newsletter september 2010 - geo-informatie.nl · the netherlands, april 18-21. the theme is "...

AGILE Newsletter - 1 - Vol. 4, No. 3

e-NEWSLETTER

http://www.agile-online.org March 2010 – September 2010

Table of contents Word from the Editor ..................................................1 AGILE-2011 in Utrecht ...............................................2 From the Chair ...........................................................3 Members on the spot .................................................3 AGILE initiatives ........................................................4 Call for Papers, Conferences of Interest ....................6 Ongoing and new activities ...................................... 11 Corporate news ....................................................... 13 News from AGILE .................................................... 13

Word from the Editor ________ During the long seven months since our last issue, the financial problems have been at the forefront. A fund to support the failing banks was formed about the time our association had its annual meeting, the euro lost some of its value but as we are going to press it is back at the 1.40 level and healthy growth in the economy is returning to some countries in Europe, particularly Germany. However, the forecasts point out that the above average annual growth rates of the past will take some time before they return and unemployment will remain a major issue for some time. On environmental issues, after several months the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was capped, the whole issue nonetheless has raised several concerns with respect oil extraction from deep waters. The 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 16) will be held in Cancun, Mexico, from 29 November to 10 December 2010 and let’s keep our fingers crossed that some agreement will be reached this year.

Our association this year has its 12th birthday. Originally formed in 1998 it was at a time when GI was witnessing explosive growth. Many things have changed since that time; the original quest for digital geographic data has been transformed to the concept of Spatial Data Infrastructure with official rules set by the EU, there are many sensors and satellite images of different resolutions for use in all kind of applications, portals

such as Google Earth and Bing maps have brought to the masses the use of maps, navigation devices whether in vehicle or in mobiles have become commonplace, open source software it seems that is getting a foothold and ESRI is preparing the 10th version of the original arc/info software (Mapinfo already has it and has not skipped version numbers ! while Geomedia was recently purchased by Hexagon).

During the same period we have seen some changes also in our organization, although more subtle. Since 2004 that I have been an active member it seems that the Annual meetings continue to have the same format with one major change when the concept of long papers that could be published in the Springer Verlag series was introduced. However, there is a focus shift in the papers presented at the annual conferences. This was very clear in the recent conference in Guimaraes, where there have been by far more papers than previous ones with respect to the use of Geographic Information Systems Technology for various planning issues. There were few papers on SDI, either because the major research problems in the field have been solved, or most probably the INSPIRE conferences are attracting these papers. The workshops that are scheduled one day before the conference are attracting more and more people. Last year there were 7 workshops of which two at least have led to dedicated journal issues and this year there were 4. One on Visual Analytics attracted almost 25 papers. This brief assessment of AGILE would not be complete if it was not mentioned that the last two conferences had very good attendance and paper submission figures, which means that there is still interest in our organization.

Coming now to this issue. Frans Rip presents the EduMapping initiative. The initiative has gained momentum from the two workshops held in Hannover and Guimaraes and its objective is to propose some methodology for establishing a common European reference that would permit to relate various GI courses and curriculum. They propose to use the Body of Knowledge (BoK) as a standard reference.

With respect to the calls for papers in conferences. Next year’s AGILE conference is at Utrecht and the deadline for long papers is approaching very fast, it is on October 18. There is a call for papers for a special


issue of the Journal of Geographical Information Science on Data-Intensive Geospatial Computing. The 10th International Symposium on Web and Wireless GIS that will be held in Kyoto next year has issued a call for papers. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) calls for participation in the OGC Web Services Shibboleth Interoperability Experiment to advance best practices for implementing standards on federated security in transactions involving geospatial data and services. In the article there is also a brief discussion of the various groups in OGC involved with security and related topics. There is a call for papers for a symposium on Space-Time Integration in Geography and GIScience that will take place in Seattle next year during the Annual meeting of the AAG. The 4th International Conference on Geospatial Semantics is coming to Brest, France next year and has a call for papers on research results in the areas of modeling and processing of geospatial semantics. And finally the European Association of Geographers issues a call for papers for its annual meeting in Athens. An interesting aspect in the different calls is that there is an increasing discussion of the theme research based innovation.

There are several interesting workshops and conferences that will take part the next few months. Among them I must point out the Value of Geoinformation Workshop that is taking place in Hamburg at the end of this month and it is supported by AGILE.

One new member is introduced in this issue the Centre for Spatial Information at the University of Groningen.

I hope you find this issue of the Newsletter interesting and if you have any comments, suggestions and articles for the next issue please don t hesitate to send them. Next issue will be published in March 2011.

Poulicos Prastacos Chief Editor

AGILE-2011 in Utrecht ______ 14th International Conference on Geographic Information Science

Advancing Geoinformation Science for a Changing World

Utrecht, The Netherlands, 18-21 April 2011

http://www.uu.nl/geo/agile2011)

The AGILE council, and the organizing committee would like to invite all involved with geospatial science to participate at the 14th AGILE International Conference on Geographic Information Science, scheduled to take place in Utrecht, The Netherlands. The program will offer parallel paper presentation sessions, keynote sessions, poster sessions and pre conference workshops to share your ideas, explore

ongoing research, future developments, including state-of-the-art applications, and to network with the professionals from academia, industry, and government who are interested in promoting GI teaching and research activities among GI laboratories at the European level.

Potential contributors are invited to submit:

Full papers: maximum 6000‐words manuscripts of original and unpublished fundamental scientific research. High‐quality scientific submissions will be accepted for presentation at the conference and will be published in the Springer Lecture Notes on Geoinformation and Cartography. PhD students in particular are encouraged to submit full papers. Papers must be written in correct English according to the Springer formatting guidelines.

Short papers: 2000 to 3000 words manuscripts of original and unpublished research work. High quality scientific and strategic (industrial and governmental) submissions will be accepted for presentation at the conference and published in the AGILE proceedings.

Poster proposals: 500 to 1000-words manuscripts of original scientific and strategic research work. High-quality submissions will be accepted for poster presentations at the conference and provide the exceptional opportunity to stimulate scientific discussions and exchange novel ideas.

All submissions must be written in correct English and must be sent electronically via the on-line conference manager according to the Springer formatting guidelines. All full papers will be evaluated through a double-blind review process. Authors’ instructions are available at the AGILE 2011 website at www.uu.nl/geo/agile2011.

