by Jan Cees Venema

Ghanaian woman receives Geospatial World Leadership Award

Ms Aida Opoku-Mensah, a Ghanaian national has been awarded with the ‘Geospatial World Leadership Award for Making a Difference’.

Ms Opoku-Mensah, who is also the Director of the UN Economic Commission for Africa’s (ECA) ICT, Science Technology Division, received the award during the 2012 Geospatial World Forum held in Amsterdam April 24, 2012.

According to a statement issued by the ECA, the citation for Ms Opoku-Mensah’s award read; she has “been a great advocate of geospatial technology in Africa and has provided leadership to several very valuable programmes and initiatives leading to capacity development of African countries with reference to geospatial competence and infrastructure, including promoting the UN GGIM initiative in Africa”.

Furthermore, the citation stated “her pro-active engagement with the geospatial community including academic institutions, policy makers, mapping agencies, the geospatial industry and end users has paved way for meaningful collaboration and cooperation amongst them for overall development of the continent”.

An elated Ms Opoku-Mensah accepting the award, said she was humbled by the recognition from the global geospatial community and stressed that she was only implementing the work programme of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, “which happens to be one of the few institutions that sees the strategic importance of geospatial technology for sustainable development, whether it’s in mining, natural resource management, monitoring elections, infrastructure development or measuring and managing the economy”.

The award is given to persons who have made significant contributions towards development of geographic information science, technology, products, applications, capacity development and in turn helped towards the growth of the geospatial industry as well as making geographic information a public commodity.

by Jan Cees Venema

UNGIWG becomes a Principal Member of the Open Geospatial Consortium

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) just announced that the United Nations Geographic Information Working Group (UNGIWG) has taken Principal level membership.

The UNGIWG addresses topics related to geospatial information sharing and quality of location information. The group is working across the United Nations to improve the efficient use of geographic information for better decision-making, to promote standards and norms for maps and other geospatial and location information and to provide a forum for discussing common issues and emerging technological changes.

The Consortium’s Principal Members together with OGC Strategic Members constitute the OGC Planning Committee (PC). The PC is the final authority for approval of OGC standards as well as discussions related to market and business drivers impacting the standards development focus of the OGC. Principal members provide valuable expertise to support the forward-thinking market strategy of the consortium, they influence and maintain the Consortium’s Policies and Procedures, and they approve nominations to the OGC Board of Directors.

“The UNGIWG’s Principal Membership in the OGC reflects the importance to the UN of efficient and effective sharing of geospatial information among UN agencies,” said Mark Reichardt, President and CEO of the OGC. “We look forward to their active involvement in our process, as they bring expertise, international experience and a  tremendous breadth of requirements that will help shape and advance future OGC standards and best practices.”

Suha Ulgen, Co-chair of the UNGIWG, said, “It is no coincidence that UNGIWG’s OGC membership is aligned with the launch of the Centre of Excellence for UN Spatial Data Infrastructure by UNGIWG. The Centre will boost the UN’s capacity to leverage the power of geoinformatics in support of the its many mandates. As a Principal Member, UNGIWG is looking forward to contributing to the OGC in the standards setting process, as well as the promulgation of geospatial information management best practices.”

About the UNGIWG  The United Nations Geographical Information Working Group (UNGIWG, www.ungiwg.org) is a network of cartography and geographic information science professionals representing more than 30 United Nations Secretariat departments, specialized agencies, programmes and funds with mandates ranging from peacekeeping to humanitarian relief, from climate change to disaster reduction, response and recovery, from international law and human rights to environmental protection, poverty reduction, food security, water management and economic development.  UNGIWG was established in 2000 by acknowledgement of the United Nations System Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB) High Level Committee on Programmes (HLCP). 2011-2013 UNGIWG Co-chairs are the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) in Vienna, Austria and the Office of Information and Communications  Technology (OICT) of the UN Secretariat in New York, USA.

About the OGC  The OGC is an international consortium of more than 445 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web, wireless and location based services, and  mainstream IT. OGC standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.

(from OGC, 23 May 2012, Wayland, Massachusetts)

by Jan Cees Venema

GSDI Regional Newsletter for May 2012

GSDI-logoThe SDI Regional Newsletters for May 2012 are now posted on the GSDI home page at http://www.gsdi.org.

You may also download them directly as follows:

Chinese translations of the newsletter are posted as they arrive and may be downloaded at http://www.gsdi.org/newsletters

Past and current SDI Regional newsletters are also accessible in the archives at http://www.gsdi.org/newsletters

Also posted here are the the Newsletters from related associations:

  • FGDC (USA Federal Geographic Data Committee)
  • EuroGeographics (European association representing mapping, land registry, cadastral agencies)
  • EUROGI (European association representing broad geospatial community)
  • GSDI Newsletter, offering news on the GSDI Association activities, occasional publication
  • EIS Africa, Environmental Information Systems in Africa
  • SALB, Second Administrative Level Boundaries

Please forward the newsletters to others that may be interested.

ANNOUNCEMENTS DURING THE MONTH

If you want to be kept up to date on announcements in your region of the world throughout the month or want to contribute announcements to others in your region, subscribe to the appropriate SDI discussion lists at http://www.gsdi.org/discussionlists

Among the several discussion list offerings include:

by Jan Cees Venema

Crop monitoring and forecasting

Analysis of meteorological and climatic data allows to provide near real-time information about the crop state, in quality and quantity, with the possibility of early warning on alarm/alert situations so that timely interventions can be planned and undertaken. Crop forecasting philosophy is based on various kind of data collected from different sources: meteorological data, agrometeorological phenology, yield, soil water holding capacity, remotely sensed, agricultural statistics. Based on meteorological and agronomic data, several indices are derived which are deemed to be relevant variables in determining crop yield, for instance crop water satisfaction, surplus and excess moisture, average soil moisture, etc.

Crop forecasting is the art of predicting crop yields tons/ha and production before the harvest actually takes place, typically a couple of months in advance. Crop forecasting relies on computer programmes that describe the plant-environment interactions in quantitative terms. Such programmes are called “models”, and they attempt to simulate plant-weather-soil interactions. They need, therefore, information and data on the most important factors that affect crop yields – the model inputs. After passing “through” the model, the inputs are converted to a number of outputs, such as maps of crop conditions and yields.

via CLIMPAG: Climate Impact on Agriculture | ADVICE and WARNINGS.