News in 2019
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The meeting attracted 130 participants from Algeria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Moldavia, Netherlands, Romania and Turkey. In addition, a record number of 35 Young Surveyors and professionals registered.
The event addressed the roles of the geospatial community in shaping the future of urban and regional development. The meeting consisted of two plenary sessions, five technical sessions, and one interactive session. In addition to the technical program, dinners, and a gala night featuring local cuisine and traditional folk dances of Romania were also organized. A city tour before the meeting with volunteers and a day long post-symposium day trip to Transylvania villages also enriched the cultural and social experience of the program.
The distinguished speakers at the opening ceremony and plenary sessions highlighted the era of change for all professions and applications of the surveying society. The representation of the FIG Council by Vice President Orhan Ercan, and presence of past president of FIG Chryssy Potsiou at the commission opening and throughout the week reflected how Spatial Information Management is vital for the existence of surveyors in the dawn of this new era. Speakers covered topics from the guidance of UN Goals on Sustainable Development and roles of surveyors to contribute reaching these goals, to issues such as the changing definition of professions with Industry 4.0, machine learning and artificial intelligence AI, Smart Cities, Citizen 2.0, open data and Volunteered Geographic Information VGI.
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From the opening and keynote sessions.
The technical sessions provided a detailed look at research and applications within the fields and interest of the Commission 3 activities including, but not limited to, SDI, data/information management, open data and provided case experiences of emerging areas. Innovative solutions for acquiring geospatial data and processing methods were presented for various purposes. Furthermore, representatives of companies presented the commercial perspective and displayed their latest products in the exhibition area throughout the week.
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Some presentations during the technical sessions. Presenters provided a broad perspective of recent trends and developments within the scope of Commission 3.
Among the sessions, the youngest WG of Commission 3, Working Group 3.6 Geospatial Next organized a Young Surveyors session. The session was divided in two parts: presentations of young surveyors’ technical experiences and geo-innovation followed with an interactive discussion with the leading participants. This inter-generation session provided a unique opportunity for networking and learning from each others’ experiences both in terms of technical and soft skills.
Interactive session included online questions from the audience |
Volunteers contributed both to the organization of the event and had possibility to learn about the recent trends in their profession. |
Group picture of generations
The Commission Chair and representatives were very happy with the local host’s organization efforts. During the Commission meetings and at the closing session, various ideas and possibilities for the future of the activities were proposed which will be evaluated for the next event series. The young generation of professionals played an important role both by participating in and organizing the event; we thus believe this inter-generations approach, which we started in the previous annual meeting, and expanded with this 2019 meeting, was successful in producing new synergy for the commission activities.
One of the participants, Leonardo Franchi from Italy, expressed that he will be returning home with his luggage full of experience and new knowledge. Another participant, Elias Issawi, from Israel explained the importance of the event for him as; “beside the new developments in research and technologies the event let me learn from different surveying cultures.”. Anca Nicoleta Păvăloiu from Romania, a participant and local organizing committee member said, “It was a great experience having both the opportunity to be a part of the organization as a young surveyor and experience the whole event from the first hand.” underlying the active participation for the Commission 3 as well.
The Commission Chair Hartmut Müller and Vice Chairs Charalabos Ioannides and Ulrike Klein together with the Chair of WG 3.6 Cemal Özgür Kıvılcım expressed their gratitude to the organizers: to the President of UGR Ionut Savoiu and Tudor Salagean Vice Dean of Horticulture Faculty USAMV CN and Laura Cocu for her assistantship for organizing the Commission 3 meeting in Cluj-Napoca together with the Romanian Surveying Week. The Commission 3 once again emphasize their interest and possible areas for further collaboration and activities to be organized with all the members of FIG.The Commission 3 annual meeting and workshop provided a platform to the surveyors for the new century with display of applications of the geospatial data/information developments and innovative solutions. We hope all the participants and organizers will benefit the fruitful discussions for next steps in the region and had a memorable experience of professional and cultural activities. We look forward to meeting once again at the FIG 2020 Amsterdam Working Week and next Commission meeting, which which will be held in Berlin Germany in October 2020.
Cemal Özgür Kivilcim
October 2019
