UNIGIS Amsterdam Newsletterspinlab.vu.nl/websites/unigis/downloads/newsletters/unigis... · The time has come around again for another newsletter, and as we approach the end of the

UNIGIS Amsterdam NewsletterWinter 2004

1

UNIGIS impressions from Henk Scholten

The time has come around again for another newsletter, and as we approach the end of the year we lookback with pleasure at the many activities which have taken place since our summer newsletter.In this issue you can read about, amongst other activities, our special summer schools in Salzburg, Goa,and of course in Amsterdam. Then we had a very fruitful event here in September when several of ourMSc students made presentations of their work to alumni, family and friends.

This is also a good time to renew contact with old friends and colleagues. We would like to remind you allthat (due to past admin problems) we have lost the contact details of some of our old students. If any ofyou are in contact with them, please ask them to mail us so that we can keep in touch with them in thefuture.

And finally we look forward to many activities and developments as we move into 2005. The dates whichare already fixed for early in the year are shown below, but we know that there will be more on offer asthe year proceeds so keep looking for new information on our website.

We wish you all a happy festive season and best wishes for 2005. For those of you actively studying withUNIGIS we also wish you success with your study.

Important dates:Information session for new studentsFriday, 4 February 2005, 14.00 – 16.00Please let your colleagues know!

Introductory Workshop Intake March 2005Friday, 11 March 2005, 09.00 – 17.00Start of the new Postgraduate Certificate and Diploma course

UNIGIS Workshop IIMay 23rd to 26th, 2005Amsterdam Netherlandswww.feweb.vu.nl.unigis

UNIGIS Workshop IIIJune 13th to 16th, 2005 Amsterdam, Netherlandswww.feweb.vu.nl.unigis

Upcoming events:International GIS Study Journey "Geo-standardisation in the E-world", 13-16 March 2005 in the UK

Map India4-8 February 2005, New Delhi, India

Contents:UNIGIS Events 2News on InterGIS 3Activities 4Puzzle 5Workshops & Summer Schools 6MSc students 9People 10Alumni 11Colophon 12

Activities

UNIGIS Amsterdam Newsletter Winter 2004 2

Graduation ceremony and AlumnieventFrom Margaret Jones & Eleni Koulouki

MSc graduation Ceremony, September2004

First and foremost in the meeting was thepublic defense of their research by four ofour recent MSc graduates. We heardfrom:Han Slotman - “The basis for basisregistration”; Sjaak van Popering – “Thequality of Geo-information in theory andpractice”; Patrick Strootman – “Theefficiency of a standarised geographicalmodel”; Herman Schultz – “Financialconsequences of changing the localzoning plan process”.

They all duly received their MSc degrees,in front of their family and supporters.The Postgraduate Diploma was awardedto Frits Wegenwijs. Rosan vanWilgenburg gave a presentation on thesubject of GeoMarketing.

After some discussion to round off thesession, the afternoon closed on a socialnote, with drinks and snacks, togetherwith the fresh MSc graduates, theirrelatives and friends and quite a numberof UNIGIS alumni.

New Intake, September 2004

We had a new group of 8 students whostarted the Certificate/Diplomaprogramme this September. They had amorning workshop at the VU, and afterlunching with us they were invited to jointhe audience during the afternoon’sAlumni Meeting and MSc Graduationceremony.

News on InterGIS


InterGIS Standard Curriculum forGIScience EducationFrom S. Shahnawaz

International cooperation for GIScienceEducation (InterGIS – www.gis-learning.net)is a project aimed at improving andstandardising GIScience education in theEuropean Union and South Asia. It is aninitiative of the three UNIGIS-basedEuropean GIS-Labs from University ofSalzburg, Austria (Coordinator); Universityof Girona, Spain and Vrije Universiteit ofAmsterdam, Netherlands in cooperation withJawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi,India; Goa University, India and Universityof Jaffna, Sri Lanka. The project is co-funded by the European Commission underAsia Link Programme for 2 years beginningin May 2003 and completing in April 2005.

The 2 main objectives of the project are, (1)develop a standard curriculum for GIScienceeducation; and accordingly (2) develophuman resources at partner institutions andbeyond. A series of activities is designed forachieving each objective by fostering directand indirect participation of a large numberof current and future educators from a rangeof educational institutions as well as theexperts from related industry. Beginningwith review of existing curricula andfollowing further steps, the first draft of thecommon baseline curriculum has beencompleted. It has been widely circulated inSouth Asia and European Union for contentand quality assessment and the feedback willbe incorporated in the final version.

