Intergeo: Biggest Marketplace for Innovation

By Wim van Wegen, editorial manager

Present at the press conference were Professor Dieter Kempf of the Federal Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM), Rainer Bomba, State Secretary at the German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development (BMVBS), Matt Delano on behalf of event sponsor Trimble, Olaf Freier of HINTE Messe- und Ausstellungs-GmbH, Professor Karl-Friedrich Thöne of DVW, and  Ed Parson, Geospatial Technologist at Google.

"The Nuremberg sky is sunny and bright today, and so is the atmosphere at Intergeo. But I don't want to get swept away on a wave of euphoria," Karl-Friedrich Thöne said. He pointed out that the combination of the trade show and the conference is a smart one. As the main trends observed so far, he mentioned geodesy and the modern state, disaster management and environment-related subjects. Thöne emphasised the importance of governments agreeing that geoinformation is the engine for the economy.

Olaf Freier underlined that Intergeo is bringing together the best of geomatics. This year, the show is being attended by 527 exhibitors from no less than 30 different countries accounting for 28,000 square metres of stand space. One third of the show's visitors have come from abroad. These positive statistics once again represent an increase on previous years' figures. Freier also expressed how happy he was with the policy of switching host cities, the new target groups the show was attracting, and all the new aspects of geoinformation that were emerging. Furthermore, he added that social media activity and the official Intergeo app are helping to encourage contact within the industry, making Intergeo more interactive and bringing geoinformation closer to the citizen.

State Secretary Rainer Bomba had just completed a tour of Intergeo and remarked that, being an engineer himself by profession, he now felt that familiar urge to get involved again. Mr. Bomba pointed out the importance of geoinformation when it comes to road travel and to urban development. Nowadays, road travel is unthinkable without navigation and satellites, and he illustrated his point using the examples of finding the smartest route, working out how to miss traffic jams and avoiding toll roads.

State Secretary Bomba also referred to the prestigious Galileo project. He assured the audience that the Galileo project will be in operation by 2014 or 2015. "Europe as an economic continent cannot function without its own positioning system," he remarked. He admitted that the taxpayer has the right to see that progress really is being made.

Professor Dieter Kempf stressed that he was very confident in the success of the co-located navigation conference. Many topics have lots of overlap with the industry present at Intergeo. He said he was proud of the co-operation with Intergeo. The same goes for Matt Delano, who said he regarded Intergeo as the most important industry event, not just in Germany but in the entire geomatics world. According to Delano, geoinformation serves the industry and makes a better world.

Ed Parsons (Google) was introduced by Hagen Graeff with the remark that Google Earth is a large and impressive engine for geoinformation.  Ed Parsons, who used to work in the field of remote sensing and Earth observation in earlier days, quoted Isaac Newton - "We can see so far because we are standing on the shoulders of giants" - to reflect the importance of geoinformation, and perhaps more specifically the role that internet infrastructure plays in it. Parsons also indentified a current shift in the way technology is adopted. "New technologies today no longer come first to the industry; instead, they come first to the customer." He also emphasised the major role of cloud-based data infrastructure which is increasingly found embedded in day-to-day services.

Despite the current uncertainty in the economy, there are many chances for geoinformation, Karl-Friedrich Thöne stated. People within the industry are becoming more creative under such challenging circumstances - perhaps new funding models are necessary. According to State Secretary Bomba, at least German politics is on the right track. Thöne underlined the need for transparency and participation, and said it was time for open governments, which will cut costs in a significant way.