Map Middle East 2006 conference ends

The conference held under the patronage of Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai, UAE Minister of Finance and Industry and Chairman of Dubai Municipality with the theme, 'Geospatial for All and All for Geospatial,' was jointly organized by Dubai Municipality and GIS Development.

The conference, focused on the capability of geospatial information and technology in improving quality of life for the public, was addressed by 28 keynote speakers with 59 work papers being presented over four days.

Three papers were selected by the Technical Coordination Committee as best papers of the conference based on their technical content, adherence to the conference theme and presentation. During the closing ceremony, trophies were presented to these winners by Manal Al Shamlan, Head of GIS Development Section in the GIS Centre at Dubai Municipality and Swati Grover, Regional Manager, Middle East and North Africa, GIS Development.

The winning papers included "Local Urban Observatory at Sin El Fil Municipality, Lebanon" by Mounia Bedran Seba, Victoria Zwein, Khatib & Alami, CEC, Lebanon, "Tracking Shipping Containers with a Geospatial Information System for National Security," by Helmut Kraenzle, Professor in Geography, UAE University and "Progress towards the implementation and development of Tide-Met stations in the Emirate of Dubai," by a team of Dubai Municipality officials that included Yousuf AbdulRahman Al Marzouqui, Mehran Samdholla Ghassemi, Satheesh Gopi Neelakandan, and Amira Ahmed Al Zarouni.

Over 1000 delegates from 41 countries attended the four-day conference and the accompanying exhibition, which was participated by 51 exhibitors from the government and the industry. Military survey UAE, Intergraph and Dubai Municipality shared the top honours for the best exhibitors.

"The conference was also aimed at delivery of E-government services using GIS technology and promoting GIS technology and its applications for land administration, security, and infrastructure development like roads, transport, electricity, gas and telecommunication," said Eng. Mohammed Al Zaffin, Director of GIS Centre at Dubai Municipality.

The various keynote and technical sessions focused on contemporary topics and various people from the industry and academics in the Middle East and abroad concentrated on throwing valuable insight into the growth of Geoinformation and Geospatial sciences in today's world.

Also as part of the Map Middle East 2006, the First GIS Students Forum was organized by Dubai Municipality in cooperation with the Ministry of Education in which 60 students from 12 schools in the UAE participated.

Wednesday's presentations included "UAE Space Reconnaissance Center: A Key Element In National Security Protection" by Major Ali M Al Shehhi, Manager, Falcon UGS, Space Reconnaissance Center, UAE Air Force & Air Defense, "Tracking Shipping Containers with a Geospatial Information System for National Security" by Prof. Helmut Kraenzle, Director of Masters Program in GIS and Remote Sensing, UAE University, "Overlay analysis of GIS Layers from an Integrated Geospatial Database to Evaluate Changes on Al Sammalyah Island" by Salem Essa, from the Geology Department, UAE.

University, "How would the population growth affect the water resources in Dubai?" by Ahmed A Murad from the Geology Department, College of Sciences, UAE University, and "Soil Thematic Geo Data base for Dubai Emirate using Remote Sensing & GIS" by Hussein Harahsheh, Global Scan Technologies, Dubai, "Commercial Open Source Geospatial Software & the Enterprise Geospatial Market for Infrastructure" by Geoff Zeiss, Director of Technology, Autodesk Inc, in addition to a workshop on GIS Project Management by Prof. A R Dasgupta from the Bhaskaracharya Institute for Space Applications and Geoinformatics, Gandhinagar, India.