Commission Program Stream in Geospatial World Forum 2017 in Hyderabad, India. January 23-25, 2017.

Commission Program Stream in Geospatial World Forum 2017 in Hyderabad, India. January 23-25, 2017.

Geospatial World Forum is the only conference covering the entire spectrum of geospatial technologies, workflows, policies and practices in one global platform. Founded in Hyderabad in 2007, the conference has travelled to Amsterdam, Geneva, Lisbon and Rotterdam. Celebrating a decade of inception, Geospatial World Forum 2017 came back to Hyderabad. The event was organized by Geospatial Media and Communications, and co-hosted by Survey of India and Indian Space Research Organization — giving it great governmental leverage and support.

The 10th edition of Geospatial World Forum, held January 23-25, 2017 at Hyderabad International Convention Centre, highlighted the value and power of geospatial technology as an enabler in addressing global economic and socio-economic issues.

With 3,000 high-profile delegates from global geospatial community, policy makers, academia, researchers, technology providers, solution providers, and end-user segments across industries, regions and communities targeted, the forum featured large-scale conference and exhibition, top-ranked keynote speakers, major industry segments, high-level discussion programs and various social networking events.

In the 2017 the headline title was “Geospatial + Deep Learning: Shaping Smarter World”, January 23-25 2017. Researchesr, experts and industrial leaders from from 56 countries,763 organizations and 60 exhibitors attended.

ICA traditionally participated, first time by two symposiums.

First stream with strong ICA participation was Digital Cartography Summit, Scientific Symposium on NextGen Cartography, which was leaded by Menno-Jan Kraak, president of ICA and Christian Heipke, president of ISPRS, with speakers based or cooperated with ICA, like Timothy Trainor,former ICA V-P, Swarna Subba, Director General, Survey India, Mark Cygan, ESRI, Ed Parsons, GOOGLE UK, and others.

Second symposium Climate Change and Disaster Management was initiated by ICA Commission Cartography for Early Warning and Crises Management and organized together with Indian organizers – India Meteorological Department, and Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India. Important and influential support was provided by Mr. Sanjay Kumar, Ms. Deepali Roy and Ms. Megha Datta. In every of three sessions participated 55-60 specialists. Symposium Web page:

http://geospatialworldforum.org/climate-change-and-disaster-management.asp

Symposium was held on January 24 in 3 sessions. The first session Geoinformation and cartography in early warning and disaster management, was moderated and started by keynote speech of Milan Konecny (Chair of ICA CCEW&cm], titled:

The Strategic Challenges of Early Warning and Crises Management in the Advent of Big Data Era: Geoinformatics and Cartographic Ambitious. Other keynotes have been delivered by Michael Goodchild,Emeritus Professor of Geography, University of California, USA (image 3), titled: Successful Response Starts with a Map, Shailesh Nayak, Distinguished Scientist, Ministry of Earth Sciences, India (image 2): Mitigating Tsunami Risk in the Indian Ocean, KJ Ramesh, Director General, India Meteorological Department, India: Climate Risk Management: Challenges & Opportunities for India, Akhilesh Gupta, Adviser & Head, SPLICE & Climate Change Programme, Department of Science & Technology, India (image 3): S&T Capacity Building in Climate Change in India and Michele Campagna, Associate Professor of Spatial Planning, University of Cagliari, Italy (image 3): Volunteered Geography in Spatial Planning and Design.

The second session Geo-information as actionable information for disaster and climate change resilience was moderated by Dr. Shailesh Nayak, Distinguished Scientist, Ministry of Earth Sciences, India. The speeches have been done by and named: Gopal Raman Iyengar, Scientist-G, Ministry of Earth Sciences and M. Mohapatra, Sc. G (Services), Indian Meteorological Department: IMD’s information Mechanism to Address the Disaster & Climate Change Issues; G.S. Srinivasa Reddy, Director, Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre: The Application of ICT Tools for Natural Disaster Monitoring and Mitigation Karnataka Model; Steve Laming, Managing Director, Aerial Survey Limited, New Zealand: Reviewing the impact of the New Zealand earthquakes Lidar/photogrammetry; Steven Ramage, Senior External Relations Manager, Group on Earth Observations(GEO), Switzerland: Earth observations policy, strategy and data considerations for climate change resilience; Freddy M. Pranajaya, Deputy Director, Innovation, Space Flight Laboratory, Canada and Vijay Choudhury, Sales Engineer (3D Documentation), FARO, India: FARO Applications on Disaster Management.

Third session titled Securing habitats and resources was moderated by Basanta Shrestha, Director, Strategic Cooperation Directorate, International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Nepal. He delivered also first speech titled: Geospatial Technology – Taking the Pulse of the Himalayas. Other speeches have been done by and titled: M. Bhutiyani, Director, Defence Terrain Research Laboratory, and Michael Mayer, Assistant Director International Sales, RIEGL Laser Measurement Systems, Austria: UAV-based multi-sensor survey of disaster locations for first-responder support; Zhang Le, Director, Forestry GIS Application Department, KQ GEO Technologies, China: Topic: Applications of GIS in Forest Disaster Prevention; Puri Vasan, Scientist ‘D’, Indian Meteorology Department, India: Monitoring the Atmospheric Water Vapour in Real Time Using Ground Based Trimble GNSS Network; Omkar Parishwad, Assistant Professor, College of Engineering, Pune, India: Climate change impact on urban areas by assessment of Urban Green Spaces in Indian cities; G. Prasad Babu, Founder & CEO, Geo Climate Risk Solutions Pvt. Ltd.: Need of Location based services in Emergency and Humanitarian Response.

In the symposium participated also founder of GWFs, Dr. M.P. Narayan (image 3),

Positives of the symposium have been rich discussions after every session and highlightning of the importance of cartography in solving contemporary climatic change and disaster management. Also topics of U.N. DRR Conference in Sendai, 2015 were highlighted and Research Agendy of CCEW&CM followed.

Images:

Image 1: Dr. Shailesh Nayak, India, during his speech.

Image 2: Dr Akhilesh Gupta, Department of Science & Technology, India delivering his speech.

Image 3: (from left to right): Prof. Michael Goodchild, USA, Dr M Bhutiyani, Director, Defence Terrain Research Laboratory, India; Dr. M.P. Narayan, Founder of GWFs and Geospatial Media organization, India; and Prof. Michele Campagna, Cagliari University, Italy