President Elect Stig Enemark attends the 9th International Conference on Global Spatial Data Infrastructures - GSDI9

6 – 10 November 2006, Santiago, Chile

President Elect Stig Enemark attended the GSDI9 International Conference on Global Spatial Data Infrastructures held in Santiago, Chile 6-10 November 2006. The theme of the conference was “Spatial Information: Tool for Reducing Poverty”. The President Prof. Harlan Onsrud introduced this theme in his welcome address by underlining the organizational goal of fostering spatial data infrastructure developments in support of important worldwide needs.

President Elect Stig Enemark was invited to participate in the Global and Regional Organizations Panel together with Milan Konecny (ICA), Fraser Taylor (ISCGM), Santiago Borrero (PAIGH), Peter Holland (PCGIAP), Mario Reyes Ibarra (PC IDEA), and Carl Reed (OGC). The idea of this session was to present ideas of how global and regional organizations might better contribute to and apply knowledge and resources towards addressing the world’s most pressing social problems.

Stig Enemark also chaired a joint FIG/GSDI session on Spatially Enabled Land Administration. The session included the following papers:

• Stig Enemark: Spatially Enabled Government – Bridging the Gap
• Ian Williamson et.al.: Template for Assessing Worldwide Cadastral Systems as Part of National SDI Initiatives
• David Cowen: National Vision for Land Parcel Databases in the United States

The conference was attended by around 400 participants from about 60 countries. The impressive program included about 65 technical sessions with around 250 papers, plus workshops, panel discussions, and poster sessions. All papers and presentation are available at the GSDI website:
http://www.gsdi9.cl/english/08_Act_Tec_Sess_Sched_TechProg.html

Examples of the range of interesting papers include, among others, presentations from Bas Kok, Peter Laarakker (Netherlands) in TS 1, Santiago Borrero (Mexico), David Coleman (Canada) and Harlan Onsrud (USA) in TS 6, Vanessa Lawrence (UK) in TS 13, Joop Crompwoerts (Netherlands) in TS 36, Dietmar Grünreich (Germany) in TS41; and Ulrik Westman (UN-Habitat) in TS 54.

Jarmo Ratia from Finland was elected as the new President of GSDI.

Further reading:

• Stig Enemark´s presentation to the panel in TS 20 and WB Land Thematic Group
  • Handouts of the Powerpoint presentation
• Stig Enemark´s paper to TS 26 on Spatially Enabled Government
  • Handouts of the Powerpoint presentation