Tuesday, December 29, 2009

GIS in Central Asia Conference - Call for Contributions

From Jan 1, 2010 the GISCA Call for Papers and conference registration will be open - further details are available from http://gisca10.aca-giscience.org/!
This annual conference is focused on GIS applications across all domains with a link to or relevance for the Central Asian region. Conference secretary Dr. Akylbek Chymyrov points out that "the 2010 conference theme 'Water: Life, Risk, Energy and Landuse' essentially summarizes many of the problems Central Asia today is facing, and GISCA 2010 is striving to make significant contributions to resolving or at least mitigating these problems".
GIS experts, public officials, industry representatives and academics will again converge at Bishkek (Kyrgyz Republic) at this now well established regional platform for communication, learning and collaboration!

Sunday, November 22, 2009

GISCA 2010 announced for May 27/28

The fourth GIS in Central Asia Conference has been scheduled for May 27/28 and will again be complemented with workshops, seminars and training courses offered before and after the conference. See gisca10.aca-giscience.org for detailed information and updates!

Monday, August 31, 2009

Emerging GIS Landscapes in Central Asia - Geospatial Experts Converging at GISCA Conference in Bishkek

by Ainura Nazarkulova, Austria-Central Asia Centre for GIScience

The 3rd successful Central Asia GIS Conference was concluded by conference chairs Akylbek Chymyrov and Josef Strobl from the Austria-Central Asia Centre for GIScience (www.aca-giscience.org) on August 28 at the University of Construction, Transportation and Architecture in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic. The two-day conference program brought together speakers from Central Asian countries with their counterparts from Central Europe, with representatives from Russia, India, Iran, USA and several other countries making this a truly international event.

Within and beyond the conference theme of “GIScience for Environmental and Emergency Management” 28 paper presentations were highlighting current trends –like the building of spatial data infrastructures- and innovative applications ranging from environmental monitoring, risk assessment and planning for sustainability to logistics and navigation. Over 100 registered participants had the opportunity to continue building a Central Asia – focused network of GI experts and professionals at the social events supported by conference sponsors Trimble Navigation and SAFE Software.

A keynote on ‘Thinking Spatially’ by ESRI’s Michael Phoenix recognized the importance of capacity building and human resources development as the single most important success factor for geospatial methods and technologies in this region. This was further supported by educational workshops facilitated by SAFE Software and various other learning opportunities for participants, like access to exhibits of publications and technologies by GIS companies.

Pre-conference workshops were attracting particular attention. The UN-SPIDER (www.unspider.org) program for the first time in this region invited to an expert meeting on “Managing Disasters using Space-Based Technologies”. The three day openSolar-Workshop attracted 25 participants to assess and evaluate ‘Solar Energy Potentials in Central Asia’, but actually reaching far beyond this topic and aiming at a sustainable energy concept for this region.

The openSolar event as well as GISCA’09 were made possible through generous support from the Austria-based Eurasia-Pacific Uninet (www.eurasiapacific.net). Its president, Prof. Brigitte Winklehner spoke at the GISCA opening ceremony together with KSUCTA Rektor Akymbek Abdykalykov and Austrian ambassador HE Ursula Fahringer, emphasizing the value of international cooperation to manage environments, resources and societies at the ancient crossroads of Central Asia with modern geospatial technologies.

Participants received a copy of the conference proceedings at registration (jointly published by KSUCTA and Salzburg University’s Centre for Geoinformatics), this volume and further information is available from the conference website at www.aca-giscience.org/gisca. Plans for the 2010 conference are currently being finalized for late May 2010 – striving to recognize GIS as an indispensable technical resource for the development of the emerging Central Asian economies.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

GISCA'09 Call for Papers

The Third GIS-in-Central-Asia conference "GIScience for Environmental and Emergency Management" has been announced for August 27-28 and the conference will again be held at KSUCTA in Bishkek. A call for papers is addressing a broad range of topics, with all details available from www.aca-giscience.org/gisca09.

First UNIGIS MSc graduate at KSUCTA Bishkek

During an UNIGIS workshop on Jan 10, Andrew Smith was awarded his MSC (GISc) degree from Salzburg University. A self-taught GIS expert from the days when no formal GIS degrees were yet available, he built on his engineering background and has many years of experience in applying and teaching GIS. After completing all online courseworAndrewSJan10k and successfully defending his thesis on open source GIS tools for spatial data infrastructures and spatial analysis in October 2008, Andrew now received his certificates in a small ceremony at ACA*GIScience.  Congratulations!