The curriculum addresses postgraduate levelstudents having completed the first degreefrom any discipline with spatial perspectivelike geography, geology, planning, ecology,forestry, etc. The learners from other studyprogrammes like computer science or socialsciences will require to re-orient theirpreviously acquired skills and to combinethese with GIScience. The curriculum aims atimparting management level knowledge,

qualifying GIS-professionals as work-group,division and project leaders etc. The practicaland operational skills are therefore of lesserimportance than acquiring a broader expertperspective on GeoInformatics. The studentsare expected to develop a soundunderstanding about where and why to applyGIS and should be able to direct and/or leadothers on the operational levels.

The current version of the curriculum isdesigned primarily for two-year Master-levelcourses taught in residential as well asdistance learning modes. It contains ninecompulsory “modules” each of which has 15lessons with stated learning objectives. Eachmodule includes 5-7 Self-assessed exercisesand 5-7 Tutor-assessed assignments and willrequire a minimum of 90 student work hours(and valued at 8 credit units in the EuropeanCredit Transfer System). In addition,students will have to take a minimum of 2optional modules and complete a Masterthesis.

In order to ‘develop human resources’, 5international learning/training events havebeen planned. Four of these have beencompleted the concluding one is scheduledfrom 6-8 February 2005 in Delhi, India.

You will read more about the completedevents in the next sections!

Activities


Health Geography and GISFrom Mathilde Molendijk

We just finalised a brand new course onHealth Geography and GIS for daytimestudents of BSc Health Sciences and MScBiomedical Sciences (InfectiousDiseases) of the Vrije Universiteit.

The studentswereintroduced tothe role thatGIS andGeography canplay within healthsciences. They had to work out practicalassignments on the use of GIS for themonitoring and prevention of malaria inBrazil; and on the use of GIS for thestrategic planning of the distribution ofhealthcare in the Netherlands. As you canexpect from us, the students had topresent their results, they wrote papersand they made impressive websites on thetopic. The course was evaluated verypositively and seems to meet a newdemand. Currently, we are preparing aplan together with the UNIGIS colleaguesfrom the U.K. and others to prepare anUNIGIS module on GIS and Health. Ifyou are interested in contributing in anyway to this development, please don’thesitate to contact us. Your input will begreatly appreciated.

GIS conference 2004Once a year ESRI Netherlands organise aGIS conference in Rotterdam. So therewas in September this year a conferencewith the theme “Ruimte voor wonen”*.During two whole days GIS specialistshad the opportunity to discuss Space andGIS issues, attend lectures, workshopsand short sessions in the GIS Theatre. Asalways the discussions continued betweenthe sessions, at lunch and among theexhibition stands and while visiting theMap Gallery. Naturally UNIGIS wasthere, together with our colleagues fromthe other Dutch GIS institutions towelcome our students and to inform newapplicants about our programme.On the second day ESRI was so kind asto allow us a special reunion in order towelcome our InterGIS colleagues fromAsia and to bring them in contact withour (ex) students in the Netherlands.

* Space for Living

SPINlab organised a course onLocation Based Services

The Spatial Information Laboratory(SPINlab) of the Vrije UniversiteitAmsterdam in cooperation with GeodanMobile Solutions organized a course onLocation Based Services (LBS) onAugust 25th during the ANMI SummerSchool 2004.

During this full-immersion day withtechnology, market, and innovationexperts, the course provided:


• a comprehensive understanding ofthe science, technology anddevelopments in LBS

• the drivers and barriers to theintroduction of location services

• the added value of these services

• the privacy issues related to LBS,and

• the direction of LBSdevelopments in the researchworld as well as in consumer,entertainment and industrialapplications.

The course included case studies ofapplications, testimonials from the LBSresearch and industry, as well as livedemonstrations and applications of LBS.The course was organized with thecooperation of Oracle Corporation,CapGemini and telecom operators.

International GIS Study Journey"Geo-standardisation in the E-world"13-16 March 2005

After last year's successful trip toGermany (see our earlier newsletter,December 2003 for a report), ESRINederland, Geo-Informatie Nederlandand of course UNIGIS, are organising anew Study Journey in 2005. This time thedestination will be the U.K.The trip will include working visits to theOrdnance Survey (national mappingagency) in Southampton, the Office ofNational Statistics, the City University inLondon and the Office of the DeputyPrime Minister.

The trip will be particularly interestingfor participants from organisations wherethe exchange of geodata is veryimportant.

