UNGIWG-10
The UNGIWG hold its 10th Plenary Meeting in Germany between October 19-21, 2009, hosted by the UN SPIDER Bonn Office. The UNGIWG is under the co-chairmanship of UN Office of the Outer Space Affairs in Vienna and UN Economic Committee for Africa in Addis Abbeba. Two of the orchestrater of the UN Meeting Lorant Czaran of UN-SPIDER and Dozie of UNECA are active also for GSDI Association since many years. Also GSDI committee Chair CJT of ESRI took place the Meeting actively.
On the opening day HUNAGI contribution was expressed by generating a question and made three interventions as reported to HUNAGI, EUROGI and eSDI-NETplus project coordinator as follows: ¨"As observer, representing HUNAGI, the Hungarian Association for Geo-information and the European Organisation of Geographical Information I would like to share my opinion. The availability, accessibility and usability of spatial data is crucial for GIVAS. Taking into account the regional expertise and lessons learned is highly recommended for GIVAS in the SDI context. In case of Europe, SDI is more institutional arrangements and legislation framework. Main point is the share of geospatial data in the European case f the INSPIRE directive as it was highlighted by Prof. Mauro Salvemini, President of EUROGI during the UN Regional Cartographic Conference held in New York last August (EUROGI as leader international NGO in Europe in this field) met together with other regional representatives as PC IDEA and PCGIAP with UN HQ staff members and he will emphasize to build on lessons learned in SDI at the next regional UN conference in Bangkok next week."
I made two other interventions yesterday one related to the presentation given by John Latham of FAO asking him to summarize shortly the potentials of use of SDI/GI/EO to facilitate the fight against the poverty and hunger worldwide. The fact is the number of people suffering from hunger is reached the one billion and the trend is controversial with the UN Millenium Goals. ¨Other intervention emhasized to consider to taken into account the best practices gained on local to national SDI service solutions e.g. in Europe, where a project called eSDI-NETplus is underway. This project gathered over 160 subnational thematic SDIs and analysed according to an elaborated methodology under EUROGI leadership and the ranking of the best practices will be happen at the conference in Torino next month which is recommended also for UN experts to attend.
On the second day of the 10th UNSDI Plenary Meeting, HUNAGI representative made the following intervention: "The GSDI Legal & Socio-economics Committee lead by Roger Longhorn is building up a repository on socio-economic impact analysis of SDIs elaborated anywhere on the world which might be for the interest of the UN SDI experts as well.“ Similarly to Mr. Lorant Czaran who addressed the licencing issue, it should be mentioned, a new FP7 project of the European Commission will be launched soon devoted to the Legal Aspects of Public Sector Information called LAPSI shortly.
The topic UN SDI was discussed by both the open and closed sessions of the UNGIWG Plenary. Influenced by the leading actors of the UNGIWG including Suha Ulgen, the SDI-related strategy will be revisited in the coming weeks and the anticipated outcame is promising according to Co-chair David Stevens. Programme and resolution: www.ungiwg.org
Proposed actions for GSDI: as soon as the renewed UN SDI document will be known for partner organisations, a feedback should be provided by GSDI Association.
Digital Earth Summit 2010
Background: the Digital Earth
initiative of Al Gore was revisited by a group of experts in the Vespucci initiative and was published in IJSDR by Max Cralia et al.
This Next Generation Digital Earth concept was seriously taken into account at the formulation of the
Beijing Declaration approved by the participants of the 6th International symposium on Digital Earth emphasizing the role and importance of SDI explicitly
The third Digital Earth Summit 2010 (after Auckland and Potsdam) will be in Nessebar, Bulgaria between 12-14 June 2010. Local Organiser: Prof. Temenoujka Bandrova supported by Prof. Milan Konecny, Vice-President, ISDE
International Organising Committee: identical with the Executive Committee of ISDE
Title: DIGITAL EARTH
IN THE SERVICE OF SOCIETY: SHARING INFORMATION, BUILDING KNOWLEDGE
Subtopics:
1. The societal context of Digital Earth: benefits, costs, policies, and regulations
2. Digital Earth at local, regional, and global levels: from strategy to realization
3. Digital Earth in sustainable development at local and regional levels
4. Digital Cities: technology and applications
5. Access to Digital Earth: privacy, security, and trust
6. The citizen as contributor to Digital Earth
Source: recent communication of Vice President of ISDE and the President of the Summit
Information on the International Society of Digital Earth: http://www.isde-digitalearth.org
The 7th ISDE will be hosted by Australia in 2011, and the 8th International Symposium is intended by HUNAGI to host in Budapest , Hungary after Tokyo, Berkeley, Beijing and Perth.
Proposed action to GSDI Association: to take part the Nessebar Summit on Digital Earth.
CEOS WGISS
Due to schedule conflict, it was not possible to attend the last CEOS WGISS Meeting in Pretoria. The apologies were accepted and the welcome to the next WGISS Meeting will be held by UN SPIDER in Bonn next Spring was expressed by the Secretary of the CEOS Working Group on Information Systems and Services.
According the well accepted proposal to enhance the GSDI Cookbook wiki with a chapter devoted to disaster response requirements should be orchestrated by UN SPIDER based on the Conference on Earth Observation supported Disaster Management hosted by UN Bonn Campus in mid October.
Invited by CEOS WGISS using videoconference facility provided by the National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC., I had the opportunity to join the Meeting of the GEOSS Data Alliance Task Group, listening the INSPIRE contribution to the topic data sharing and harmonisation (Max Craglia) as well as the WMO WIS (Eliot Christian) (The agenda is enclosed). Mention should be made, Max Craglia of DG JRC will deliver keynote speech at the EUROGI EMM in Turin, the European SDI Best Practice Award Showcase between 26-27 November 2009.
Proposed action to GSDI Association: to encourage the EO WGISS community to formulate their requirements and needs towards spatial data and service providers in order to facilitate the disaster management decisions in critical, quick response time environment.
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