33rd National Surveying and Spatial Information Conference3-4 September 2014, National Taiwan University, TaipeiThe invitation by the organisers of the 33rd edition of Taiwan’s annual National Surveying and Spatial Information Conference, National Taiwan University (NTU), presented an opportunity for FIG to engage fellow surveying and spatial information professionals in Taiwan. Prof. P.H. HSU from NTU in Taipei was the principle organizer of the Conference and Prof. Peter TY SHIH from the National Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu was the primary liaison person. The Taiwan Society of Cadastral Surveyors, Taiwan Professional Surveying Engineers Association and Taipei Professional Surveying Engineers Association also facilitated the participation of the FIG President CheeHai Teo.
Dr. San-Cheng CHANG, the Minister of Science and Technology officiated the opening of the Conference and gave an opening address. During the Official Opening segment of the Conference, the Minister also officiated the launch of Taiwan National Land Surveying and Mapping Center’s eGNSS geodetic and positioning infrastructure. NLSC’s eGNSS was an improvement and a setup from their eGPS infrastructure that was established 10 years ago.
The launch of eGNSS was witnessed by Ms Ching-Hsu WANG, Director of the Department of Land Administration, Ministry of Interior; Dr. Guey-Shin CHANG, Director General of the National Space Organization, National Applied Research Laboratories; Prof. Liang-Chien CHEN, President of Chinese Taipei Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing and Professor in the Center for Space and Remote Sensing Research, National Central University; Prof Jia-Yush YEN, Dean of the College of Engineering, National Taiwan University; Mr. Jeng-Lun LIU, Director-General of the National Land Surveying and Mapping Center, Ministry of Interior and the FIG President.
The FIG President had the opportunity to interact with many Professors, researchers and graduate students from around the country during the two–day event. The FIG President was also able to interact with practising professionals, both in the public service and private sector and was shown some of their on-going researches, development, activities, projects and outputs. It was indeed heartening to observe and note the researches, innovation and adaptation of spatial sciences and technologies, particularly in the areas of remote sensing, airborne, terrestrial and mobile mapping, in addressing the developmental and disaster related challenges peculiar to Taiwan by the local professionals and researchers. The results of these efforts are being deployed, not just for disaster response mapping and subsequent surveys and mapping for reconstruction, but could be extended to improve knowledge on urban hazards for disaster readiness.
In his keynote presentation and various meetings, President CheeHai TEO reiterated the need to engage and exchange experiences so that the Profession can be better positioned to deploy its sciences, technologies and practices to address the various challenges faced both by humanity and the profession. During his presentation, he made a series of observations on the capabilities and competencies of the Profession in an era of rapid changes, of various challenges facing humanity that has an obvious spatial dimension, informed the audience of a series of global initiatives that the Profession must embrace, introduced and shared FIG’s thinking on Surveyor 2.0 and spatially enabled society in the hope that the Profession can be engaging in the managing all information spatially, thus allowing information and knowledge with both geographic and temporal context to be more effectively assimilated into all levels of development and decision-making towards sustainable development goals, which can be global, regional or local.. The presentation was titled “Spatial Information Addressing Global Challenges”
CheeHai Teo 09 September 2014 |
