Posted by Dr Serena Coetzee on 2 Sep 2010, 18:33 (last modified on 3 Sep 2010, 11:07)

The first bilateral workshop of the research cooperation between the Department of Computer Science at UP and the Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformatics at the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences in Wrocław took place on 2 and 3 September 2010 in Wrocław, Poland. The title of the cooperation is 'Volunteered geographical information (VGI) for spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) and geoportals'. The principal researcher on the South African side is Serena Coetzee from the Polelo research group in the department. The Polish counterpart is Adam Iwaniak. The project builds on existing projects and collaborative work between Polish and South African researchers in the field of geographical information science (GISc) and will explore the impact of volunteered geographical information (which could be viewed as the ‘wikification’ of spatial data) on spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) and geoportals (networked geographical information services to support cartographic work and spatial analysis). It will also explore the impact of volunteered geographical information on the construction, standardization and integration of services in an SDI.

The South African team includes Prof Derrick Kourie who leads the Fastar research group in the department, Mr Antony Cooper, a PhD student in the department who works at the CSIR, and hopefully some postgraduate students will join them team next year. The Polish team includes Dr Witold Palusyznski and Dr Tomasz Kubik from the Institute of Computer Engineering, Control and Robotics at the Wrocław University of Technology, Dr Paweł Netzel from the University of Wrocław, Prof Dariusz Waldziński from the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztynand and Iwona Kaczmarek, a PhD student at the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences.

During this first workshop, the two teams were introduced to each other and a number of sub-projects were identified on which the teams will work together. The next workshop is planned for the second part of February in Pretoria, South Africa.