AfricaGEO to Highlight Geomatics Practice in Africa

The AfricaGEO conference in July 2014 promises a range of interesting papers with a focus on geomatics practice in Africa. Parallel sessions are organised to offer interesting sessions across a broad spectrum of areas, including: 1) cadastres and land tenure, 2) technology, engineering, precise surveying and scanning, 3) GIS, SDI and data management, 4) remote sensing and photogrammetry, 5) geodesy, and 6) education and professional aspects.

The cadastral and land tenure sessions have a good mix of theory and practice and will be of interest to policymakers, academics and practising surveyors. Customary land management and the concerns of urbanisation and peri-urban land management feature strongly in a number of presentations. Processes and tools for land reform in South Africa are also subject to critique, an essential process in improving delivery of land tenure in South Africa. Cadastral systems development and reform in African countries such as Mozambique and Lesotho are investigated. A local property lawyer with extensive experience in pro-poor land tenure, draws the link between marriage and acquisition of land rights and tenure, while another paper explores the interface between offshore and onshore property rights for the first time in the South African context. On the theory side, insight is provided into the use of grounded theory in cadastral research, while there is also attention for the test of a method of coding qualitative field data on land tenure from Giyani, South Africa.

GIS in the African context

There are sessions that will be of interest to GIS practitioners. Many papers deal with the application of GIS in the African context. The development and use of web-based GIS applications will be reported on, and the Open Source GIS community will be presenting the results of some research. There are going to be some interesting applications of spatial data acquisition and management. For example, heritage site documentation and the management of large data sets. Remote sensing, photogrammetry, laser scanning and engineering surveying papers will showcase some of the latest technologies being developed and researched.   

Academics will benefit greatly by attending the sessions on education, and there is also a dedicated workshop on education in Africa. 

Geodesy

Geodesy is featured in two conference sessions. The SA Geoid and TrigNet will be of particular interest to those using the products of the South African national survey office. But of general interest will be the presentations featuring the revival of locally-relevant global geodesy. One of the papers deals with the role of the Hartebeesthoek Observatory in space geodesy and another paper promotes the idea of a multi-technique space geodesy analysis centre at the University of Cape Town.

These are just some of the ideas which will be presented by the wide range of academics and practitioners from South Africa, Africa and abroad.  Hosted in Cape Town with its many tourist attractions, this conference promises a professional and personal experience that attendees are unlikely to forget.

For more information on the programme go to the AfricaGEO website.