Across the world, the issue of clear land title for agricultural lands is seen as the baseline for economic development. The majority of people in the world lack any enforceable claim to their homes or the land they farm. Without land rights and records, there is a cycle of poverty and social inequalities. The lack of property rights strips the ability to generate equity that can be used to borrow against for an education or to start a business. The lack of property also strips a country’s economy of large amounts of wealth, and stifles the ability of its citizens to escape poverty.
Written by Admin Wednesday, 01 February 2012 09:53
The Surveying, Geographic Information and Map Division in China asserted it's overall 2012 strategy this past week at a plenary meeting. Min Yi-jen acted as deputy director of the meeting, which focused upon new requirements and a re-mobilization that included cultural mapping, better planning, moving forward faster and realizing results. The Council designated nine main tasks, two of them directed at the Geographic Information and Map division.
Intergraph and ERDAS are two well known brands in the geospatial industry. Recently Hexagon AB purchased Intergraph for $2.1B USD, effectively bringing GeoMedia GIS software into the wider Hexagon domain - filling a large hole across the spatial capabilities of that company. However, linking that GIS capability into a useful product was not immediately clear, nor visible. Recently ERDAS became a brand of Intergraph, thereby merging strengths while filling the missing void. This convergence now places another major GIS product into the marketplace - one with strong image analysis capabilities.
There are many aerial mapping applications where the cost of an aircraft, and the small land size of a project, make hiring an aerial mapping firm impractical. The view from above is a valuable input however, and small radio controlled aircraft that carry high-resolution cameras and GPS receivers are increasingly finding their way into the surveyor's tool kit. The capable aerial imagery platform, with its low weight and low operational costs, is set to provide entirely new perspectives about changes in the landscape.
The issue of open data, accessible and available, has long been source of discussion for many participants involved in the geomatics and geospatial industry. There are many reasons for data being confined including data formats, policy, lack of resources, inability among them. But culture also plays an important role, and at a time when growth, jobs and economic efficiency are high on the agenda, it makes good 'common and business sense' to have more people, not less, developing and innovating on geospatial data.
