New Leadership and FIG Working Week 2015

The new leadership of FIG started its four-year term (2015-2018) on 1 January 2015. FIG marked and celebrated this transition on 24 January at a kick-off event in Athens, Greece. In line with the theme of the new leadership for the term, the day was themed ‘Ensuring the Rapid Response to Change, Ensuring the Surveyor of Tomorrow’. National and international participants and speakers contributed to the interpretation of this theme, and their input will be used in the final FIG Council Work Plan which will be presented at the 38^th FIG General Assembly on 17 May 2015.

FIG Working Week 2015

Apart from the FIG General Assembly, the FIG Working Week 2015 will comprise a three-day conference with the overall theme of ‘From the Wisdom of the Ages to the Challenges of the Modern World’. The FIG Working Week 2015 will be held from 17-21 May in Sofia, Bulgaria. An ancient country with a wealth of heritage, Bulgaria is located at a strategic crossroads and its capital Sofia has a very rich history dating back many centuries. Lessons from that history may help us in our attempts to make the world a better, more comradely and more friendly place, in parallel with the development and advancement of modern technology.

The programme will be underpinned by invited high-level keynote speakers in three plenary sessions. The three themes will be: The surveyors’ response to changing the city management; The surveyors’ response to pro-growth land management; and Global and Regional Professional and Institutional reforms. Hereto a technical programme with up to 10 parallel sessions and workshops has already been designed within all the areas of the ten FIG Commissions. The technical programme covers a broad range of surveying areas, including session titles on Innovative Approaches in Teaching and Learning, Training New Generations, GIS, Geospatial Data Processing, Atmospheric Application of GNSS, Datum Definition, GNSS, Deformation Monitoring, Wide-area Engineering Surveys for Monitoring and Features Determination, Fit-for-purpose Land Administration, 3D Cadastre, Crowdsourced Land Administration,Environmental Challenges in Mega Cities, Disasters and Environmental Management, Urban and Rural Land Use Planning, Public Private Partnerships and Land Development, Taxation Assessing and Mass Valuation, Expropriation Appraisal, Current and Emerging Trends in Construction and Cost Management.

The FIG Working Week will gather together international practitioners and academics from all disciplines within the surveying, geospatial, natural and built environment professions. Surveys from recent years show that 50% of the participants represent the private sector and 50% the public sector and academia. In addition, a range of technical tours will be offered aimed at highlighting the role of the profession in Bulgaria and set in the broad context of FIGs Commissions. An excellent program of social functions/tours has been put together for the conference which promises delegates a tantalising taste of some of the great locations, cuisine and performing arts in Sofia and beyond.