The application form can be found on thewebsite: www.geo-info.nl

The Puzzle

Something different this time – a little word game, but really the language is not veryimportant. Each column is a set of words, which are connected; they form a series from topto bottom. Look carefully at the letters, choose in each word two letters; once you spot thepattern you can fill in most of the missing letters to read a message in line 5:

Hint 1: discover the pattern by starting with the two middle letters of the first words.

then celebrates lesson cup-tiehospice better sheets past

surf-shop thumbprint evidence atmosphericsflag-days bath-soap deaf-mute push

**** ******** **** ******oratorio intend rodeo importing

Workshops & Summer Schools


InterGIS Summer Schools

Digital Terrain ModellingSalzburgFrom Patrick Brooijmans

From 22 to 29 September the DigitalTerrain Modelling Summer School washeld at the Salzburg University. Becauseof the simple fact that digital terrainmodelling serves many purposes in themilitary world we decided to participatein this Summer School.On the Wednesday the icebreaker andintroduction was held at the ‘hotel’ (aformer monastery). All in all some 40participants were present plus some tutorsand students from Salzburg University.Prof. Joseph Strobl held an introductorytalk and welcomed us to Salzburg.The next day the program kicked off withan introduction to the Summer Schooland an overview of data sources andterrain data acquisition. This took thewhole day, which was concluded with acity walk in the pouring rain. The walkfinished at one of the many beer stubes inSalzburg where we socialised with thestudents of Salzburg.Wayne Forsythe from RyersonUniversity, Canada spent the Fridaymorning on terrain visualisation andDEM carthography. The afternoon wasspent in the GIS laboratory to get somehands on experience terrain visualisationusing either Geomedia or ArcGISsoftware. In the evening a bus tour wasorganised and again the rain was pouringdown.

Saturday morning started with a lectureon terrain analysis and the afternoon wasspent in the GIS laboratory on terrainanalysis using Geomedia or ArcGIS. Inthe evening one of the invited lectures

was given by Lucian Dragut of ClujUniversity.Sunday morning there was time to dosome sightseeing, but most participantsslept in because of the long discussionson DTM on Saturday evening in one ofSalzburgs many bars. The afternoon wasspent in the GIS laboratory again. Thegroup using Geomedia the day before wasnow using ArcGIS and vice versa. At theend of the afternoon there was an invitedlecture by Guoan Tang from NanjingUniversity in China.Monday morning kicked off with anindustry lecture on photogrammetry andLIDAR by a company named Inpho. Theafternoon was spent on getting hands onexperience with SRTM data and a lectureon DEM production with ASTER data.Mahender Kotha concluded the day witha lecture on multivariate statisticalmethods from Goa University.On Tuesday Bentley Corporation held alecture on using digital terrain data inCAD software for engineering andconstruction purposes. Milap ChandSharma from JNU, Delhi, concludedlecture part of the Summer School. TheSummer School was ended by a groupdiscussion on several DTM topics andthis was one of the most interesting partsof the Summer School. In the evening afarewell party with barbecue was held atthe University.The Summer School was very wellorganised by Salzburg University, thestandard was very good and there was alittle bit of everything. There werelectures on DTM, practical sessions,industry presentations and invited lecturesexplaining the use of DEM’s in research.We learned a lot about digital terrainmodelling and try to teach our ownorganisation the advantages anddisadvantages of digital terrain



modelling. We also had lively and fruitfuldiscussions on all sorts of topics with theother participants, which were from 7-10different countries. Most of the lecturescan be downloaded from the Internetfrom the following website:http://www.zgis.at/ss_dtm.

GIScience for Coastal ZoneManagementGoa, IndiaFrom Rosan van Wilgenburg

As an UNIGIS student I had the opportunity,together with Johan Keurentjes (Kadaster)and Mathilde Molendijk (UNIGIS Staff) tojoin the InterGIS Summer School in Goa.InterGIS is a project sponsored by the Asianlink programme of the European Union.Three European and three Asian universitiesjoin the project. The aim of InterGIS is toestablish co-operation and to draw up ageneral GIS learning curriculum.

This Summer School (Oct. 29 – 31) washosted by Goa University and withapproximately 60 participants from all overAsia and Europe we studied GIScience forCoastal Zone Management. The first day ofthe Summer School consisted of introductorylectures. Day 2 and 3 were spent onworkshops: GPS, Erdas and IDRISI.

Apart from the extra GIS knowledge, theSummer School offered a great opportunityto listen to the experienced lecturers and tointeract with GIS specialists with variousbackgrounds and cultures. Also speaking toother participants during the breaks anddinners gave a lot of insight into GISeducation in other countries. And of coursethere was plenty of time to explore the Indiancoastal zone!

