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Geographical Information Systems (GIS) represents
one of the most rapidly expanding areas in Information Technology. GIS is seen increasingly
as an essential tool in many areas of government and business.
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Before you you have the electronic UNIGIS Newsletter, edition Autumn 2008.
A fresh group of UNIGIS students have started their studies last month with a brand new curriculum!
What do we have for you in this newsletter? We have some staff mutations, one student introducing himself
and another student presenting his MSc thesis, some SPINlab research highlights, an appeal for Alumni to send us their 'face of UNIGIS', and much more.
Enjoy reading your UNIGIS news!
Unigis Amsterdam General News
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Looking back at fifteen years of distance learning
by Henk Scholten
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1993, it is indeed 15 years ago that it all took a definite shape; UNIGIS, distance learning
The academic chair of Spatial Informatics established on 1 January 1990 by the VU meant at the same time searching for suitable
course material, international co-operation and structure. Now, 15 years after the start of UNIGIS, we can say that it has been
a great success. Since the start of the programme I was able to sign more than 50 MSc. diplomas and hundreds of postgraduate
certificates and diplomas in Amsterdam, and they represent only one successful part of the approx. 2,500 students who are
active over the whole world!
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In the Netherlands at the moment there are 110 students studying. In the meantime, many students
have graduated or have successfully completed a part of the course. It is extremely pleasing to meet up with the students and
former students quite often. It is even more gratifying that they declare that they look back with great pleasure on all the
efforts they made. Or, as one of the MSc. students that graduated this year, expressed: "UNIGIS always pushed me a bit in the
right direction, but left me to reach my own conclusions. I thank my supervisor for all the time he spent with me, endless discussions
and never enough time to finish them off. Hopefully we'll keep on doing this in the future." So you see, it was (and still is) worth
the effort, for both the staff and the students.
Henk
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New Intake has started
by Jasper Dekkers
The September Intake 2008 has just started with the brand new curriculum. This time, the group consists mainly of Dutch students.
The educational background varies as well (surveying, informatics, forestry, consultancy and more),
like the place of work (National Forest Service, Water and sewerage management, consultancy firm and more). One of the students will
introduce himself in this newsletter.
On behalf of the UNIGIS team, we wish the new students lots of success with their studies.
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UNIGIS_NL Discussion Group Up and Running
by John-Paul Glutting
All new (and "veteran") members of the UNIGIS Amsterdam community should be aware that we now have a
Google Group dedicated to discussion of the concerns of students in the program. Membership is open (we have had no problems with
spam so far, so hopefully we can keep it that way), but I believe you need a Google account. The group can be found at:
http://groups.google.com/group/unigis_nl.
Read more...
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Graduates in 2008, MSc thesis nomination
by Jasper Dekkers
In 2008, four MSc students graduated so far at UNIGIS Amsterdam.
If everything goes well, a fifth student will be added to that list this afternoon as Patrick Brooijmans defends his thesis.
In fact, we could just as easily name a sixth graduate, since the MSc thesis of Wilbert Kurvers already was approved by our Examination Board in 2007, but it took
quite some time before he could receive his MSc title in Manchester. That celebration took place last summer. Further, One of the graduates, Paul Jonk, tells us a bit more about his MSc. research project and thesis below.
And finally, the UNIGIS Programme Board is happy to announce the fact that we have decided to nominate the MSc thesis of 2008-graduate André Coleman for the UIA Academic Excellence Prize.
This price, founded by the UNIGIS International Association, is annually awarded for an outstanding MSc thesis/dissertation accepted for graduation at one of the UNIGIS
partner universities worldwide. The price winner will be announced at the Business Meeting of the UIA that will be held in Hungary in two weeks.
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Location Services: Adding value to incident management?
by Paul Jonk
Surely the last decade GIS has become mature and is a more common used technology.
A lot of innovative applications are developed but not always with the initially expected success. Especially the
amount of mobile geo-applications are growing rapidly. But what makes an application a success or a failure?
