The FIG Report
Vol. I, No. 4
John D. Hohol, ACSM FIG Forum Head of Delegation
Having just returned from the 4th Annual Survey
and GIS Summit, held in conjunction with the 26th Annual ESRI User
Conference, I believe that it is timely to highlight the presentation made by Holger Magel, FIG President, at
the inaugural Survey and GIS Summit in 2003.
Since the creation of first Survey and GIS Summit by Mike Weir, then
ESRI Survey Industry Manager, both ACSM and FIG have supported the effort to
Bridge the Gap between Survey and GIS by participating in and being a sponsor
of the Summit. This year ACSM was well
represented by members of all four M.O.s. FIG was also well represented by several ACSM
FIG delegates.
Survey and GIS – Bridging the Gap- Univ.-
Prof. Dr.- Ing. Holger Magel- President, FIG
Ladies and Gentlemen, today
being a surveyor, planner or an other professional
like a representative of GIS industry that deals with daily problems in various
fields means that we are also responsible for the future of our one world. Our
goal should be to jointly collaborate in order to contribute to a more
sustainable and more just world.
But this means that today
apart from the pure technical aspects that used to be a main scope of duties
for many of us we also have to address ourselves to broader multi-faceted
topics like sustainability, civil society, good governance, poverty reduction,
secure tenure, urban and rural land development and interrelationship, or last
but not least decision making or disaster management.
Thus acting today means to
face new complex challenges and to work in a multidisciplinary environment. To
achieve this goal the surveyors and especially FIG as their global organization
are in demand too, as exactly the topics I quoted are the main fields of their
work and of the activities of the FIG. But they are not alone, they have
partners!
Especially companies like
ESRI that develop and constantly enhance Geographic Information Systems and
practice corporate citizenship worldwide stood abreast of these required
changes by providing surveyors and other professionals with visions, new ideas
and exactly the technological tools they need in order to deal with complex
spatial, environmental, socio cultural etc. topics, questions and challenges.
If one talks about survey
today one talks almost automatically about GIS, too. Therefore I would like to
make 7 comments about integrating survey and GIS:
1.
GIS as a key infrastructural component with immense value and benefits for
surveyors as well as for spatial planners and scientists
What benefit do we actually
have by using GIS?
Ladies and Gentlemen I
would like to answer a part of this question by quoting a column written by Jeff
Thurston (Director Integral GIS, Inc.) about ‘Determining Benefits and
Advantages of GI’ that appeared in the October/November 2002 edition of the
periodical GeoInformatics.
“GI has emerged from the
lone individual in the corner office working away on some unknown project and
using some unknown technology and this individual was very hard to communicate
with during coffee breaks. Those GI people seemed to speak a different
language. Every once in a while a person would produce a colorful and useful
map. It looked simple enough, and over time more and more people kept asking
for maps. Then they wanted to compare things spatially. Next thing we knew
there was a GPS and some satellite data in the organization. Then more and more
people wanted to do different things with the data and the organization hired
more of these people (…)” (Thurston, J.: 2002).
The text continues with the
narrator questioning his fictional Boss about the purpose and the benefit of
this technology he does not fully understand.
“It surprised me when
the Boss said we are providing GIS data for business, entertainment, and
environmental applications, sociological, population and even for research
studies for other organization amongst others. (…)” (Thurston, J.: 2002).
Last but not least the text
ends with the awareness that the information contained in GI-datasets like
cadastral and legal land registers, utility registers and map databases is a
key infrastructural component carrying immense (capital) value (Falk, T.; Oliv, S.:2003).
But it is not only the
value of the datasets we also profit from the ability of GI-Systems to analyze,
compare and combine them in their complex spatial context. So by using these
systems they can help us finding answers for spatial questions easily we would
otherwise have great difficulties to get or we would sometimes not be able to
solve at all.
Therefore it is not exactly
surprising that since Roger Tomlinson coined the term "Geographic
Information System" for the Government of Canada in the early 1960s (Coppock, J.T.; Rhind, D.W.: 1991)
the development of GI-Systems and –Applications has made great steps forward.
For most of us GIS even has
become a commodity without knowing it and it is hard for us to imagine our
everyday life without this commodity. But – this is my question here – do we
already know and use all possibilities and advantages of GIS in our profession
and for broadening the scope of our activities? I do not forget that it was FIG
and the German DVW president that organized the first international conference
on Land Information Systems (nowadays discussed under the general term GIS) in
Germany 1978 that I have attended and the response of practitioners and
academics was near to zero ! It took about 10 – 15
years that GIS became popular and a hot issue amongst at least German and
continental surveyors and universities (Schilcher,
M.: 2001).