Land Use Modelling

South Asian guests help model Dutchland useAmsterdamFrom Jasper Dekkers and Eric Koomen

The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam hosted thesecond part of the InterGIS Summer Schoolfrom September 30 to October 2. The firstpart of this Summer School was organised inSalzburg and is described in this newsletterby our two Dutch UNIGIS students whoattended Willem Steenis and PatrickBrooijmans. The background to the InterGIS-project is described more extensively in aprevious newsletter. The central theme of theAmsterdam workshop was “land usemodelling”. It was attended by around 20people, consisting of students, staff-membersand employees from India, Sri Lanka,Austria, Spain and the Netherlands.

The first day, the participants of theworkshop were invited to the annual



ESRI GIS-conference in Rotterdam.Afterwards, the group made a guided GIStour around the world’s largest harbour,which was highly appreciated by allparticipants.

The second day began with anintroductory lecture on land usemodelling in general: various concepts ofmodelling land use were introduced andsome examples discussed. Next, the LandUse Scanner model was presented,followed by an individual hands-onexploration of the model. After somepractice, most participants were able toalter the model settings and build theirown scenario of future land use for theNetherlands.

On Saturday all participants had toactually demonstrate their knowledge.Therefore, the Unigis-method of testingthe expertise acquired was adopted: theparticipants were divided into groups ofthree and had to complete and present amodelling assignment. The groups wereasked to model the future of theNetherlands in 2030. Based on anextensive description of futuredevelopments, they had to select how tomodel these developments.

A crucial element in this assignment wasthe selection of the appropriate spatialdata and the subsequent assignment ofrelative weights to these datasets. Theresults were impressive! Within one dayand without any prior knowledge of eitherland use modelling or the Netherlandsitself, the groups were able to produceplausible maps of future land use in ourcountry. It was clear that groups withidentical scenario’s could come up withcontrasting results, which taught us

something about the

importance of the ‘human expert’ factorin this type of modelling. The workshopwas concluded with a certificateceremony on a canal-boat trip. For ourSouth-Asian guests especially, this was ahighlight of their trip.

Workshops 2005

In the mood for your next workshop? In 2005we will organize two workshops again, makesure to register on time and have finished therequired modules!

Workshop IIfrom Monday 23 May 2005 to Thursday 26May 2005Workshop IIIfrom Monday 13 June 2005 to Thursday 16June 2005

Register now on the UNIGIS website!

MSc news


MSc studentsFrom Margaret Jones

As reported already, our recentlysuccessful MSc students were invited tocome to the University for a GraduationCeremony. They each presented theirwork to an audience including bothUNIGIS people (past and present) andtheir family and friends.

We have also had two more studentssuccessfully complete their studies, bothfrom South Africa: Inge Netterberg andRichard Kaufholz. Inge researched thetopic “GIS and Ecological Networks”.She made a special trip here from SouthAfrica to present her work. And Richardpresented his dissertation on “BuildingDensities”. Richard was working here fora year, and managed to complete therequirements for his MSc just before hisdeparture.

There are other students busy working ontheir research, and some prospectivestudents who may start soon.

News of an MSc graduateFrom Richard Kaufholz

Since graduating, I have had three(sunny) months to reflect on my workdone in Amsterdam. Most difficult, I havefound, has been letting go of the entireexperience and moving on to somethingnew. In a positive light, this is a sure signof the influence my study and time inHolland had on my life. I have also spentmany hours debating what it is exactlythat I would like to continue with (job,academics, etc.), but do realise what awonderful array of options an MSc givesme. As I while away in the sun overChristmas, I am rather optimistic that Iwill stumble across a good opportunityand who knows, maybe I’ll have toprepare to brave the cold of Europe oncemore!Vrolijke Kerstmis en een gelukkignieuwe jaar voor iedereen!!

People


New colleagues

We are Diana Henriques and PauloRosa, coming from Portugal, moreprecisely from sunny Lisbon. At thepresent time we are doing an internship(with the duration of 4 months) at theVrijeUniversiteit,working in aproject relatedto Land useresearch at the SPINlab, and also makingan interactive CD for UNIGISAmsterdam.We completed our environmentalengineering studies a year ago, in theNew University of Lisbon, following thehealth-engineering branch. Afterwards weworked and collaborated in researchprojects related to environment and newinformation technologies in GASA(Environmental Systems Analysis Groupof the New University of Lisbon), thePortuguese Geographical Institute and thecompany YDreams.Time goes fast, so we only have twomore months to enjoy and learn from thisexperience, which so far has been great.

Xevi leftFor the last nine months, Xevi Turró IPalé from UNIGIS Spain was working atthe SPINlab helping us design the newSPINlab website. Xevi created also thewebsites of some of our bigger projects.In November Xevi returned to Gironawhere he is tutor and webmaster.

