impressions from the INTERGEO trade show: Trimble... |
 ... Blom International (former FIG Vice President Ralf Schroth un the middle. .. |
 ... and TOPCON. |
 Congress Director Paul Harcombe and Johannes Schwarz, President of Geomatics Division of Leica Geosystems that is the titanium sponsor of FIG 2010. |
 Wolf-Dietrich Gierth, Congress Director of INTERGEO 2009 together with FIG 2010 team looking for winners at the booth draw. |
 FIG Director (in the middle) and Rector Alexander P. Karpik (second from right) and Prof. Vladimir Seredovich (second from left) from the Siberian State Academy of Geodesy, Russian Federation. |
 Media centre of INTERGEO 2009. |
13 October 2009
