News in 2016
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On the 3rd of August 2015 the 16th Annual Meeting of the Joint Board of Geospatial Information Societies was held in New York. The meeting was attended by Prof David Coleman (GSDI), Ms Ruth E. Neilan (IAG), Prof Menno-Jan Kraak (ICA), Prof Chryssy Potsiou (FIG), Mr Robert Ward (IHO), Mr Marc Cygan (IMIA), Prof Chen Jun (ISPRS), and Mr Toru Nagayama (ISCGM). The meeting was chaired by Mr Mark Cygan.
FIG was thanked for hosting and updating the JBGIS website.
Participants were informed by Mr. Stefan Schweinfest, UN Statistics Division Director and Mr. Greg Scott, Inter-Regional Advisor on Global Geospatial Information Management, UN-GGIM Secretariat about the UN-ECOSOC and UN-GGIM decisions to align their work with the SDGs and the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda (formerly known as Post-2015 Agenda).
Mr. Schweinfest and Mr. Scott thanked the JBGIS for their contributions to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd High Level Forums on UN-GGIM and welcomed the JBGIS to be actively involved in the 4th High Level Forum to be held in Africa, in Addis Ababa, in Ethiopia, in April 2016, organize the industry session and appoint some speakers. FIG, GSDI, ICA, IMIA and ISPRS intent to participate (ISCGM and IHO will consider). Action needed: to communicate with Chris Rizos to decide about the focal person to organize this session. In addition, the board members need to decide whether they would like to do workshops as pre-conference side event in Addis Ababa and communicate with Mr Tim Trainor (USA), the new Co-chair of UNGGIM.
JBGIS board had a review of the UNGGIM agenda and discussed possible interventions and asked UNGGIM to include JBGIS members in the new Working Groups.
Information was provided on the International Map Year, which was
endorsed at the 4th UNGGIM, and a reminder to UNGGIM was made to approve
the map exhibition focusing on SDGs next year in NY.
Information was also provided about the Global Map.
ISPRS president, Prof Chen informed the board members of an international declaration on Supporting Future Earth with Global Geo-information and invited the board members to comment and consider future endorsement.
Prof Chen also informed about a proposed international scientific initiative on Collaborative Platform for Global Land Information and asked for comments.
There was a request by Mrs Valrie Grant that the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association would become a member organization of the JBGIS. URISA, as a regional organization that does not work across the world, was accepted as an Observer organization (non-voting status) which should be invited to attend future JBGIS meetings and could participate in JBGIS capacity building activities.
The decision to elect a new Chair of the JBGIS was postponed. Prof Rizos has agreed to remain as chair for the next year until voting. Next organization on the succession list is IHO and Robert Ward has agreed.
Next formal JB GIS meeting will be held in Prague 12-19 July 2016 at the ISPRS conference in the evening of the 14th. An informal meeting will be held in Addis Ababa.
Chryssy Potsiou
06 January 2016