Conference Topics

Contributions are invited on all topics within the fields of geoinformation, geomatics and geocomputation, including (but not limited to):

• Perception and Representation of Geographic Phenomena

• Cognitive Aspects of Human Computer Interaction for Geographic Information Systems

• Spatial and Spatiotemporal Data Modelling and Reasoning, Analysis, and Visualisation

• Uncertainty and Error Propagation • Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery • Spatial Semantics and Spatiotemporal Ontologies • Semantic Web and GIS • Web Services, Geospatial Systems and Real-time

Applications • Location Based Services and Mobile GI

Applications • Geospatial Decision Support Systems • Public Participation GIS and Collaborative planning

support • Planning Support Systems (PSS) and Geodesign • Voluteered Geographic Information


• GIScience Education and Training • Demographic and Socioeconomic Modelling • Environmental/Ecological and Urban/Regional

Modelling • Health and Medical Informatics • Natural Resources Management and Monitoring • Disaster and Risk Management • Geosensor Networks • Earth Observation Systems; Algorithms and

Applications • Image Interpretation and Image Analysis

Pre-conference workshops

The conference workshops will be held on Monday, April 18, and are a complementary forum to the main conference, encouraging presentation and discussion of work in progress, and facilitating a dialogue on emerging topics in small groups. A more detailed call for workshop proposals will follow later this fall.

Travel Grants Available

The AGILE Grant Program will allocate grants (scholarships) to AGILE 2011 attendees, with priority given to PhD students. The estimated value of each grant is approximately 500 Euro (covering full conference registration and a maximum of 4 nights in a hotel chosen by the conference organisers). The call for the grants will be published on the conference web site later this fall.

Programme Committee • Stan Geertman (University of Utrecht) • Steven de Jong (University of Utrecht) • Wolfgang Reinhardt (University of the Bundeswehr,

Munich, Germany)

Local Organizing Committee • Fred Toppen (University of Utrecht) • JanJaap Harts (University of Utrecht) • Henk Ottens (KNAG, Royal Dutch Geographical

Society)

Important deadlines

Oct 25, 2010 Full Paper Submission Nov 15, 2010 Pre-conference workshop proposal Dec 1, 2010 Notification of Full Paper Acceptance Dec 15, 2010 Notification of workshop proposals

acceptance Jan 3, 2011 Camera-Ready Full Paper Copies due Jan 14, 2011 Short paper and poster submissions Feb 25, 2011 Notification of short paper and poster

acceptance Mar 11, 2011 Camera-Ready Short Paper Copies

due Mar 14, 2011 Early Registration Apr 18-21, 2011

Workshops and Conference

From the Chair _____________ The September issue of our Newsletter always puts special emphasis on the upcoming AGILE Conference 2011. Next year’s conference will be held in Utrecht, the Netherlands, April 18-21. The theme is " Advancing Geoinformation Science for a Changing World ". The deadline for full paper submissions is very soon : Oct 25, 2010.

I would like to welcome two new council members; Bénédicte Bucher from IGN, France and Mike Jackson from the University of Nottingham, UK. We are pleased by their nomination as they are bringing new expertise and experience to the council.

I am also pleased to have the chance to re-emphasise the role of AGILE initiatives in strengthening our mission to facilitate networking activities between geographic information laboratories at the European level. The updates on some of these initiatives are found in this newsletter.

I wish to thank the members who contributed to this issue and our Newsletter editors, Poulicos Prastacos and Ludo Engelen, for collecting and editing the texts. I hope you will enjoy reading it and I hope to meet you at next year’s AGILE Conference in Utrecht.

Members on the spot _______ Groningen Centre for Spatial Information


The Groningen Centre for Spatial Information stimulates and supports the use of spatial analysis and visualization techniques inside and outside the faculty of Spatial Sciences. The centre is responsible for teaching, development and support of the GIS and cartography education of the Bachelor and Master courses. Furthermore the centre delivers technical support (software and data) including applications of spatial information regarding the research themes of the faculty and university. Major research themes are “Well being, Innovation and Spatial Transformation”. More information can be found at http://www.rug.nl/frw/onderzoek/index.

Emphasis is on the increased use of GIS in its widest sense in different educational and research domains. The Centre is linked with the Donald Smits Centre for Information technology. In such a way the GEO-ICT component of CRIG is well guarded.

CRIG also delivers services regarding educational courses, spatial data management and projects for other faculties of the Groningen University and external partners (Professional Education, government and the business community). At this moment the Centre has a staff of 5 persons. Dr Marinus de Bakker is in charge of the Center. More information can be found at:

http://www.rug.nl/frw/voorzieningen/crig/index

AGILE initiatives ________________

EduMapping, for managing and marketing your GI courses

The AGILE EduMapping Initiative was born in 2009 at the AGILE Conference in Hannover, Germany, in the pre-Conference workshop on the European Qualification Framework (EQF) and its application in the GI field. EQF was established in 2008 to relate different countries' national qualifications systems to a common European reference framework. The objective of the workshop was to analyze if GI education in Europe was ready for EQF, and if the Geographic Information Science & Technology Body of Knowledge (DiBiase, ed., 2006) (GI-BoK) could be used for that purpose. After long discussions, the conclusion was drawn that no proper overview of GI-teaching in Europe exists. Decision was taken to change that! With the support of Marco Painho (U.N. Lisbon, Portugal) and Jos van Orshoven (K.U. Leuven, Belgium) and a number of other volunteers, the first version of EduMapping has been developed at Wageningen University using BoK as reference. This first version was presented and discussed at the AGILE pre-conference workshop in Guimarães, Portugal in May 2010. In the following months, another four presentations were given.

What is EduMapping?

EduMapping is about connecting GI related course contents to an external reference, the “GI-BoK”. It works like this: teaching staff is asked to fill in an Excel worksheet with their assessment of the proportion of teaching time in a course that is spent on each GI-BoK subject. This results in a quantitative course profile, expressed in European course credits (ECTS, representing about 28 study hours). The profile can be used to compare various courses. Formatted as a label, it could be added to the textual description of a course. Using GI-BoK as a standard for content description reduces local varieties in (sub-) disciplinary terminology and description formatting. EduMapping will be applicable to all GI-education, including GIS, Geodesy, Cartography, Remote Sensing and other fields.

Is GI-BoK well known and well used?