Eduardo in NYStart spreadin' the news, I'm leavin' todayI want to be a part of it, New York, New York

The only difference between me and thestart of the song is that I am already inNew York. I left Amsterdam last monthto embrace a huge challenge: To live inthe big apple for a few months, whileworking at the United Nations in a borderdemarcation project. I am responsible forthe high-resolution satellite imagerypreparation. On my previous research ingeo-visualization, I acquired someexperience with high-resolution images.There, the main goal was to producevisualization alternatives that would aidgeo-perception and spatial thinking. Thistime, the main issue is Accuracy!I always thought of New York as animmense city, a hard world on its own.But living here I realized the city is verypleasant and, I almost dare say, small.Small in the good sense, the sense that wecan walk almost everywhere and evenmeet the same familiar faces over andover again.Merry Christmas and Happy New Yearfrom Snowy New York (it’s not snowingyet, but withthis cold, bythe time youread this NYwill be dressedin white forsure).

Alumni news


Alumni snippitsfrom Bart Kusse

Snippits, thoughts.It is getting colder, days are gettingshorter, getting darker, so,thé time of the year to recap all that hashappened this year and bring up someideas for next year.

Last year we celebrated our 10th

anniversary and tried to establish analumni forum to provide the possibilityfor graduates to stay in touch with theUNIGIS programme. Especially sincethis can provide you with an opportunityto stay in touch with the development ofthe programme, relations with otheruniversities, and also for new students tolearn from your experiences. As you mayhave read in this newsletter there havebeen quite a number of events throughoutthis year, such as at the graduationceremony in September, which wasplanned to keep you up to date andprovide the forum for networking.However, it resulted thattime was too short for the lecture anddialogue. Nevertheless, the alumni whowere present had the possibility ofnetworking.

Now looking forward into the future:what do we have in store for you nextyear?

Well, to be honest, thisalso depends on whatyou want, because wecan provide you withthe venue and theorganisation, but youneed to help us withthe topic you wouldlike to hear about andperhaps a speaker. There has already beenone entry for this, so “let’s hear it”. Otherapplicants can register at the email-address below.

Furthermore I think the coming year willbe an interesting one from the point ofview of GIS. This because it is expectedthat in 2005 many innovative GISprojects will start. From the alumni pointof view this is also particularlyinteresting, since we have been discussingthe new GIS innovations for several yearsnow and finally there seems to be a basisfor this. For those of you who are stillworking with GIS, this can also providesome topics.

So from a GIS view a lot will behappening next year. I sincerely hope tosee you next year and have a chance tospeak to one another.Happy holidays to you all and a GIS-full2005.

PS: We’ll be expecting a lot of emailsfrom you at [email protected] .


NEWS

� New telephone / fax numbers

From December 2004 the VU telephone andfax numbers will change.Our new numbers will start with 020-598instead of 020-444. We kindly ask you to useour new numbers from now on:Phone: 31 20 5986099Fax: 31 20 5986004

� FAQ section on the UNIGIS website

After five years of intensive use of the UNIGISwebsite and thanks to the feedback of ourstudents we have created now a new section ofFrequently Asked Questions (FAQ). Here thetutors and the UNIGIS administration will putall questions about the modules, assignments,software and practical things.

This way we hope that the students will geteasier and faster an answer to their questionswithout having to contact the UNIGISAmsterdam Office first.However not all questions will appear in thissection, so please do not hesitate to contact usif you have specific questions.

On behalf of the UNIGIS teamwe wish you

Puzzle solution:

Take the middle two letters from each word,and they form the first and last letters of thenext word downwards.The hidden message:GOOD HOLIDAYS FROM UNIGIS

UNIGIS AmsterdamVrije UniversiteitFEWEB/REDe Boelelaan 11051081 HV AmsterdamNetherlands

Phone: +31-20-598 6099Fax: +31-20-598 6004www.feweb.vu.nl/[email protected]

Your contribution

In future editions of the newsletter we wouldlike to include input from our readers:students, ex-students (alumni), staff. So pleasewrite to us if you have anything tosay relating to UNIGIS or the GIS world – weshall be happy to hear from you.

Send the input to [email protected] under thesubject ‘newsletter’.ColophonThe UNIGIS Newsletter is published two times ayear and is freely distributed among UNIGISstudents and related companies all over the world.Editors: Margaret Jones, Eleni Koulouki,Mathilde Molendijk

Documents

UNIGIS Amsterdam Newsletterspinlab.vu.nl/websites/unigis/downloads/newsletters/unigis... · The time has come around again for another newsletter, and as we approach the end of the