News in 2018
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27-30 November 2017, Lisbon - Portugal The European city of Lisbon was fabulous, as expected. More than seventy members from five continents and from many different countries participated. From the field of surveying to academics and universities, expertise and Young Surveyors. |
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The opening ceremony that took place on 27th in the afternoon, saw the presence of important institutional, national and international representatives; to mention some of them:
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President Potsiou, congratulated FIG Commission 3 chair Enrico Rispoli and Vice chair of Administration Maria Scorza, as well as the Portuguese Engineers Association and its President Carlos Mineiro Aires and chair Maria Tereza Sa Pereira, for setting the themes, exploring the background and defining the goals of the workshop and for bringing together such important experts in the same place. She also congratulated the planners and the organizers of this event, all the distinguished members of both the |
organizing and the scientific committees for their valuable contributions. The FIG President in her speech referred to the value of geospatial information and its importance in implementation of the Sustainable Development Agenda by 2030. She also stated that in order to achieve this vision it will be necessary to improve our capacity in collecting and providing the necessary information reliably, affordably and timely, and she suggested that crowdsourcing is a developing methodology with a potential to support our efforts. She said that “the principle of crowdsourcing is, apparently, that more heads are better than one, and that every person has something of value to contribute”, and that “much of what we read about crowd sourcing has to do with so-called ideation meaning that the technique is applied in a search for new ideas, e.g., to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is used for problem solving. Crowdsourcing is often used in micro-tasking, that is, in breaking work up into very small tasks and sending the work out to the crowd.” President Potsiou clarified that “The theory is that work may be done faster and cheaper and with fewer errors when validation systems are in place. When used in the context of surveying the issue of validation is critical, and assumes a certain amount of preparation and training of volunteers as well as control of crowdsourced data prior to their integration with official databases. It may involve the collection of information that is required to be neither positionally nor dimensionally precise, yet important enough to achieve the SDGs, including cadaster and first registration where missing; and as long as positioning and validation improve, the use of crowdsourced information will be extended.”
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This year the FIG Commission 3 Workshop elaborated better the fields where crowdsourcing is of great value for the surveying profession in order to obtain affordable geospatial data reliably and timely, as well as it will investigate what are the validation systems available to the surveyor in such an operation.
VGI, another theme of the workshop, in the age of the internet of things, is a capability and also an inescapable tool in the present and future for better and faster geospatial knowledge and, more than a threat for the surveyors community, it will have to be a source for their professional activity. The integration of VGI in Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) is a big challenge for our community.
The three days workshop and meeting was a great opportunity to meet with professional and academic colleagues in the field of surveying and to follow the reports of international members about the latest and curious news.
As usually Commission 3 does, also this year was elected the best paper between the peer reviews ones (many papers deserved in the same way and over 35 participants voted) and also one paper was chosen as FIG Article of the Month.
During the workshop, a very important exhibition took place for celebrating the “150 years of the Border Treaty: military missions of sovereignty and border representations”.
The exhibition, which was presented at the end of the Opening Ceremony, was very interesting and was about the history of demarcation of boundaries of Spain and Portugal: “With a centuries-old border dating to the Treaty of Alcanices (1297), Portugal and Spain began to more rigorously define and demarcate their border in the middle of the nineteenth century. The efforts involved Army officers, who always led, on the Portuguese side, the technical delegations established by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Initially comprising only two representatives of each country, the Commission expanded over time. Even today, the Centro de Informação Geoespacial do Exército [Army Center of Geospatial Information] continues to assume responsibility for its maintenance in tandem with its Spanish counterpart”
The exposition was guided by Prof. Dr. Maria Helena Dias and the President of the Army Geospacial Information Centre, Colonel José Rodrigues.
Joining FIG Commission 3 activities in Lisbon has been an excellent chance for increasing the international participation and this fact has helped every participant to exchange and enhance their experiences enabling all people to exchange new ideas and initiating new common projects. All these will help the development of the Commission 3 activities and geodetic profession role in the society.
As a result of this important scientific event, Commission 3 expects the presentation of numerous papers for the sessions of the upcoming Working Week and FIG Congress which will take place on 6-11 May 2018, in Istanbul, Turkey.
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As a result of this important scientific event, Commission 3 expects the presentation of numerous papers for the sessions of the upcoming Working Week and FIG Congress which will take place on 6-11 May 2018, in Istanbul, Turkey. I am looking forward to meeting you in Istanbul. Enrico Rispoli, Chair Commission 3 |