Of course, for EduMapping to become a standard approach, it has to be recognized and accepted by all parties that GI-BoK is the external reference. At the Guimarães workshop, Kreet Masik from the Geography department of Tartu University, Estonia, presented the results of a survey she did as part of her Master thesis on the use of GI-BoK in Europe. With 113 responses, her conclusion was, that about 22% of the universities in Europe are using it. In the United States, GI-BoK is used for recognition of GIS knowledge and professional experience by the GIS Certification Institute. The editor of GI-BoK, David DiBiase, is not aware of any surveys on the use of GI BoK in the USA. This year, the American National Science Foundation has decided to fund a project in which possibilities for improving the first version of GI-Bok will be researched. The outcome will be the foundation for GI-BoK2.

Different views on the same content

Because the content profiling can be applied to GI-courses of any length (duration) and complexity level, EduMapping could be used to establish a content based overview of education in the GI-field. Adding quantitative EduMapping based course profiles to the course descriptions available on the websites could make more clear and better understandable what the GI course offers. It will permit GI teachers elsewhere to compare their courses, it could be of use to students searching for interesting courses and it will permit GI-

Example of GI Teaching Content Label for a


employers to get a quick overview of of the GI knowledge and experience of theprospective employees.. Locally, the course profiles will help to determine the focus of each course and identify different views among teaching staff. Assessments made by skilled outsiders will show other ways to interpret the course descriptions. And former students might show yet another view on the content of courses they have followed. On a higher level of integration, an overview of profiles for courses and curricula in the region will be helpful for education managers in deciding on the best niche for the courses and curricula in their responsibility.

Spreading the word

EduMapping could be of use nationally for comparing GIS know how for students that have been taught at different educational institutions and also locally, for instance within a University, for comparing different courses. However, its real advantages will become evident when applied on an international scale and in all GI-related disciplines. So it is necessary to make the GI-community outside AGILE aware of this initiative. A start was made by presenting a paper at the ISPRS conference in Enschede, Netherlands, in June 2010, with a description of the assessment procedure. Also in June, a poster was presented at the INSPIRE Conference in Krakow, Poland, promoting to label courses using GI-BoK. In September 2010, a presentation was given at the EUGISES conference in Serres, Greece, showing possibilities of quantitative based comparisons of different courses. Shortly after that, I had the opportunity to repeat the EUGISES presentation in Zurich, Switzerland, at a meeting with Sean Ahern and André Skupin (on behalf of the GI-BoK2 project), Ian Bowman for ISPRS, Georg Gartner for ICA, and Monica Wachowicz for AGILE. This was interesting as it showed that there exists an interest at both organizations , although no definite agreements were made. This experience and the discussions during the last few months suggest that it is worthwhile to continue this initiative.

References

GI BoK: http://www.ucgis.org/priorities/education/modelcurriculaproject.asp

Presentations in Guimarães (Masik, Rip): http://plone.itc.nl/agile/agile-conferences/agile-2010-archive-page

ISPRS paper: http://www.isprs.org/proceedings/XXXVIII/part6/papers/Rip/Rip+vLammeren.pdf

INSPIRE slides of poster:

http://www.geo-informatie.nl/rip001/EduMapping/Rip_37_EduMapping_INSPIRE2010.ppt

EUGISES presentation: http://www.eugises.eu/proceedings2010/RIP_eugises2010.ppt

by Frans I. Rip,

Wageningen University, the Netherlands

AGILE-2010: Report from Guimaraes On May 10-14th, 2010 the 13th AGILE International Conference on Geographic Information Science was held at Guimaraes, near Porto in northern Portugal. The theme of the Conference, that was jointly organized by the Universities of Minho and New Lisbon, was “Geospatial Thinking”. Although airline travel was disrupted the weekend before the conference because of the ashes from the Iceland volcano the conference proved to be a success. More than two hundred friends of GI science/technology attended the conference. A total of 153 papers were submitted, 54 of them as full papers contributions. The number of papers submitted was a new record for the AGILE meetings (last year there were 130 papers, 71 however were full papers). After a double blind review process, 21 full papers, 38 short papers and 28 posters were selected for presentation in three parallel sessions. The papers presented covered a whole range of geospatial research topics covering issues such as data modeling, analysis and visualization. Martin Reubal’s (U.C. Santa Barbara) and Stephan Winter’s (U. of Melbourne) paper on “A Spatio-temporal model: towards ad-hoc collaborative decision-making” was voted as the best paper of the conference.

There were three keynote speakers. Prof Michael Batty (University College London) presented the land use –transportation models that his group has developed for many years for Greater London, while Dr. Jim Thomas (Pacific Northwest National Laboratories) made an enlightened presentation of Visual Analytics and the new challenges they provide Geospatial Sciences. The third keynote speaker, Prof Michael Worboys (University of Maine) focused his presentation on the spatio-temporal mosaic: local views to global visions. There were 4 preconference workshops , one of which on Visual Analytics: Focus on Time included 17 papers and was held for 1.5 days.

The social activities as is customary in AGILE conferences were very good. Guimaraes is an old city that back in the 9th century was the first capital of


Portugal and has a charm that can not be found in more modern cities. The center of the city is paved, there are churches everywhere and the city has a Medieval look with old houses, many of them with flags. A guided tour of the city was organized, while others preferred the traditional run. The dinner was held at the old castle. At the time of the conference the Pope Benedict XVI was visiting Portugal and the various masses and religious processes on the streets made the whole conference more interesting.

Overall the local organizers Maribel Yasmina Santos, Marco Painho, Andriano Moreira, Jorge Gustavo Rocha, Filipe Meneses and Fernando Bação have organized a very nice conference that despite the air travel difficulties proved to be a success.

Poulicos Prastacos FORTH

Geospatial Visual Analytics Workshop

The consensus of the discussion was that although space/time/temporal analytics is indeed a core science enabling innovative visual analytics, it is not developed to the mature point and needs considerable research funding for the next decade.

There was some concern about the viability of the workshop given that the day before the local airports at Porto and Lisbon were closed and many flights were cancelled due to the volcanic ash in the air. However, 17 of the 25 accepted papers were presented with considerable interest and discussions over the course of 1.5 days.

The first day was limited to 5 of the 9 papers. The extra time was taken by considerable questions and discussions. The second day started with a keynote talk provided by the “father of visual analytics”, Jim Thomas. This was well received with many questions and discussion. Jim discussed the core concepts, current state-of-the-art and research opportunities in Geospatial Visual Analytics.

The rest of the full day included presentations of the accepted papers from around the world. The time was fully booked by extending the presentation time slightly and allowing discussions. The interaction and positive exchange of ideas enabled a fine workshop. Towards the end of the second day we had over 50 people attending the workshop in the meeting room for our Capstone talk.

