Keynote Speakers
Dr. Nicholas Chrisman - GEOIDE Network Scientific Director
"A difference that makes a difference"
View Nicholas Chrisman's presentation as a pdf
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Nick Chrisman has been Professor of Geomatics Sciences at the Université Laval since January 2005. His main assignment is to serve as Scientific Director of the GEOIDE Network, a Network of Centres of Excellence. His research has concentrated on time in GIS, data quality testing and the social and institutional aspects of GIS. From 1987-2004 he was Professor of Geography at University of Washington. From 1982-87 he was Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In this job, he participated in a multidisciplinary team applying GIS to soil erosion planning. This project helped provide the impetus for the Wisconsin Land Records Committee that led to the current statewide GIS program. From 1972-82 he was a programmer at the Harvard Lab for Computer Graphics. He participated in the design of prototype GIS software. His PhD is from the University of Bristol (UK) based on research on error and statistics for categorical maps. For thirty years, his writing has tried to connect the technical details of GIS to larger issues of philosophy and culture.
Ed Parsons - Google
"When Good Enough, is Good Enough : Data quality requirements of the geoweb"
View Ed Parson's presentation as a pdf
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Ed Parsons is the Geospatial Technologist of Google, with responsibility for evangelising Google's mission to organise the world's information using geography, and tools including Google Earth, Google Maps and Google Maps for Mobile.
Ed was the first Chief Technology Officer in the 200-year-old history of Ordnance Survey, and was instrumental in moving the focus of the organisation from mapping to Geographical Information.
Ed came to the Ordnance Survey from Autodesk, where he was EMEA Applications Manager for the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) Division. During his tenure, he helped Autodesk to become one of the key providers of GIS software. Earlier in his career he was a Senior Lecturer at Kingston University, where he helped establish Europe's fs first undergraduate course in GIS.
He earned a Master degree in Applied Remote Sensing from Cranfield Institute of Technology and is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, London. He is the author of numerous articles, professional papers and presentations to International Conferences, and has developed one of most popular Weblogs in the Geospatial Industry, www.edparsons.com.
Harlan Onsrud - University of Maine
"Liability for Spatial Data Quality"
View Harlan Onsrud's presentation as a pdf
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Professor Onsrud’s research focuses on the analysis of legal, ethical, and institutional issues affecting the creation and use of digital databases and the assessment of the social impacts of spatial technologies. He is past president and current acting Executive Director of the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association (GSDI), past-president of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS), and past Chair of the U.S. National Committee (USNC) on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) of the National Research Council. He recently chaired a U.S. National Research Council Study on the Licensing of Spatial Data and Services and is a lifetime National Associate of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences. A unifying theme in much of his teaching and research involves the concept of "ethics driven design.".
He is a licensed engineer, land surveyor and attorney. Current and past research projects have been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Federal Geographic Data Committee, and the U.S. Department of Education. He teaches courses in Information Systems Law, Information Ethics, Cadastral and Land Information Systems, and Research Ethics.
Peter Fisher, Lex Comber and Richard Wadsworth - University of Leicester
"What is in a name? Semantics, Uncertainty Standards and Data Quality"
View Peter Fisher, Lex Comber and Richard Wadsworth's presentation as a pdf
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Pete Fisher is Professor of Geographical Information at the University of Leicester in the UK. For 14 years, until 2007, he was editor of the International Journal of Geographical Information Science (IJGIS). He has published nearly 100 journal papers and 50 book chapters, dominantly in the various issues related to uncertainty as it relates to geographical information.
Lex Comber has a background in land cover, land use and habitat research. He has developed methods for incorporating expert knowledge into analyses of land cover information and for integrating discordant land cover data. Addressing the uncertainties associated with data analysis integration has resulted in research into questions relating to data ontologies, semantics and meaning and to the impact of these factors on the use of spatial data.
Richard Wadsworth likes to use his mathematical/statistical skills at the interface between academic disciplines. While at CEH he has published on: invasive weeds, pollutants (agricultural & industrial), critical loads, land cover mapping and change detection (UK and tropics), erosion (terrestrial & coastal), decision support systems, hydro-ecology, remote sensing and uncertainty. During a brief foray into informatics he used land-cover to study the value of semantics and ontology to CEH. He joined CEH Monks Wood (then ITE) in 1994 and became head of the GIS Group in 1998 and later head of the Ecological Systems Modelling Group. He moved to Lancaster in 2007. Before CEH, he spent five years at Newcastle with the NERC/ESRC funded land use programme. His working life started with three years in Sierra Leone as the 'swamp development officer'.
Fisher, Comber and Wadsworth have collaborated on issues related to semantic heterogeneity in spatial information.