2. Despite the progress within GIS development further efforts to
bridge the still existing gap between different standards have to be made
We have lost a lot of time:
So it is not surprising, that GIS still is a relatively new and constantly
expanding technology and science. If we take a close look at the applications
and data we realize that today we – as just mentioned- are far away from being
able to benefit from the full potential that is inherent in this GIS
development. The reasons are mainly the confusing amount of different
interfaces and proprietary standards for description of GIS data and data
accuracy. Although first steps in the right direction with great achievements
regarding standardization have already been undertaken in the name of the 1994
established Open GIS Consortium (OGC) no real uniform GIS standard that every
GIS – application and – software can handle without problems exists until
today.
But in order to use the
full potentials of the GIS –technology and to open up new innovative markets
for GIS and its applications we have to make further efforts to bridge the gap
between these different proprietary standards and develop a common ‘language’
every application and every GIS is able to understand at last. We have to force
an interdisciplinary understanding of object oriented information instead of
discussing on a higher level of GIS-data formats.
The importance of this
topic can be seen if you take a close look for example at the German Land
surveying Offices. In my home country the Bavarian land surveying office
established lots of high quality official datasets like cadastre maps, ATKIS,
Digital Topographic Maps, Digital Orthorectified
Imagery, Geocoded Addresses
and so on. For all of these datasets the Bavarian Land Surveying Office has
established different standards and interfaces. Our own experiences from GIS
applications we use at our institute give an idea about the time, efforts and
sometimes money invested to convert and integrate these data because of the
lack of a common standards.
Similar official datasets
have also been created by the 15 other German Land Surveying Offices. In order
to maintain interoperability and standardisation in
Germany the so-called AdV (Working Committee of the
Surveying Authorities of the States of the Federal Republic of Germany) was
founded but until now there are still no common standards and interfaces. Every
federal State in Germany still has its own standards. If you turn a close look
on the different European States you will see that no common European GIS
standard exists. And if you take a worldwide perspective you will encounter the
same problem.
The user driven approach
however might bring what could not be solved in the past: Nowadays we discuss
in Germany about a more integrated approach on geographic objects used in
different applications like Cadastre or topography.
At the national level, the
National Mapping Agencies are playing a key role in the development of national
Spatial Data Infrastructures. In Germany the “Interministerial
Committee for Geoinformation” (IMAGI) under the
chairmanship and management of the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) works
towards a national geo data infrastructure (GDI-DE) for Germany.
At the European level, EuroGeographics as the association of Europe’s National
Mapping Agencies provides the focal point for coordination of National Mapping
Agencies activity in the implementation of INSPIRE (Land, N: 2003).
Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe is the latest name given to
the E-ESDI initiative (Environmental European Spatial Data Infrastructure)
being itself the first practical implementation in building the European
Geographic Information Infrastructure mentioned in the EuroGeographics
mission statement (http://www.gsi.go.jp/PCGIAP/brunei/seminar/euroge_strtgy.pdf).
This discussion on a higher level about Infrastructure for Spatial Information
in Europe with its user driven approach coming from a joint interest of sharing
environmental information seems to make good progresses.
An approach similar to
IMAGI and INSPIRE is pursued in the USA lead-managed by the Federal Geographic
Data Committee (FGDC). This FGDC – as many of our American colleagues know - is
a 19 member interagency committee composed of representatives from the
Executive Office of the President, Cabinet-level and independent agencies. FGDC
is developing the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) in cooperation
with organizations from State, local and tribal governments, the academic
community, and the private sector. The NSDI encompasses policies, standards,
and procedures for organizations to cooperatively produce and share geographic
data (http://www.fgdc.gov/).
The worldwide initiative on
GSDI (Global Spatial Data Infrastructure) is a similar example for that. The
Global Spatial Data Infrastructure is a non-profit global organization made up
of members from more than 50 countries. Their membership includes emerging and
developed nations, industry and government organizations, and individuals
(Global Spatial Data Infrastructure a).
All that is not about data
– it is much more about integrating and improving procedures and services with
an interdisciplinary approach.
3. The relationship between Surveyors and GIS is outstandingly strong
as the surveyor is the classical expert for spatial data acquisition
Because of the benefits GIS
offers it is not surprising that today lots of professionals focusing on
spatial topics like Planners, Geographers, Geologists, Archeologists, and
Surveyors etc. deal with the further development of GIS-Technology and
standardization.