Gennady Andrienko Fraunhofer

Persistent Testbed (PTB) Workshop

(PTB) was successfully kicked-off at the annual pre-conference workshop at AGILE 2010. Ten partners from all over Europe from academia, public and private sectors presented their planned contribution for Phase 2. Besides, reports from FP7 ESDIN (addressing SDI authentication mechanisms) and FP7 GIGAS (Development of Business Models for Persistent Interoperability Testing) and SDI testing in a military

environment were given. In the afternoon, the way forward for Phase 2 on the one hand and the PTB on the other was discussed. Several cross-contribution scenarios were identified to strengthen the collaboration between the partners. Future funding possibilities were identified and the permanent status as a rolling OGC Interoperability Experiment (IE) were discussed and brought forward. A more detailed report and the corresponding presentations can be found in the Documents Section at http://sdi-testbed.eu.

PTB Phase 2 addresses the issues of “Access management federation of European universities”, geoprocessing services, 3D visualisation and INSPIRE testing as topics of most interest. If you are interested in one of these topics, or Phase 2 in general or just want to join the community, please get in contact with the PTB facilitator (find details on the PTB website http://sdi-testbed.eu). The PTB team kindly thanks AGILE, EuroSDR and OGC for their constant support.

Lars Bernard Dresden University

Call for Papers, Conferences of Interest ___________________

Data-intensive Geospatial Computing Special issue of the International Journal of

Geographical Information Science http://fromto.hig.se/~bjg/.

Data-intensive computing has been emerging as a fourth scientific paradigm from the mainstream computer science. In terms of the techniques and technologies involved, this fourth paradigm is fundamentally distinct from the third one called computational science focusing on simulating complex phenomena or processes since the invention of computers. The massive data volume and ever increasing computing power in the twenty-first century will dramatically change the ways of doing science and scholarly communications. We believe therefore that this emerging new paradigm has profound implications to geographic information science and various applications to environment and urban systems.

CyberGIS is an emerging phenomenon where geographic information systems or science (GIS) meets cyberinfrastructure for data-intensive geospatial computing. Many unsolvable problems with environmental and urban systems can be well studied using the continuously increasing geospatial data, collected through massively deployed positioning technologies, sensor networks and voluntary contributions by individuals, and ever increasing computing power of personal computers, higher


performance computers, and emerging grid/cloud computing facilities.

This special issue of International Journal of Geographical Information Science is seeking original unpublished papers that describe recent advances and efforts in data-intensive geospatial computing, with particular applications to environment and urban systems.

Suggested topics include (but are not limited to):

• Intensively computing volunteered geographic information for geographic knowledge discovery

• Grid/cloud computing geographic data for unsolvable or hard-to-solve GIS problems

• Massive agent-based simulation of nonlinear geographic phenomena and processes

• Analyzing large-scale geosensor networks data for monitoring environment and urban systems

• Deployment and development of web mapping processing services for various applications

All manuscripts including any support material should be submitted using the journal's online Manuscript Central facility (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ijgis). All papers must be submitted by September 30, 2010 with expected publication date on April 30, 2011. Detailed instructions are available at the web site of the conference at http://fromto.hig.se/~bjg/. Prof. Bin Jiang of the University of Gavle, Sweden is the guest editor.

10th International Symposium on the Web and Wireless GIS

Kyoto, Japan March 3-4, 2011

http://w2gis.org/

The continuing advances in the development of Wireless and Internet technologies generate an ever increasing interest in the diffusion, usage, and processing of geo-referenced data of all types. Spatially aware wireless and Internet devices also offer new ways of accessing and analyzing geo-spatial information in both real-world and virtual spaces.

Consequently, new challenges and opportunities have been provided that expand the traditional GIS research scope into the realm of Intelligent Media - including geomedia with context-aware behaviours for self-adaptive use and delivery. The aim is research-based innovation that increases the ease of creating, delivering and using geomedia across different platforms and application domains that continue to have dramatic effect on society.

The 2011 Symposium, hosted by Kyoto University, is intended to provide an up-to-date review of advances in recent development of Web and Wireless Geographical

Information Systems (W2GIS). W2GIS is a series of successful events alternating locations between East Asia and Europe, with the most recent event held in Maynooth, Ireland. The 10th Symposium is returning to Kyoto, where the W2GIS series was first launched in 2001.

Submissions are invited on topics that address theoretical, technical, and practical issues of W2GIS and Intelligent GeoMedia. Reports on ongoing implementations and applications research are particularly welcome. Suggested topics should address research & development issues related to W2GIS and/or Intelligent GeoMedia applications:

• GeoSpatial databases, spatial search, data mining • Mobile spatial interaction • GeoWeb search engines and services • GeoSocial Networks • Spatio-temporal Data Management • GeoSensor data acquisition, processing and

analysis • Smart environments and ambient spatial

intelligence • Exploratory cartography and interfaces • 3D modelling of cityscapes for LBS • LBS applications in both real-world and virtual

spaces • Security, privacy, and usability • Cyber-geography & augmented reality • Semantic geospatial web • Intelligent Media structure, interaction, and

distribution • Telematics and GIS applications • Ubiquitous and wireless GIS • Map personalization and adaptation • User studies and evaluations • Indoor and outdoor locationing, wayfinding, and

navigation

Papers have to be submitted online by September 30, 2010. Accepted papers will be published in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. Best papers will be invited for extended publication in Transactions in GIS journal. All papers must be written in English, should be limited to 6000 words. Acceptance of a paper means an obligation for at least one of the authors to present the paper at the conference venue. Detailed formatting instructions are available on the website of the conference http://w2gis.org/

OGC Advances Best Practice for Federated

Security in Geospatial Transactions Sydney, Australia

Nov 29-Dec 3, 2010

http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/initiatives/shibbolethie


The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) recently issued a call for participation in the OGC Web Services (OWS) Shibboleth Interoperability Experiment) to advance best practice for implementing standards on federated security in transactions involving geospatial data and services.

The Interoperability Experiment (IE), initiated by OGC Members Cadcorp, EDINA, and Snowflake Software, will demonstrate use of Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) with OGC Web Services including use of Shibboleth. This IE is built on ESDIN best practices and the previous OGC Authentication IE that tested ways to transfer authentication information between OGC Web Services and applications. An OGC Interoperability Experiment is a brief, low-overhead, formally structured OGC led activity, where members achieve specific technical objectives that further the OGC Technical Baseline. Often a key outcome of this activity is a formal OGC Best Practice document. The initiative also represents an outcome from the discussions of the AGILE/EuroSDR/OGC Persistent Test-bed (PTB) Workshop held in 2010 (see http://sdi-testbed.eu/).

