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Dear Readers,
After Day 1 ended yesterday and all sessions closed, one didn’t imagine that the evening would stretch equally long. And beautifully long. The traditionalism of Malaysian culture touched the heart of most in heavy doses. And it was undoubtedly soothing after the day of intense discussions. Dinner has preceded and interspaced with Malay music and dances from professionals of different parts of the country. Dance forms traced the evolution of Malaysian culture and its various deep-rooted rituals. Colour, music, happy faces and art mingled well with the exquisite Malaysian cuisine. The second day of Map Asia, today, had much more to offer and ponder relative to the yesterday. A number of thoughts strike me as I recall. In brief I will sum up the day with a few important points that emerged from the various halls. There were 7 technical sessions and 3 tech shows in 5 parallel halls.
Keynote Session III – Regional Cooperation and Public Private Partnership The session was chaired by Mr Thung Hooi Chew, Senior Officer, Forestry Department, Malaysia. He briefly introduced the session with his views that whatever be the application area and use, the need to think of coalition services is critical if one is aiming at future generations. The time has come to develop systems that can fit with surrounding systems easily in any matters of administration. Being a public official he elaborated on how even for the government, creation of a focused market and area is important. Every department primarily thinks within there shells. This however has to be rethought of, where each of these shells start gelling in the wider and broader perspective of national governance. Why do we need dynamic land cover information? The session started with the presentation of Paul Reichert, FAO, United Nations . He spoke primarily on Global Land Cover Network and ASIACOVER. After a brief mention of world figures of land uses, poverty, undernourishment, he moved onto how FAO and UN is gathering a comprehensive database that focuses on ‘Food Security and Sustainable Development’ issues. He explained the processes involved, the status and the level of complexity involved in getting this regional global database together. The main concerns, he stated were – Can we think of ‘Spatial Information’ as ‘Social Infrastructure’? Prof Hiromichi Fukui, of Digital Asia Network, Japan , followed with a very well-received and rich presentation that urged the audience to think on numerous fronts. He started with the mandates of Japan in geospatial field. Further he elaborated on the framework of ‘Digital Asia’ and ‘Digital Earth’. According to him, such networks of information are not about huge quantity of data or models, rather they are more about a complex interrelation and presentation of data at the right moment to the right person and to the adequate amount he/she needs. It is actually about intelligent distribution and accessibility. He also talked about various projects in Japan and their initiatives towards integration and regional cooperation. He summed up with the following – Why Partner? Mark Cattini from Map Info started his speech with this question. Soon he had most of the answers too - just as MapInfo leaves very little to be asked! He started with a bright presentation of MapInfo, its figures, its reach and mandates. He emphasized that geospatial information is critical in business, administration and planning. His figures also depicted an upswing in service sector revenue over the last year by almost 12%. His presentation then moved to the real crux, where he stated that partnership is crucial for the following reasons – Its all about how you interpret data… Martin Carballo, HP , gave a lucid presentation where he emphasized the need for proper presentation and interpretation of data. He basically stated the importance to have intact data for proper analysis and decision-making. Data interpretation on hard format needs error free capturing (scanning) and output (printing). Web GIS Session The session was chaired by Brig Girish Kumar, Deputy Surveyor General of India, Survey of India. The session was packed with over 200 attendees alone in spite of running parallel to other halls. There were 8 presentations spread over 2 hours. Presenters ranged from various parts of Asia, namely China, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Iran, USA, etc. Topics spanned from application development with Oracle to 3D terrain visualization over web GIS. A presentation on ‘route to societal GIS’ drew interesting applause and response. It traversed the possibilities of how societal issues can easily and effectively be given voice over web and enabled with rationality with the use of real-time GIS. Since the presentation focused more on the possibilities and concepts, questions of actual technical issues related to its effectual implementation were raised. However, in general what emerged was a strong focus on – Transport Session and Urban Planning Session The above sessions were merged and jointly chaired by Dr.Ing. Rolf Katzenbeisser and R Joseph Arokiadas. There were a number of papers presented. The paper by M D Mani received good response in the Urban Planning sector. He emphasized how government officials working at different levels, and taking location/area specific decisions related to rural development now have a rational decision making tool to use from. Decision making in rural development is difficult if the level of planning happens to be at the sub-state levels i.e. district and block levels. Because, the decisions have to be taken in tune with the ground realities, especially in India. He elaborated on how changes are seeping into local level planning by the government. He also mentioned about one of the extension projects where the Department of Rural Development has carried out a project on GIS for Vedasandur Panchayat Union in Dindigul District of Tamil Nadu State in India. In the transport sector, 3 papers were presented as follows - AMIS: Development and Application of a GIS/Multicriteria Corridor Evaluation Methodology by Keiron Bailey, Department of Geography and Regional Development, University of Arizona, USA . In brief Bailey spoke of how Highway corridor alignment presents a highly complex decision environment in which a variety of social, environmental and economic factors must be defined and weighted and tradeoffs evaluated. These data vary widely in format and quality. Stakeholders from various groups, often with competing interests, should be integrated into this process efficiently