Furthermore a steadily
growing trend towards the use of mobile computing and GIS in the everyday field
work can be registered amongst these professionals.
But from all this
professionals the relationship between Surveyors and GIS is outstandingly
strong as the surveyor has the expertise to practice the science of
measurement; to assemble and assess land and geographic related information; to
use that information for the purpose of planning, valuation, and implementing
the efficient administration and management of the land, the sea and structures
thereon; and to instigate the advancement and development of such practices.
The merge of global geodata requires the surveyor’s well-based knowledge about
reference systems, map projections, geodetic data and about the background of
their needs. Or with other words: Once having started with “data gathering”
surveyors have moved on to “data modeling” and now they strongly should go
toward the “integrated competence of land, property and construction managing”.
That is our FIG vision of surveyors competence (Magel,
H.: 2003 a)! To do this in a professional way and successful manner we
naturally have to intensively cooperate with neighbor disciplines and
professions like lawyers, land economists, civil engineers etc. Here GIS gives
surveyors the ability to combine and analyze spatial data in their complexity.
Briefly it is mainly the
surveying and mapping and its neighboring disciplines that produces, provides
and uses the information and the data pool as basis for GIS-Applications. So it
is quite obvious that surveyors should not only be experts in mapping,
digitizing and georeferencing these data. They should
also be specialists concerning principles of GIS, Geoservices,
Spatial Information Management and appropriate use of GIS itself.
4. FIG supports the development and use of GIS through its Commission 3
that is closely intertwined with its other commissions and leading GIS experts
and GIS industry
Exactly this is one of the
reasons why the International Federation of Surveyors established the
Commission 3 ‘Spatial Information Management’.
FIG, especially its
Commission 3, works among others towards interoperability and standardization,
too. So one of the important topics of FIG is to use its
influence in order to enforce further efforts towards interoperability.
Furthermore FIG also supports
the use of GIS and distribution of GIS- knowledge. Last but not least FIG
encourages the use of GIS to change the way problems are solved in society by
adding a spatial or geographic component to the problem solving process for a
better decision making.
Of course Commission 3 is
strongly intertwined with FIG´s other commissions.
For example in Commission 7 ‘Cadastre and Land Management’ we encourage the
development of appropriate concepts and tools for land administration and land
management. FIG encourages knowledge, skills and capabilities of surveyors in
this field. Here the appropriate use and further technical development of GIS
is amongst others needed as key tool in order to provide a successful field
work. Vice versa the insights that are made by doing Land Management can lead
to the further enhancement and development of GI-applications and datasets.
Our commissions do not only
cooperate within FIG but also outside with other international organizations
and industries: As one current example of our efforts to achieve this goal I
would like to name the cooperation of FIG with ESRI in order to develop an ArcGIS Cadastre Data Model template based on the Cadastre
2014 concepts of the FIG.
Together with FIG and the
International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation
(ITC), ESRI recently co-hosted an international cadastre data model workshop at
the ITC headquarters in Enschede, the Netherlands.
More than 30 cadastre data modeling experts from around the world gathered to
share their expertise and project experience to help define the core data model
requirements. The goal of the workshop was to refine the initial 2014 cadastral
data model so it could be used to implement core requirements, which include
the management of multiple property rights and restrictions by cadastre
agencies (ESRI: 2003 a).
5. GIS is no end in itself - doing GIS requires more than just coping
with technical aspects
In our discussion about GIS
and its benefits, potentials and technical problems we sometimes forget that
GIS is no end in itself. Within the surveyor’s community we can observe that
many surveyors deal either with pure technical GIS aspects or with survey
engineering, Geodesy, Land Management and Land Tenure. The representatives of
the different subject areas of surveying and mapping often do not have a spirit
of collaboration. Instead unfortunately they only focus on their own narrow
subject.
Therefore one often gets
the wrong impression that a surveyor is either a GIS specialist or a survey engineer
or a Land Manager. But instead of ‘either or’ surveyors must develop good
skills in all subject areas and should be open minded to an interdisciplinary
cooperation.
Me and the FIG are of the
opinion that today a surveyor as well as every other professional dealing with
space and spatial and socio-political etc. topics has to master both general
competence and special knowledge in one or more fields of surveyor’s range or
vice versa. What is needed is the ‘well grounded specialized generalist’
(Magel, H.: 2003 b). Only this well grounded
specialized generalist will be able to meet the requirements of today’s
multidisciplinary field of surveying that I have outlined at the beginning of
my speech.
