Land Management

Germany: INTERGEO 2009 Opens

INTERGEO 2009 opened in Karlsruhe, Germany today. Sponsored by the DVW - Deutsche Gessellschaft fur Geodasie, Geoinformation and Land Management, this year's event has an estimated 15,000 in attendance - a cnumber comparable to 2008 when the event was held in Bremen.  The event is organised in concert with the 57th German Cartographic Day.

German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble officially opened the event and presented the DVW- GIS Best Practice Award to the Baden-Wurttenburger Landes Stadt fur Umwelt - environment. The Mercator Medal was presented by the German DGfK to Prof. Mark Monmonier. He was the author of the book 'How to Lie WithMaps' for those unaware.

Jurgen Graeff, Harmut Rosengarten and Dirk Westinburger officiated over an opening breakfast that I attended to announce the event and to provide some background. They said the show is about three things primarily. These include the show itself, the international nature of those in attendance and the local synergies that come through sharing geoinformation and data. I asked how many people were from the Asian regions (assuming those markets are buying a lot of the technologies on display). About 5% or less of those in attendance originate from those regions. It was mentioned that 70% of the audience is from outside Germany, the largest numbers obviously coming from Europe. The attendance was expected to be in the range of 15,000 and the number of displays remained similar to last year at 475.

It was explained that INTERGEO is moving toward becoming a 'geospatial' event. With that in mind I asked, "traditionally INTERGEO is viewed as a surveying event, so what does geospatial mean to the organiser's?" The answer circled mostly around a geodata focus with discussion on integrating data - more GIS processing, data standards, laser scanning and modern technology. Over the many year's I have attended INTERGEO is has come to be strongly centered on surveying. It is going to be a while before 'geospatial' in the sense of sensors, robotics, GIS modeling, visualisation, 3D model architecture and some of the other topics enter into the fray here - a quick purview of the booths on the floor shows a strong orientation to surveying.

The interesting point here from V1 Magazine perspective is that I don't think we have a single survey related company on our site. Now I ask, how can that be, since, we are pretty much oriented into mainstream geospatial technology? It could be that INTERGEO is maturing from a surveyor's forum to focus on what becomes of the data, and today, we know that many people are wanting to use geodata without all the complexity involved. That may be posing an interesting challenge to the survey community.

But in a realistic fashion, it is simply the time to recognise that different technologies create useful data and that the application is where it all flows. The days of anyone using survey technology are rapidly approaching, if not already here.

I think the INTERGEO team are recognising the inevitable. The data flows and circulates through workflows to solve problems period. And that integration of data is becoming more prominent. it also opens discussion on a lot of issues, but hopefully, it engages everyone into needed change.

Related Posts

1. INTERGEO 2007 Opens in Leipzig
2. Overview: INTERGEO 2007 — Leipzig, Germany
3. INTERGEO: Karlsruhe, Germany
4. INTERGEO EAST 2009 Conference Cancelled Until 2010
5. Germany: INTERGEO 2009 — Moving Beyond Surveying Alone
6. INTERGEO 2008 Opens in Bremen
7. Intergeo 2008 — Where Has All the Hard Copy Marketing Gone?
8. GI Forum 2009 Opens in Salzburg
9. Stuttgart 2009 — 100 Years of Photogrammetry Week Opens
10. Australia: Thesis — The Integration of Multi-source Spatial Datasets in the Context of SDI Initiatives

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