In 2005 a business case was drawn up by Spinlab Amsterdam which showed a substantial gain in efficiency when
using Location Services as an innovative information service for the activities of Incident Management. But
this was a theoretical approach. Now in practice: "Is the end-user willing to adopt this new technology?"
In june 2008 I completed my MSc dissertation handling this aspect with the title mentioned above. The main question of this research was:
"What factors do influence the adoption of LS with IM+ by the Dutch highway authority?"
Read more...
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Faces of UNIGIS Wordlwide
What is truly unique about our the UNIGIS worldwide network is the diversity of it's members. To further emphasize this, UNIGIS International would like to create a
"Faces of UNIGIS" catalogue. We believe it can be used on various occasions to present the people that form the network. They have asked each UNIGIS site to
participate in this initiative. Creating such a catalogue without your help will be impossible.
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So please, help us out, re-affirm your ties with the UNIGIS
worldwide family and fill in the Faces of UNIGIS-document. There is also a place for a photograph. Try to keep
it informal. Instead of an ID-like picture it should show who you are - and in some interesting location for example.
Thank you very much in advance for your participation!
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Alumni Invitation for 2009
UNIGIS Alumni - please note in your agenda's: June 26 2009, Amsterdam: UNIGIS Annual Conference 2009. We will organise
a special session for the alumni on this day to discuss Alumni access to new study material and other interesting issues.
Alumni, be realistic: you simply can't afford to miss this event!
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Vincent van Altena
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Hi, let me introduce myself: my name is Vincent van Altena and I joined the UNIGIS Amsterdam last September.
In my spare free time I like to read. I also play piano and keyboards, and I did this in several bands. Besides making music, I composed and arranged some music.
I've done a Bachelor in Theology, but did not work in that area. Since 1999, I've been working at the Topografische Dienst Nederland (Dutch Mapping Agency),
which after a fusion in 2004 is part of het Kadaster (Dutch Cadastre) and now is called Kadaster Geo Informatie.
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I've held several positions: digitizer,
operator, project coordinator and GIS cartographer. Since February 2008, I'm holding the position of GIS Maatwerk Specialist for the division GIS Maatwerk
en Advies (GIS Customer Solutions and Support) of the Dutch Cadastre.
My totatally different educational background urged me to do some formal training in the GIS field. After doing some shortterm courses from several
software vendors, I wanted to get involved in a academic programme. So I joined the UNIGIS programme. In the programme, I appreciate working with
people from several nationalities and backgrounds and the possibilty to combine work, family and study.
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New MSc Co-ordinator
by Henk Scholten
For the past 14 years, Mathilde Molendijk has been the MSc Co-ordinator of UNIGIS Amsterdam. From September 1 onwards, Jasper Dekkers
will succeed her in this position. Mathilde is now co-ordinating two studies for full-time regular students at the university: the Bachelor of Earth & Economics and the Master
of Environment and Research Management. Combining these jobs with the co-ordination of UNIGIS was to much.
Mathilde has been involved with UNIGIS from the start and will continue to be involved: as tutor of the first module, and as part of the
Programme Board. She has successfully guided the UNIGIS staff through the process of obtaining an accreditation and will now get the time to focus on other educational
matters within university and even more important, to start working on her own PhD thesis! We are thankfull for all the work she has done for UNIGIS and we know that many students with us appreciate all her efforts in this respect.
As said, Jasper Dekkers will succeed Mathilde in the role of MSc Co-ordinator. Jasper has been involved with UNIGIS from 2001 onwards. The first years as a Diploma-student and
later as tutor of several modules and of workshop 2 at the annual conference and, occassionally, as secretary at the UNIGIS office. Since two years, he co-ordinates the third year of Unigis and he currently
is a member of the Educational Board.