The European Spatial Data Infrastructure Network (ESDIN) (www.esdin.eu) is partly funded under the eContentplus programme of the European Union (EU). ESDIN is a best practice network that includes a number of National Mapping and Cadastre Agencies (NMCAs), academic institutes and technology providers and is coordinated by the NMCA's Association, Eurogeographics . The work in ESDIN is closely related to the INSPIRE Directive, which aims to build a European Spatial Data Infrastructure (ESDI).

Shibboleth is a free and open source software package released by the Internet2 Consortium based on the SAML standard from OASIS. European National Mapping Agencies and leading European universities have been advancing the use of Shibboleth in operational spatial data infrastructures as part of the activities of the ESDIN project.

A ‘birds of a feather’ informal discussion meeting about the Shibboleth IE will take place during the week of the OGC Technical Committee meeting in Toulouse, France, 20-23 September 2010. The virtual kickoff meeting will take place on September 30th. To finalize this activity a best practice report will be presented at the OGC Technical Committee meeting in Sydney, Australia, 29 November - 3 December 2010.

The registration deadline is 30 September 2010. For information and registration, see http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/initiatives/shibbolethie. The OGC contact person for this interoperability experiment is Luis Bermudez, PhD [email protected].

Within the OGC, four groups address security and related topics:

• The Geo Rights Management Domain Working Group (GeoRM DWG)

(http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/geormwg) has produced the Geospatial Digital Rights Management Reference Model (Abstract Specification Topic 18), and a related GeoRM Common Standards Working Group is defining a standard to implement that reference model. The goal is to provide industry with a standards-based, automated system for implementing operating agreements. This system will enable broader distribution and licensed use of geodata while managing the rights of producers and users. Also, users need such a system if they are to have concrete terms-of-use that reduce their legal risks. Rights management and security are separate topics, but use cases for security are often closely related to use cases for rights management services.

• The Security DWG (http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/securitywg) is a forum for discussing topics related to authentication, access control and secure communication.

• The OGC GeoXACML Standards Working Group (http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/geoxacmlswg) developed GeoXACML, which is based on the OASIS XACML standard. XACML (eXtensible Access Control Markup Language) was developed by OASIS (the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards). This working group continues to coordinate OGC’s work on GeoXACML with OASIS’s work on XACML and is currently developing an XACML profile for OGC Web Services.

• In 2009 the OGC Board of Directors created the OGC Spatial Law and Policy Committee (http://www.opengeospatial.org/pressroom/pressreleases/964) to provide an open forum for OGC members' legal and policy advisors to discuss the unique and increasingly critical legal and policy issues associated with spatial data and technology.

Ideas for OGC testbeds, pilot projects and interoperability experiments often derive from discussions in these groups. Testbeds, pilot projects and interoperability experiments are part of OGC's Interoperability Program, a global, hands-on collaborative prototyping program designed to rapidly develop, test and deliver proven candidate specifications into OGC's Specification Program, where they are formalized for public release.

The OGC® is an international consortium of over 395 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application. More information can be found on the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.


Special Symposium: Space-Time Integration

in Geography and GIScience Seattle, USA

April 12-16, 2011

http://www.aag.org/cs/giscienceresearch

A special Symposium focused on the research status, recent advances and research needs of space-time integration, modeling and analysis in geography and GIScience will be organized within the American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting in Seattle, April 12-16, 2011.

Space-time analysis is a rapidly growing research frontier in geography, GIS, and GIScience. Advances in integrated GPS/GIS technologies, the availability of large datasets (over time and space), and increased capacity to manage, integrate, model and visualize complex data in (near) real time, offer the GIS and geography communities extraordinary opportunities to begin to integrate sophisticated space-time analysis and models in the study of complex environmental and social systems, from climate change to infectious disease transmission.

This special Symposium builds on momentum from a space-time analysis workshop co-sponsored by the AAG, ESRI, the University of Redlands, and University of Southern California in early 2010, and several other initiatives during the past few years. Geographers, GIScientists, modelers, computer programmers, GPS/GIS systems scientists, climate change scientists, epidemiologists, ecologists, planners, transportation experts, and others with active research expertise in integrating space–time in GIS and geography are encouraged to participate in this special symposium. This special Symposium will open with plenary sessions led by prominent theorists and pioneers in time-space GIScience and technology research. The Symposium organizers welcome paper or poster abstracts in the following areas.

Research advances and needs in space-time analysis and representation, such as:

• collaborations among GIScientists and modelers (systems, agent-based, network, etc.)

• real-time GPS/GIS interactive systems • technological challenges and R&D needs • visualization of space-time in GIS • sharing discoveries and results with decision-

makers • integrating analysis and results into web 2.0 • ontological frameworks • qualitative space-time analysis • temporal scale and event representation • historical time and HGIS • computational algorithms

• analytical tools for time constrained decision support systems

• sensor integration • 3-D or 4-D representations of time and space

interactive data • real-time geographic management systems • uncertainty analysis • community or participatory GPS/GIS and related

systems (including “VGI”)

State-of-the-Art applications of space-time modeling and analysis in areas such as:

• climate change response and adaptation • species migrations and habitat connectivity • marine environments (oil spill impacts, other

persistent pollution, fisheries, ocean transport) • hydrology (flows and observations) • land use/land cover change • location-based services (LBS)/mobile

GIS/navigation • homelessness and poverty research • health (epidemics, disease transmission) • disaster response, crisis mapping • crime analysis and mapping • dynamics of urban renewal/decay • dynamics of the global financial system • wars, revolutions, and military activities • flows of labor and trade in a global economy • transportation (information, materials, people) • refugee populations

Education and the GIS workforce using space-time analysis, such as:

• Needs of business, nonprofit, governmental, and academic organizations for expertise

• Opportunities and pathways to educate geographers and GIScientists (students to mature GIS professionals) in new research techniques, tools, and concepts

Deadline for paper and poster submissions is on October 20, 2010. Paper submissions guidelines are available at www.aag.org, and at www.aag.org/giscienceresearch.

