FIG Congress Sydney, to take place from 11th to 16th April 2010, will be the highlight of the four-year term of office of the current FIG Council and Commissions. We will have a full professional programme consisting of more than eighty technical and poster sessions, several workshops, pre-congress seminars, and special forums. The technical programme will offer six-to eight hundred papers. We expect more than two thousand participants from almost a hundred countries, and there is no doubt that Sydney 2010 will be the global focus of survey activity in April 2010 and the place to be for all land professionals.

Climate Change
The opening session will provide a spectacular introduction to congress, its theme and its unique location. Professor Tim Flannery, one of Australia’s leading thinkers, an internationally acclaimed scientist and conservationist, and 2007 Australian of the Year, will give the Congress Keynote. In line with our theme, ‘Facing the Challenges’, he will discuss climate change, one of the greatest challenges currently facing our world and profession, drawing on ideas from his groundbreaking book,The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth, which debuted onThe New York Timesbestseller list.


Plenary Sessions
The first plenary will take stock of work through a keynote presentation by the president of FIG and invited presentations from selected FIG office bearers. The session will profile the work of the FIG Council, Commissions, and Task Forces, and highlight particular achievements such as seminar workshops, agreements and so on. The second plenary session will examine the accelerating trend towards a more spatially-enabled society and what that means for our profession.


Global to Local
Issues addressed will range from the global perspective to what spatial enablement means in two quite different regions of the planet, Latin America and Australasia. The third plenary will further develop the congress theme, with three internationally recognised speakers exploring in detail three big contemporary challenges: climate change, disaster management and land governance.


Future
The final plenary session will look at the future, including the technologies that will influence our profession as we move into the second decade of the twenty-first century. This glimpse will be described from the three diverse perspectives of an eminent scientist, a commercial technology evangelist, and a custodian of public infrastructure.


Papers
Congress will be held at the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre in Darling Harbour, conveniently situated within walking distance of hotels and the central business district. A call for papers has been published, and online submission is now open (see website 1). The deadline for submission of abstracts for both non-peer-reviewed papers and full papers for peer review is 22nd September 2009.

We look forward to welcoming you all ‘down under’ in April 2010!