Jasper has ample experience as a lecturer in courses at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration. Examples of courses he is involved with are the MSc-courses Geomarketing, Geographical
Information Systems, Applied Spatial Economics, and the BSc-course Real Estate Management. We trust that he will take up the challenge of continuing all the good work that has been done by Mathilde with great enthusiasm
and wish him all the very best in finalizing his PhD dissertation this winter.
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Participatory Planning in an oldtimer bus successfull
SPINlab research project makes it to the national news broadcast
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The structuurvisiebus is a bus with a multi-user Touch Table application on
future land use planning and policy in the province of Noord-Holland. The bus drives through the province
with the goald to let citizens participate in the development of a new spatial policy for the province.
The bus, a joint project of Spinlab and Geodan Next, was discussed in a national news broadcast on 31-07-2008.
See the website of Geodan Next for a broadcast of the item
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SPINlab PhD Thesis nominated for VU prize
Eric Koomen (2008), Spatial analysis in support of physical planning
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Calendar &
Activities
November 2008
Markt en overheid
GeoBusiness Nederland en de TU Delft organiseren op 13 november een themabijeenkomst gericht op de vraag hoe de markt optimaal
en op de goede manier kan worden ingeschakeld, zowel bij de inwinning van geo-informatie als bij het creëren van toegevoegde waarde producten en
-diensten op basis van overheidsinformatie
Visit their website for more information
GIN-RGI-symposium
Thursday November 27th the annual GIN-conference (Geo-Informatie Nederland) will be held at the Reehorst in Ede. This year, the theme is "Met het oog op de toekomst".
The Conference will be co-organised by RGI (Ruimte voor Geo-Informatie).
Visit their website for more information
December 2008
GIS & Education
KNAG-dag 2008
Op 12 december organiseert het Koninklijk Nederlands Aardrijkskundig Genootschap (KNAG) in samenwerking met Wageningen Universiteit de jaarlijkse Onderwijsdag. Het thema is "Jaar van de Aarde".
Het EduGIS-project waarin het SPINlab participeert is hier ook vertegenwoordigd. Deze dag is zeker interessant voor mensen die geïnteresseerd zijn in GIS en onderwijs.
Klik hier om de brochure en het inschrijfformulier te downloaden
February 2009
Information Session Intake March 2009
Are you interested in GIS and do you want to learn more about the subject? Unigis can help! An Information Session for the new intake will be
held on Friday February 20nd 2009 at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Come and visit us!
Information will be made available through our website in due time.
And of course you can always contact us, through our website or by phone should you not be able to visit us.
March 2009
Start Intake March 2009
The new intake will start at Friday March 20th 2009 at the campus of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam with Workshop 1.
Information will be made available through our website in due time.
And of course you can always contact us, through our website or by phone should you not be able to visit us.
June 2009
11th GSDI World Conference
Monday 15 through Friday 19th of June 2009, Rotterdam, The Netherlands: GSDI 11 Conference.
The theme for this conference is Spatial Data Infrastructure Convergence: Building SDI Bridges to Address Global Challenges.
Geographic information technologies and spatial data infrastructure play critical roles in allowing organizations and people to make progress in addressing many
of the worlds most pressing problems. The approaches in building spatial data infrastructure within and among nations are in many respects converging.
This conference will explore the convergence towards best standards, practices and processes among nations while at the same time explore ever evolving and
exciting new approaches to the offering of geographic data and services in meeting real world needs.
The deadline for abstract submission is
1 December, 2008.
Visit the conference website for more information
UNIGIS Conference
Monday 22 through Friday 26th of June 2009, the Annual UNIGIS Conference will be held at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.
Workshops 2 and 3, plenary sessions and an Alumni event will be all part of the Conference.
Information will be made available through our website in due time.
And of course you can always contact us, through our website or by phone should you not be able to visit us.
Alumni event 2009
Friday 26th of June 2009, an Alumni day will be organised at the UNIGIS Conference. Special guest speakers will be invited.
Information will be made available through our website in due time.
And of course you can always contact us, through our website or by phone should you not be able to visit us.
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