4th International Conference

on Geospatial Semantics Brest, France

12-13 May, 2011

http://geosco.org/geos2011/

GEOspatial Semantics (GEOS) is an emerging research area in the domain of geographic information systems and spatial databases. The fourth edition of GeoS aims at providing a forum for the exchange of state�of�the�art research results in the areas of modeling and processing of geospatial semantics. It


has been largely recognized that geospatial semantics play an important role for the development of next�generation spatial databases and geographic information systems, as well as specialized geospatial web services. This year’s GEOS conference will be held 12�13 May 2011 in Brest, France the day after IF&GIS 2011 conference and under the umbrella of the Safer Seas 2011 conference.

GeoS traditionally brings together researchers whose expertise will address geospatial semantics issues such as:

• Cognitive aspects of geospatial semantics • Multicultural aspects of geospatial knowledge • Geospatial ontologies • Ontology-driven GIS • Geospatial semantic models • Models and languages for geo-ontologies • Alignment and integration of geo-ontologies • Formal representations of geospatial data • Geospatial data integration and fusion • Geospatial semantics-based approaches for query

processing • Geospatial information retrieval • Geospatial semantics similarity • Geospatial semantic Web • Ontology-based visualization of geospatial data • Conceptual models of dynamic geospatial

environments • Geospatial artificial intelligence • Computational geospatial approaches • Real-time geospatial systems • Techniques to reduce geospatial information

overload • Context-based approaches for geospatial semantic

information • Context-based adaption in GIS • Personalization of geospatial semantic services

Authors are invited to submit full papers of approx. 18 single-spaced pages, in English, formatted in Springer’s Lecture Notes in Computer Science style. The GeoS 2011 proceedings will be published as a volume in Springer's LNCS series. Deadline for submissions is on November 30, 2010. Guidelines for submissions can be found in the conference’s website http://geosco.org/geos2011/.

European Association of Geographers

2011 conference Athens, Greece June 2-5, 2011

http://www.ntua.gr/MIRC/EUROGEO/index.html

The European Association of Geographers - EUROGEO, in collaboration with the Laboratory of Geography of the National Technical University of Athens, Greece (NTUA) is organizing its annual meeting titled: “Geography: Your world – A European

Perspective” next year in Athens, Greece. The meeting will be held at the “Titania Hotel” in Athens, Greece, June 2 - 5, 2011.

The scope of the congress is for original and innovative papers to be presented which will substantially improve, in a theoretical, conceptual or empirical way the quality of research, learning, teaching and applying geography, as well as in promoting the significance of geography as a discipline. Deadline for abstract submission is February 28, 2011. Details are published at http://www.ntua.gr/MIRC/EUROGEO/index.html and further information can be obtained by e-mailing to Professor Kostis Koutsopoulos koutsop@ survey.ntua.gr

Agenda

October 4 – November 11

Short online course on Programming with Python, ITC - the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation, University of Twente. http://www.itc.nl/Pub/study/Courses/C10-GFM-DE-05

October 8 - 9 VII Conference of the Italian Chapter of AIS (Association for Information Systems), Naples, Italy. http://www.itais2010.org/

October 19 - 20 3rd International Conference on Geoinformation Technology for Natural Disaster Management & Rehabilitation, Chiang Mai,Thailand. http://e-geoinfo.net/git4ndm2010/

October 19 - 22 GSDI 12 World Conference, Singapore. http://www.gsdi.org/gsdiconf/gsdi12/

November 1 - 3 International Symposium on Information Technology and its Applications in Environmental Management (Co-located with the First International Conference on Environmental Management and Technologies), Amman, Jordan. http://icemt10.emtme.com/page.php?sec=0&id=11

November 2 - 5 18th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems, San José, USA. http://acmgis2010.cs.ucsb.edu/

November 3 - 4 Fifth International Workshop on 3D Geo Information, Berlin, Germany. http://www.igg.tu-berlin.de/3dgeoinfo/

November 15 – 18

18th international research symposium on computer-based cartography and GIScience, Orlando, Florida. http://www.cartogis.org/autocarto

November 17 – 19

Spatial Analysis and GEOmatics 2010, Toulouse, France. http://sageo10.univ-toulouse.fr/

November 19 Annual meeting of the ICA Maps and the Internet Commission, Orlando, Florida. http://orlando2010.eventbrite.com/

December 2-3 6th conference of the Hellenic Association of GIS Users www.hellasgi.gr


December 8 - 10 Third Workshop on Story-Telling and Educational Games (STEG'10), Shanghai, China. http://www.prolearn-academy.org/Events/steg10

February 23 – 28, 2011

The Third International Conference on Advanced Geographic Information Systems, Applications, and Services, Gosier, Guadeloupe. http://www.iaria.org/conferences2011/GEOProcessing11.html

March 3 – 4, 2011

10th International Symposium on Web and Wireless Geographical Information Systems..., Kyoto, Japan. http://www.w2gis.org/

April 12-16, 2011 Special Symposium on “Space-Time Integration in Geography and GIScience” as part of the Annual Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meetings, Seattle, USA http://www.aag.org/cs/giscienceresearch

April 18 – 21, 2011

14th AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science, Utrecht, The Netherlands

http://www.uu.nl/geo/agile2011)

May 12 – 13, 2011

4th International Conference on Geospatial Semantics, Brest, France. http://geosco.org/geos2011/

June 2-5, 2011 European Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, Athens, Greece. http://www.ntua.gr/MIRC/EUROGEO/index.html

July 3 – 8, 2011 25th International Cartographic conference and the 15th General Assembly of the International Cartographic Association, Paris, France. http://www.icc2011.fr/

Ongoing and new activities _____

"Geospatial Analysis " available on the web

The 3rd edition of the book "Geospatial Analysis - a comprehensive guide", by Smith, Goodchild and Longley is available in a free web version http://www.spatialanalysisonline.com/

One Semester Course on Environmental Information in 2011: “Methods, Systems, Technologies, Management” The Harz University of Applied Sciences offers a one semester, international program for students who are interested in “Environmental Information Systems and Technologies“. The interdisciplinary program includes courses on environmental management and environmental technologies, geographical information systems & science, and environmental databases.

Additionally, a team oriented project is carried out, in which most input and initiative concerning content, and

management comes from the participants themselves. This project benefits from the interdisciplinary knowledge acquired during the semester.

Parallel, studying at the University of Applied Sciences Harz gives participants an opportunity to improve their German language competency (which is an elective during the semester), as well as learning more about country & culture.

The course is open for students from universities throughout Europe and the world. During the semester, students can earn 30 credits. The course takes place during summer 2011.

