Record-breaking Intergeo 2005

This year's Intergeo, held under the theme of Grenzen ûberschreiten was held in Düsseldorf, Germany, from 4th to 6th October, and all subsequently released statistics indicate new records for the event. The exhibition was visited by over 16,000 professionals, of whom about 15% from outside Germany. There were about 25,000 square metres of exhibition space accommodating more than five hundred exhibitors from 24 countries. The annual DVW (German Association for Geodesy, Geoinformation and Land Management) conference attracted about 1,600 delegates, also the best figure for recent years.

The conference was held jointly with Geodetic Week (Geodätische Woche). Around a hundred participants attended the special session at the top of the conference programme, the traditional FIG Forum. The topic this year was ‘Tsunami - Surveyors Contributions in Risk Prevention’ and Adam Kerr made presentations on behalf of FIG Commission 4
on ‘Hydrography and Disaster Management - The Role
of Hydrography in the Management of Marine Disasters’. Two other presentations in this session were by Professor Markus Rothacher and Dr Jörg-Peter Schmitter, who described German contributions in the wake of the tsunami catastrophe, andrebuilding work in Sri Lanka.

FIG attendance at Intergeo 2006 – by now a long tradition – included participating in the exhibition on the DVW stand, distributing information about the Federation and future FIG events, especially FIG Congress 2006, to take place from 8th to 13th October 2006, immediately after the famous Oktoberfest. Next year's Intergeo will be held from 10th to 12th October 2006.


5th FIG Regional Conference, Ghana

The 5th FIG Regional Conference is to be held in Accra, Ghana, from March 8th to 11th 2006. This conference is organised by the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) and the Ghana Institution of Surveyors (GhIS) and will be co-hosted by the Ministry of Land, Forestry and Mines (MLFM) of Ghana. It will be the first FIG Regional Conference to be held in West Africa and continues the series of previous con-ferences held in Nairobi, Kenya in 2001, in Marrakech, Morocco in 2003 and Jakarta, Indonesia in 2004. As with previous FIG regional conferences, the one in Accra will be organised in co-operation with other international and regional organisations, such as the United Nations and its agencies (e.g. the UN Economic Commission for Africa and UN-Habitat), as well as with international geospatial societies. Regional partners will include associations in Africa. The conference is open to participants from all over the world, the main focus being, however, on Africa, and especially West Africa. To help participation from West African countries the conference will be held in English and French. All previous FIG regional conferences have included participants from thirty to fifty countries, representing all continents.

The focus of the 5th FIG Regional Conference under the theme ‘Promoting Land Administration and Good Governance’ will be on land administration and good governance as conditions for sustainable development. These topics will be discussed in relation to the technical tools offered by modern surveying technology to promote these main goals. Sub-themes of the conference will cover all ten FIG technical commissions, plus the three divisions of the Ghana Institution of Surveyors (GhIS): general practice, land surveying and quantity surveying. The objective of the conference is therefore how to effectively utilise modern technologies to promote good land administration strategies in furtherance of appropriate governance practices to bring about integrated economic, environmental and sustainable development.

The conference theme embraces the following policy issues and specific topics:

• modern technology and land administration
  
• professional qualifications and standards
  
• quantity surveying
  
• urban-rural interrelationship in land administration
  
• positioning and measurements
  
• surveying and geoinformatics education
  
• mine surveying.

All ten FIG technical commissions will attend the conference, and papers are therefore invited on all the following topics: Professional Standards and Practice, Professional Education, Spatial Information Management, Hydrography, Positioning and Measurement, Engineering Surveys, Cadastre & Land Management, Spatial Planning & Development, Valuation and the Management of Real Estate, and Construction Economics and Management.

The conference will take place at La Palm Beach Hotel on the Accra’s Golden Coast. The programme has been carefully prepared to provide high-profile technical sessions, along with superb entertainment, to include social events, a technical tour with eco-tourism (canopy walk), gala dinner and opening and closing ceremonies rich with Ghanaian cultural heritage.

The Organising Committee therefore has singular pleasure in extending a welcome to Ghana and wishes you a pleasant stay before, during and after the conference.

We look forward to meeting you in Accra.