“Empowering people is about empowering ourselves” –Dr Kusmayanto Kadiman had mentioned at the opening ceremony assertively, thereby setting the pace and mindset of the international conference. Extended debates, viewpoints and discussions that related geospatial information with citizen’s empowerment took shape over the conference along with various other aspects of geospatial application, technology and information.
Map Asia 2005 was the 4th Annual Asian Conference and Exhibition in the field of GIS, GPS, Aerial Photography, Remote Sensing and related technologies. After Bangkok in 2002, Kuala Lumpur in 2003, and Beijing in 2004, this year Map Asia conference happened in Jakarta with a strong participation and representation from Asia and beyond. Map Asia 2005, was again a response to the need in the Asian region for a platform that brings together government departments, industries, research communities and policy-makers in the geospatial domain.
Map Asia 2005 was organized by GIS Development, Centre for Science Development and Media Studies (CSDMS) in collaboration with Bakosurtanal (National Coordination Agency for Surveying and Mapping of Indonesia), the Association of Indonesian Survey and Mapping Enterprises (APSPI) and Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Thailand.
The event took place at the Hotel Mulia Senayan, Jakarta between August 22 – 25. The government level sponsor was RISTEK. There were 4 gold sponsors and 4 co-sponsors along with many supporting organizations. Hewlett Packard, Oracle, Digital Globe and Leica Geosystems were the 'gold sponsors' of the event, while ESRI, ER Mapper, OGC and GITA were the ‘co-sponsors’.
Theme
Map Asia 2005 had the primary theme of ‘Empowering People through Geospatial Sciences’. The idea was to explore the processes and paths that leverage the movement of geospatial information closer to the common man thereby enabling them to act based on this information. The Asian region is felt by many to be on the verge of a revolution in geospatial usage and development. One of the key factors that directly affects or will affect this is the level of information democracy prevalent. Since it is common today that geospatial information generated through rigourous analysis is no longer limited to just the organisation domain but trickles down till the end user makes this understanding more relevant and critical.
Map Asia 2005 also took up two more sub themes in depth for detailed discussions – ‘Regional Cooperation’ and ‘Disaster Management’. Various papers were presented in each of these sub-themes bringing out crucial viewpoints of the need and prospective manner of cooperating to reduce impact of disasters and natural calamities in these regions with the use of technology.
Participation
Map Asia 2005 witnessed a total participation of over 639 people attending the 4-day conference including about 100 visitors. Around 330 papers were accepted and a total of 96 papers were presented on the floor, during the conference. 36 exhibitors displayed their products and services.
Inaugural Session
Map Asia 2005 opened on 22nd August at 4pm in the evening in the Grand Ballroom Hall of Hotel Mulia Senayan, Jakarta. Over 500 people gathered at this evening Inauguration ceremony that comprised policy makers, scientists, research scholars, working professionals, engineers and industry leaders gathered in the evening. The ambience was somber and the inauguration preceded a formal dinner. There were 5 dignitaries on the dais for the Inaugural.
Rudolf W Matindas, Head of Bakosurtanal spoke first giving the welcome address. Wishing everybody a good stay in Indonesia he threw light on the status of the mapping application in Indonesia in the government sector. He also gave a positive idea of the market size and the trends in the growth of the technology. His emphasis was on the fact most of the needs and demands of Asian countries are similar. Hence he visualized a harmonized scenario for the future where the mapping agencies of the entire region work hand in hand leading to a ‘secure, lawful and prosperous Asia’. He mentioned that the professional group of geospatial domain experts has the primary task to take these technologies to the common man.
Dr M P Narayanan, the President of CSDMS, India remarked next on Map Asia as a conference that has increasingly reinstated positive and constructive scientific deliberations aimed at development of the mankind. He wished the same for 2005. He mentioned about the highly technical and advanced nature of the papers that shall form Map Asia 2005 touching on critical applications that are needed in the region.
Dr Kusmayanto Kadiman, Minister for Research and Technology, Government of Indonesia gave a short speech, where he emphasized the importance of such conferences in building capacities and empowering a group of people who would and can further empower the masses. He stated that Indonesia understands the growing need of GIS and is open to collaborate for solution development and technology exchange. He talked about the important and potent role of GIS in National Food Security, natural resource monitoring and agriculture programmes as important applications relevant to the Indonesian economy.
This was followed by the official opening of the ceremony by a traditional ceremony of hitting a gong to release an auspicious chiming sound.
Suvith Vipul Sreshtha, GISTDA, Thailand spoke next where he mentioned of the different levels of government coordination in the geospatial arena. He also talked about how a well-coordinated system within a country can enable people to start taking decisions. Bebas Purnawan, Head, PSJSDS, Bakosurtanal gave the official Vote of Thanks to end the ceremony which was followed by the official inauguration of the Exhibition by the Minister and other dignitaries.
Plenary and keynotes
Empowering people through Geospatial Information – Plenary
The second day started with the important plenary on the theme. There were three main speakers in this session chaired by Rudolf Matindas.
Brain Bullock, CEO, Intermap Technologies was the first speaker who brought out the viewpoint of the industry in empowering the common man with technology. He demonstrated the manner in which geospatial technologies have developed in the last decade and the way information has emerged in the public domain. He mentioned that the discussions now need to reach the levels where technical challenges like handling of huge data sizes, sharing, quality and inscription aspects are to be embraced in making information democracy a reality.