In case of interest contact Prof. Dr. Andrea Heilmann ([email protected]) or Prof. Dr. Hardy Pundt ([email protected]). Information about the University is available at www.hs-harz.de

AGILE 2009 preconference workshop GI@Earlywarning papers published in IJDE Part of the papers presented at the AGILE preconference GI@Earlywarning, held in conjunction with the 12th AGILE conference in Hannover in May 2009, have been published in the September issue (Volume 3, Number 3) of the International Journal of Digital Earth (IJDE) together with some other papers related to the topic. Milan Konecny and Wolfgang Reinhardt acted as Guest editors. IJDE has been accepted for coverage in Science Citation Index Expanded.

A New Book Series: Dissertations in Geographic Information Science, ISSN 1868-4160 - Aims and Scope The GISDISS series of dissertations in Geographic Information Science provides access in printed archival form to doctoral research on geospatial information. It collects high quality PhD theses contributing to the global scientific exchange in the field, as well as, to a better understanding of the human environment and better decisions about it. More information: http://www.gisdiss.com/

AGILE members

AGILE has presently 85 members coming from 24 different countries. The distribution of these members among the different countries is as follows:

Country Country

Austria 3 Italy 4

Belgium 4 Netherlands 7

Bosnia – Her. 1 Norway 2

Czech Republic 3 Poland 1

Denmark 2 Portugal 3

Finland 3 Romania 1


France 6 Serbia 1

Germany 13 Slovenia 2

Greece 7 Spain 6

Hungary 2 Sweden 3

Ireland 2 Switzerland 1

Israel 1 UK 7

New developments within INSPIRE

http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

Krakow Declaration on INSPIRE

At the closing session of the Conference “INSPIRE as a framework for cooperation”, that took place in Krakow, Poland the following declarations has been approved.

“In total 670 scientists, engineers, educators, entrepreneurs, managers, administrators, and representatives of civil societies from 50 countries have assembled here, in the historic city of Krakow, to attend the INSPIRE Conference 2010, organized by the European Commission and the Polish Head Office of Geodesy and Cartography. Noting that:

• INSPIRE has demonstrated to operate across an increasingly wide range of EU and national policies and strategies, greatly assisting their development, implementation and assessment;

• INSPIRE attracts an increasing interest and support from stakeholders in both the public and private sector;

• the INSPIRE spatial data infrastructures are fundamental for providing the knowledge needed for mitigating natural and man-made hazards, a more efficient use of our natural resources, better protecting our environment and our efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change;

• the INSPIRE spatial data infrastructures underpin and enable a wide range of eGovernment and eEnvironment services leading to important social and economic benefits and cost-savings;

• INSPIRE as a process, emerges as a major framework for cooperation, innovation, and integration across the social, economic and environmental pillars of sustainable development in Europe and beyond.

Recognizing in addition that:

• the EU Member States are steadily advancing with the implementation of INSPIRE;

• research and technological development will benefit substantially from the improved access and

sharing of spatial data and information that INSPIRE provides;

• international organisations, non-EU countries in Europe and beyond have expressed their interest in using the INSPIRE methodologies and good practices.

We therefore recommend our governments and organisations to

• maintain their efforts and investments needed for reaping the societal benefits that INSPIRE provides;

• increase their international collaboration efforts to create an INSPIREd information society without obstacles or borders;

• support the implementation of INSPIREd spatial data infrastructures in non-EU countries in Europe and beyond.

2010 INSPIRE Conference

The 2010 INSPIRE Conference 2010 took place in Krakow, Poland on June 23-25, 2010. The papers presented are available on-line at http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/events/conferences/inspire_2010/conf_skd_conference.cfm

Open positions at the INSPIRE team at JRC

The Spatial Data Infrastructure Unit at JRC has presently 5 open positions. The deadline for applications is November 10. The persons to be employed will be involved in:

• Evolution of the INSPIRE geoportal and the INSPIRE architecture

• Innovative approaches for the interoperability of data, services and models to support the development of next generation data infrastructures

• Advanced workflow modeling for the support of interoperability of geo-spatial data, services and models

• Environmental spatial data interoperability and harmonization

• Spatial Data Infrastructure and Shared Environmental Information System in Lombardia

More information can be obtained at http://ies.jrc.ec.europa.eu/call-for-grantholders

Other INSPIRE news • Publication of the report INSPIRE: Good Practice in

data and service sharing. The report provides examples of good practice on data sharing for three scenarios: for Member States with the Community institutions and bodies, between Member States, and between public authorities within a Member State. Although some of the good practice experiences discussed were implemented before the INSPIRE initiative was initiated they can be an inspiration for implementing INSPIRE, as they often embody the general principles which are now in INSPIRE. http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/documents/Data_and


_Service_Sharing/INSPIRE_GoodPractice_%20DataService%20Sharing_v1.pdf

• Publication of the report Schema Transformation Network Service: State of the Art Analysis. This report documents leading technologies and existing standards relating to Data Model Transformation and Network Services that are considered relevant to the provision of Technical Guidance to the requirements of the INSPIRE Transformation Network Service (TNS). http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.cfm/pageid/241/documentid/1747

• A revised version of the INSPIRE Metadata Implementing Rules: Technical Guidelines ( Version 1.2) have been published, along with a document outlining the changes introduced to Version 1.1. http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.cfm/pageid/101

• An updated version of the INSPIRE Generic Conceptual Model (v3.3 of D2.5) has been published http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.cfm/pageid/241/documentid/1807

• Translations of the Draft regulations implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services have been published in the community languages. http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.cfm/pageid/682

• Translations of the Draft regulations amending Regulation (EC) No 976/2009 as regards download services and transformation services have been published in the community languages http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.cfm/pageid/681

• INSPIRE Forum Newsletter launched. The newsletter will feature highlights from the INSPIRE Forum, INSPIRE news, articles, news and events from the INSPIRE community. http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/enews/jul_44_2010/xnews.html

• Invitation to Tender for the “Development of the technical components of the INSPIRE Geo-portal at European Union level" has been published. The deadline for the submission of proposals is on October 15, 2010. Both the contract notice (http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:234033-2010:TEXT:EN:HTML&src=0) and the full text of the ITT http://web.jrc.ec.europa.eu/callsfortender/index.cfm?action=app.homepage&instdir=5&type=1) are publically available.

Corporate news ____________________

So far, AGILE has signed Memorandum of Understandings (MoU) with some corporate AGILE members. When signing a Memorandum of Understanding, the parties involved agree to cooperate in a group of activities that are of mutual benefit. See www.agile-online.org for detailed information. In the course of the last year, several of these agreements were renewed.

