Posted by Dr Serena Coetzee on 7 Feb 2011, 21:30 (last modified on 18 Feb 2011, 08:59)

On Thursday, 17 February 2011 at 11:00 Adam Iwaniak and Tomasz Kubik will each present an open lecture at the CSIR Knowledge Commons on 'The role of metadata in current and the future GIS' and 'Open source and spatial data infrastructures (SDIs)' respectively. Adam and Tomasz are from the Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformatics at the Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences (WUEL) in Poland. Tomasz also holds a position at the Institute of Computer Engineering, Control and Robotics at the Wroclaw University of Technology. They are visiting South Africa as part of a collaboration between the University of Pretoria and WUEL. The project is funded by a joint research grant under the SA/Poland agreement on cooperation in Science and Technology. Serena Coetzee, Derrick Kourie and Antony Cooper (also from the CSIR) from the department are the local counterparts. Details about the lectures and presenters follow.


'The role of metadata in current and the future GIS'
Prof Adam Iwaniak
Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformatics,Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences

Abstract
The talk is about the role of metadata in the development of GIS systems. A general overview on that subject will be provided together with some comments on related technical and organizational aspects. Thus, some details on organizing and designing of data structures in GIS (supported with software tools as MGE, Geographics, GeoMedia) will be discussed together with some highlights on the importance of catalogue services and their use in SDI. This will be supported with some remarks on formal bases of metadata development, such as Dublin Core, ISO 19115, ISO 19139 standards and INSPIRE Implementing rules. The technical documentation should follow some rules described in legal acts. This topic will be discussed as well, with comments on difficulties in their interpretation and use. The talk will end with the description of semantic networks and some solution from the semantic technology stack, such as RDF, which can be used to annotate geospatial resources within a broader context. This will be accompanied with the concept of the thesauri that can extend search capabilities of current systems running in WWW.

Profile
Iwaniak Adam is an assistant professor at the Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformatics at the Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences. He also heads the GIS laboratory, which conducts research on the use of information technology in surveying and cartography, in particular, the generalization of digital maps, neural networks and currently works on SDIs. In the years 2006 to 2008 he served as Vice President of the Central Office of Geodesy and Cartography and was responsible for the establishment of the SDI in Poland.


‘Open source and spatial data infrastructures’
Prof Tomasz Kubik
1. Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformatics,Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences
2. Institute of Computer Engineering, Control and Robotics, Wroclaw University of Technology

Abstract
In the modern world, the role of geospatial information constantly increases. Knowledge about objects, events and processes associated with a specific location relative to the Earth is not only the subject of academic disputes or governmental activities. It is a part of a daily life and affects various actors interacting on the 21st century stage. For members of the information society the existence of geoenabled web services is as common and natural as the existence of web search engines, e-mail servers or auctioning and e-shopping systems. Nowadays all these IT solutions might interfere, resulting in a positive synergy effect. But the success in these areas depends strongly on advances in technology, and, especially, on data, standards and software use and availability. The lecture gives an overview of the three main components of geoenabled software systems from which various users can benefits. These are: open standards, open data and open source. The users, which were identified as members of education, government, business and home classes, might see these systems from different viewpoints. The analysis will highlight the role of open source software, open data and open standards in these areas.

Profile
Tomasz Kubik received M.Sc. Eng. degree in Control Eng. and Robotics in 1993, and Ph.D. degree in Automatics and Robotics in 1998 from Institute of Engineering Cybernetics, Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland. He completed an internship at The Research Institute for Symbolic Computation na Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria (1993-1996). He worked as Lecturer, Postdoctoral Fellow, at Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Oita University, Japan from November 2000 to June 2002, and from November 2002 to March 2003. From May 2007 to March 2008 he served as adviser for Information Systems for the Surveyor General of Poland. From 1997 to 1999 he was an Assistant, and then he became an Assistant Professor at the same university. From October 2010 he started to work at Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences. His current research interests are in GIS, SDI, AI and robotics.