Prof Joseph Strobl from the Department of Geography, Salzburg University, Austria was the next speaker. He presented a perspective paper on the trends of GIS in relation to common man or the end user. He deliberated on GI-Science and GI-Service and drew conceptual analogies of what drives the science, the technology and the service in an information society.
Ravi Gupta, Editor in Chief of GIS Development was the final speaker. He spoke on the very basics of empowerment. He talked about the empowerment of end users like villagers, traders and common man who have no idea about GIS. He raised questions about data availability to these classes of citizens. The fundamentals of information democracy whereby the government need to take massive steps to get information flowing were touched upon. Some good case studies were highlighted.
Regional Cooperation - Plenary
Chaired by Dr M P Narayanan, this session had 2 speakers. Rudolf Matindas spoke at length in this session about the manner in which Bakosurtanal is executing its tasks with a vision to provide updated and quality information for various government departments and users across the region. He also spoke of Bakosurtanal’s participation in international sphere in terms of projects, technical knowledge exchange and future initiatives. He emphasized the need to collaborate amongst agencies within and beyond the nation to avoid duplicity, loss of time money and energy. He showed glimpses of the manner in which Bakosurtanal is gearing up to meet the geospatial needs of the future of Indonesia in every application fields.
Pengiran Haji Matusan Matasan, the Surveyor General of Brunai was the other speaker. He gave an informative speech where he stressed upon the benefits of regional cooperation. He brought out the hindrances that departments and nations face while developing a geodatabase from scratch without capitalizing the strength of more experienced nations of the region.
Web GIS and Large Scale Mapping - Keynote
Chaired by Prof Joseph Strobel, this session had 4 speakers. William Shepard, Business Development Manager - Asia Pacific, ESRI was the first speaker. He spoke on aspect of Web GIS and the GIS Portal. He elaborated the need for having a web-based output for all geo-database for the coming days as the only means of overcoming the hurdles associated with geospatial information democracy. He showed the various components of developing a GIS Portal and gave glimpses of the existing systems available globally. Guy Perkins, Vice President, ER Mapper was the next speaker. He elaborated on the various datasets of ER Mapper that are being used over net and otherwise along with the applications that are being put to use. He focused, with case studies on the aspect of contextualisation of any application based on geographic data depending on the end user needs. Oracle also had a well-received presentation after this. This significant presentation traversed the aspects of large scale database and its storage and analysis, especially when thought of executed over the Internet.
Mike McGill, Director Sales, Digital Globe spoke next with emphasis on large scale mapping and its growing needs. He mentioned the role of the industry and private sector in meeting these needs with quality and adequate value. He gave detailed demonstration of the accurate and amazing imaging quality aspects of private remote sensing satellites. Kaushik Chakraborty, Leica Geosystems, spoke next. His eloquent speech covered aspects of photogrammetry, aerial photography and other aspects of large scale mapping with the technicalities involved as well as the advantages.
Technical Sessions
Perhaps the key strength of Map Asia 2005 was in the quality and diversity of the technical sessions. The 3rd and 4th day were completely filled with technical sessions. In all there were 15 technical sessions. The sessions took place in 6 parallel halls. Each session had an average of 5 papers. These sessions provided opportunity to speakers to present papers on almost all the varied aspects of technical and social applications of spatial technology in the fields of: Geological Applications, Water Resources, LIS, Environment and Forestry, Traffic and Transportation, Precision Farming, Urban Planning, Digital Image Processing, Web GIS, Global Positioning Systems, Photogrammetry and 3D Visualisation, Database Design and Ontologies, Land Use and Land Cover, Emerging Applications, Natural Resource Applications and Explorations.
Workshops and Seminars
Map Asia 2005 had three key seminars inbuilt in its programme. The seminars were spread over the last three days. The seminars were on ‘Space Programme and Remote Sensing’; ‘Disaster Management’; and ‘Marine and Coastal GIS’. Each seminar had about 8 papers and discussions that covered almost the entire day. The sessions demonstrated the variety of research ongoing in the region and the level of advancement in various fields of geospatial sciences. There were two significant workshops in Map Asia 2005.
The Workshop on GIS Education was coordinated by Prof Joseph Strobl of Salzburg University and Dr Shahnawaz of UNIGIS International, Centre for Geoinformatics, Salzburg University, Austria. The workshop had important presentations and discussions that covered the challenges, needs and innovations of GIS education. Various presenters from across the globe expressed their views of the manner in which GIS Education is shaping up in the last one decade. The other workshop was the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Workshop, conducted by Dr Raj Singh. This workshop had paced participation and discussed aspects of interoperability and standards.
Exhibition and Socials
The exhibition area with over 1500 sq m of space with 38 exhibitors. Map Asia 2005 was one of the largest industry exhibitions in the region of the year. Huge influx of visitors commuted over the area over the three days. The second day of the conference had a social dinner with cultural programme. Traditional Indonesian, Thai and Chinese dances were performed in the informal dinner.
Summation
The final day had the closing ceremony where Awards were given out to best papers, poster and exhibition. In brief, Map Asia 2005 was an important convergence of productive, significant and intelligent heads at Jakarta. It acted as a timely podium that had the capacity to leverage and move country-to-country relations and policies, in response to the current Asian tides of increase in use of mapping and geographic technology.