Bentley – AGILE Bentley Systems offers to AGILE members subscription to the Bentley Education Network, BEN, at 30% discount from the list price of Euro 110 per seat per year (Minimum is 15 seats). For more information on Bentley Education Network, BEN, please visit http://www.benbentley.com . Also, Bentley Systems will offer free training on MicroStation for one person from each institution, AGILE member, who subscribes to BEN.

Student exchange between GEOIDE - AGILE An agreement has been signed between the GEOIDE Network in Canada and AGILE with respect the exchange of students. As part of the agreement that is valid for the year 2011 two students selected from the AGILE members will be able to attend the GEOIDE 2011 Summer School conference for free (registration, food, accommodation). In return two students from the GEOIDE network will be able to attend for free the AGILE conference next year in Utrecht. The selection procedure will be announced at a later day.

Other MoUs AGILE has also signed MoU's with the following associations for pursuing common objectives and increasing collaboration: Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), Geographic Information System International Group (GISIG), International Postgraduate Course on GIS (UNIGIS) and University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS).

News from AGILE ___________ News from the Council In the recent elections Bénédicte Bucher and Mike Jackson were elected in the Council. Bénédicte is from IGN, France and Mike from the University of Nottingham, UK. The two new Council members are

presented below.

Bénédicte Bucher is the head executive officer of the French National Mapping Agency (IGN-France) research department which includes four research laboratories covering all aspects from the acquisition of geodata to the diffusion of usable geographic

information: geodesy, digital cameras and sensors, photogrammetry, image processing, computer vision, vector data management, cartography. Before that, she has done most of her career in one of these labs, COGIT. Bénédicte holds a degree from the Grande Ecole ‘Ecole Polytechnique’, a state Higher Education Institute and then earned a survey engineer degree and a PhD in GeoSciences and Natural Resources. Her


domains of expertise are on-line access to geographic information and processes, metadata issues, dialog interfaces and on-demand mapping. She has participated in several collaborative projects, in particular SPIRIT, a European project funded through the EC Fifth Framework Programme on geospatial information retrieval. “I was impressed by the multidiscipline aspects of this project. Around that time arose a new scientific community, geographic information retrieval, at the crossroads between information retrieval and geomatics.” Currently, Bénédicte studies the collaborative edition of geodata and is involved in a French research project aiming at facilitating the publishing of legal data –like NMAs data- as Linked Data.

Mike Jackson was appointed to the Chair of Geospatial Science at the University of Nottingham in April 2005 where he has established the Centre for Geospatial Science (CGS). CGS is a multi-disciplinary post-graduate centre which undertakes research and teaching

in areas of geospatial science including spatial data infrastructures, location-based services and geospatial interoperability. The Center is active in several EU research projects funded under eContentPlus, FP7, Erasmus and COST, as well as, UK Government and industry research programmes. It runs an MSc by Research in Geospatial Intelligence and contributes to the University’s MSc’s in GIS and Navigation. Previous posts Mike has held include: Director of Space Division, QinetiQ; Head of Location Platform at Hutchison 3G (“3”) with design responsibility for the 3-G location-based services for Hutchison Wampoa’s 3G telecommunications companies and CEO of geospatial software developer Laser-Scan (now 1Spatial). Mike has a 1st class honours degree in Geography and a PhD in Civil Engineering (Manchester University) and an honorary doctorate from Kingston University. He is a non-executive director of the Open Geospatial Consortium Inc (OGC) and Chair of Commission 5 (Networks) EuroSDR and on the UK Location Council Information Interoperability Board. He has presented and published widely on digital mapping, GIS and location-based services.

Monica Wachowicz, from Wageningen University,The Netherlands continues to be the Chairperson of AGILE and Danny Vandenbroucke, from SADL/K.U.Leuven R&D, Belgium is the Secretary.

The AGILE Council is supported by three External Officers. Ludo Engelen (SADL/K.U.Leuven R&D, Belgium) supports the Secretariat, Fred Toppen (University of Utrecht, The Netherlands) supports the Treasurer, while Barend Köbben (ITC, The Netherlands) maintains the web.

News from your lab? If you want to present your lab and its research activities, or if you want to announce a conference or workshop, or if you have vacancies eligible for

international candidates, please contact the secretariat to get it in this newsletter and/or on the AGILE website. Both are consulted by a broad scientific public.

Call for hosting conference 2012 AGILE is seeking statements of interest for hosting future AGILE conferences. AGILE members are invited to prepare their candidature for 2012 or beyond, by preparing a formal offer using the forms that can be obtained through our Secretariat.

Join AGILE! Is your lab or institute active in the field of GI research and/or education? Then your place is at AGILE! As a member of AGILE you have: reduced fees for our annual conference and pre-conference workshops, easy access to the AGILE network for joint research proposals and European collaboration in general, the possibility to influence the GI research agenda, proposing of and participation in one or more AGILE initiatives, better access to products offered by our MOU-partners and access to database on research activities in Europe.

AGILE Council Monica Wachowicz - Chairperson, Wageningen University and

Research Centre, Centre for Geo-Information, The Netherlands Danny Vandenbroucke - Secretary, Spatial Applications Division

of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Wolfgang Reinhardt - Treasurer, UniBw Munchen, AGIS GIS

Lab, Neubiberg, Germany Lars Bernard, Technical University of Dresden, Faculty of

Forest, Geo and Hydro Sciences, Germany Bénédicte Bucher, IGN, France Mike Jackson, University of Nottingham, UK Poulicos Prastacos, Foundation for Research and Technology,

Greece Hardy Pundt, University of Applied Sciences Harz in

Wernigerode, Germany

External Officers Ludo Engelen (in support of secretary), Spatial Applications

Division of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium [email protected]

Fred Toppen (in support of treasurer), University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, [email protected]

Barend Köbben (webmaster), ITC, Enschede, The Netherlands, [email protected]

AGILE Secretariat p/a Danny Vandenbroucke, SADL/K.U.Leuven

Celestijnenlaan 200 E, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium email: [email protected] fax: +32 16 32 97 24

e-Newsletter contacts If you want to contribute to the next issues of the newsletter, please contact one of the persons below: Poulicos Prastacos, IACM, FORTH, Greece, Chief Editor,

[email protected] Ludo Engelen, SADL/K.U.Leuven R&D, Belgium, Layout,

[email protected]