News in 2022
|
This FIG Report, which is no 78 in the series of FIG Publications is prepared by FIG Commission 3 - Spatial Information Management.
Editors: Claire Buxton, Marije Louwsma, Hartmut Müller and Markus Schaffert
 |
In his forweword, President of FIG, Rudolf Staiger writes: Megatrends in the 2020s, such as climate change and resource scarcity, rapid advances in technology like artificial Intelligence and machine learning, changes in global demographics, in particular the ongoing growth of the world’s population, the rapid ageing of populations in many countries, and global migration to megacities, are causing disruptions and will pose major challenges in the coming years. This FIG-publication is the result of a very fruitful cooperation between the FIG Commissions 3 and 8 together with VCSP (Volunteer Community Surveyor Program) of the Young Surveyors Network over the last years. |
Traditionally, land surveyors used to be viewed as ‘measurers’. In
recent years, the surveyor has evolved to a professional who measures,
models and manages all kind of location related data. Surveyors use open
standards, incorporate volunteered information, and ensure
interoperability of systems to deliver knowledge derived from geospatial
data of different scales and origin in the form of user-adapted
geospatial information.
Today, geospatial information is widely recognized as an indispensable
source for informed decision making in many fields, such as achieving
the Sustainable Development Goals.
One technological advancement is Earth observation from space, which provides geospatial data at various spatial, spectral, radiometric and temporal resolutions and enables the use of the data for a variety of applications. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the importance to all stakeholders of having trusted geospatial health data readily available more or less in real time. Particularly in less developed regions of our world, where officially maintained geospatial data sets are a scarce resource, citizen input of volunteered geographic information can be very valuable. Digital land administration platforms can provide ready to use geospatial data to support emergency response, climate change response, disaster and conflict management, health management, spatial land use planning, real estate market stimulation, infrastructure provision, protection of women and vulnerable groups, and business activation and citizen action.
This FIG report Geospatial Data in the 2020s - transformative Power and Pathways to Sustainability sheds light on several areas where geospatial data can be particularly useful in supporting the path to sustainability in the 2020s, for spatial land use planning and health monitoring, with data collection through voluntary geographic information, with attention to diversity and inclusion, and by providing information on property, including property values.
Evelien Hertz
October 2022