to determine objectives, to select data and then quantify the importance. He summed up saying that corridor planning is an appropriate domain for the development and application of enhanced methodologies that conjoin multicriteria decision support techniques with the spatial analytic and presentation capacities of a GIS. The Cost Model of Iran Roads Network by Masood Varshosaz , Abolghasem Sadeghi Niaraki Surveying college, Iran followed where he spoke of finding a best route between two points of a network with the development of a suitable cost model, derived based on a number of quantitative and qualitative parameters, which affect the value of a road segment. Once formed, the model was tested in parts of Iran road network. Due to the diversity of weather conditions and user tastes the model was implemented and evaluated in four separate cases. The preliminary results showed that utilising the parameters presented in this article and the way they are formulated, could lead to routs of more satisfaction to users. Land Use Change Analysis in a Highway Corridor in Southern Bangladesh, Sarwar Jahan Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Bangladesh followed with a lucid presentation covering aspects of a study that was undertaken to investigate the changes in land use in a highway corridor connecting three growing urban centres in Southern Bangladesh. The study afforded a wide range of information on land use dynamics in the corridor, which are useful for planning purposes. On the basis of information contained in the land use maps, a Markov Model was also developed in order to specify the process of land use change and the specific relationships in the process of change. An attempt was also made to determine the magnitude of changes in different types of land uses during the study period. In short, the study made a comprehensive analysis of land use changes in the highway corridor under study and thus added to our general understanding of the patterns and process of land use change in the corridor. Agriculture Session The session was chaired by Dr Abd Rashid Mohd Shariff, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia. A number of papers were presented. A few noteworthy are as follows. Integrated GPS-aided-INS for Mobile Mapping in Precision Agriculture Khurram Niaz Shaikh , Abdul Rashid bin Mohammad Shariff University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia The paper provided an overview of the solution of Mobile Mapping for Precision Agriculture by GPS-aided-INS Approach. It highlighted that application of GPS-aided-INS for use in Precision Agriculture can give farmers fast, accurate and quick updates about the location of the field, even when there is no signal available under the canopy, predicting the precision site specific farming, and ultimately contribute towards better yield monitoring and management. Optimizing the Correlation between percentage of the Oil Content in palm oil fruit lets and Digital Number of Images System Saad A Abbas , Abdul Rashid Shariff , Halim Shah, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia The presentation stressed on the use of digital image processing to estimate oil content in palm oil fruit, as a technique that might help to monitor the quality of palm oil bunches inter the mill. This technique might reduce the losses due to the traditional procedure of dealing with the processing of palm oil fruitlets including harvesting, as it is known that the higher amount of oil produced, the better profit value can be obtained. Suresh Tripathi, Australia Laili Nordin, Head of Image Processing and Application Division Malaysian Centre For Remote Sensing (MACRES), Malaysia Saiful Bahari Abu Bakar, Malaysian Centre For Remote Sensing (MACRES), Malaysia Ratih Dewanti Dimyati, Dede Dirgahayu, National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN), Indonesia Water Resources Session The session was chaired by Mr Mansoor of MACRES, Malaysia. A number of papers were presented. A few noteworthy are as follows. The sediment yield potential estimation of Fariabad and Kordian watersheds using MPSIAC model in the GIS framework Seid Mohammad Tajbakhsh, Hadi Meamarian, College of Agriculture, University of Birjand, Iran The presentation focused on modified PSIAC model. It aimed to estimate sediment yield and provide erosion intensity map of the watershed in parts of Iran. It elaborated on aspects of how on using DEM layer, slope and rain (using the rain gradient equation) maps were provided and consequently topographic and runoff (using the rational method) factors maps were prepared. Then these factors maps were summed together and finally sedimentation score map was provided. GIS and Visualisation (VRML) Capabilities in Spatial Database for River Network M Krishnaveni, J Prakashvel, Centre for Water Resources, Anna University, India The need for developing digital spatial database was emphasized in this paper. Also the possible ways of using GIS to support decision-making in the interlinking of peninsular or whole of Indian rivers project were presented. i4d Seminar The seminar was presided over by Prof Karl Harmsen and Dr M P Narayanan. The seminar had a number of attendees and spanned for over 4 hours of discussion. There were 8 presentations from Malaysia, India, Philippines, USA, etc. Participants present also represented many other countries of Asia. The seminar was initiated by Ravi Gupta, Editor of GIS Development magazine . He spoke of the need to be cautious and hopeful in the domain of information and development. “ICT does not mean hovering around internet only”, he said. He emphasized on the need to debate and start the linkages that are needed to enable citizens with information for development. Prof Karl Harmsen followed with a thought provoking speech that went into the basics of the words of ‘information’ and ‘development’. In crux he stated that development strategies needed to be concretized before stepping onto i4d initiatives. In the dearth of strategies adequate for development it is early to decide on the type of information. Further he stated that one can assume that whatever be the development model, information shall be key and hence one needs to think now bilaterally about how to develop and with which correct information. He also discussed economic development figures of GNP and PPP and related developing countries with developed ones. Topics in the discussion spanned from basic Education aspects with ICT to issues of gender and healthcare. In general what emerged was a strong focus on – |
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