Even if a surveyor’s main
interest lies in the technical aspect of GIS only a profound knowledge of at
least the fields of GIS applications is helpful in order to develop useful
practical oriented applications, adaptations and new techniques.
At our Technical University
of Munich we offer courses for our students with topics that deal with
technical GIS aspects and their application in Land and Disaster Management and
survey engineering. In lectures, seminars and projects we encourage our
students to widen their perspective towards a multidisciplinary one.
But at our university we
also try to contribute to the postulated interoperability by developing a web-based
OGC compliant ‘GeoPortal’ where experts are able to
access and use data from different official Geodatabases
online.
6. GIS – a bridging role for disciplines and professions
If we discuss about
integrating GIS and survey we should widen our perspective and should also take
a close look at the GIS- community as a whole; then one will realize that the
GIS experts and users have quite different backgrounds. They are either
surveyors or geographers or archaeologists or geologists or experts for
agriculture, forestry, landscape or spatial planning and so on. All of them
have different specific professional skills and all see space and spatial
topics from different viewpoints, even – as we know it from the surveyor -
within the same profession. But all of them are somehow connected by the
phenomenon GIS as a tool for visualizing, analyzing and transferring
information. It gives them a spirit of collaboration. The common interest in
the topic GIS brings together different professionals with their different
backgrounds. On meetings, discussions and conferences experiences and know-how
is exchanged. A surveyor as well as any other professional using GIS has therefore
the possibility to benefit from the knowledge outside ones own field as he can
get new ideas and perspectives and last but not least can learn a different way
to deal with topics than he is used to do. This is applied interdisciplinary
work and this is for example the goal of FIG Regional Conferences, as it will
happen in Marrakech in December 2003 again about the multidisciplinary topic “urban-
rural relationship for sustainable environment”.
Sharing of experience and
know-how is also the aim of the most important annual European, possibly even
most important global, surveying event - visited not only by surveyors but by
other “spatial professionals”, too - the German DVW run INTERGEO. At the
INTERGEO GIS and its use and applications are already for quite a few years one
of the central conference and exhibition topics. The hot issues of this year’s (2003) INTERGEO held in Hamburg in
September will be among others spatial data infrastructure and the use of geodata.
So the common interest in
GIS brings together individuals from different spatial sciences and
disciplines.
7. GIS and survey – from partnership to integration for a sustainable
world
Let me come to the end: It
is no doubt that GIS is an essential technology and tool for lots of daily
decisions and professional work. I even would like to underline what Jack Dangermond last year at the 22nd Annual International User
Conference has said: “Geography and GIS are necessary tools if we are
willing to sustain our world” (Dangermond, J.:
2003 cited after ESRI: 2003 b).
GIS can well contribute to
sustainability in two ways:
- The databases and the data management used in geodatabases contribute to an economically sustainable
data storage and sustainable use of the core of every GIS- application.
And it represents a vast amount of highly valuable geodata
about our world and its environment.
- GIS projects and systems can help to get a better
understanding for processes and problems of our world and therefore
contribute to a sustainable use and management of resources, environmental
protection and last but not least to a more just world.
Let me go on with the
quotation of Jack Dangermond: Not only Geography and
GIS, but also or even mainly – in my opinion - survey and GIS are necessary
tools for sustaining our world. So it is no more a question to bridge the gap
between survey and GIS, it is no more only a question to come to a closer
partnership between both, no it is really ultimate time to integrate survey and
GIS with the goal of a new entity. That is exactly what has happened in the
last decade in the countries of the so called ‘Old Europe’, especially in
Germany. If you want to study survey at universities there you will find a new
term – not Geomatics (because this does not cover the
full range of surveyors activities or competences) but
“Geodesy and Geoinformation”. The message is very
clear: GIS is an indispensable essential of the study, but only as one of many
other fields and competences. For the range “from the single land parcel up
to the planet mars” (that is for example the slogan in Munich) GIS
knowledge and competence must be combined with additional competences and
oriented toward various fields of application.
On this background I will
continue to encourage FIG and its commissions and our partners to help
establishing GIS – knowledge and competence centers in all parts of the world.
With its exemplary education and its grateful university programs ESRI is an
outstanding model of corporate citizenship and one of our most brilliant
flagships of FIG partners and corporate members!
Many thanks for your
support. Let’s jointly go on implementing our vision of world widely bridging
the gap and let’s make integration solutions happen in order to contribute to a
better world!
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