Sixth URISA Caribbean GIS Conference

Caribbean GIS professionals will convene in Montego Bay, Jamaica, next week for the Sixth URISA Caribbean GIS Conference. The event is taking place from 12 to 16 November at the Hilton Rose Hall.

From preconference workshops and classes (including two-day ArcGIS Online and Mobile and Server GIS classes and URISA's GIS Program Management and Open Source GIS workshops) to a High Level Caribbean Geospatial Information Management Meeting, the conference showcases the best of GIS in the region.

The objectives of URISA's Caribbean GIS Conference include:
• To inform broad cross-section of Caribbean users about GIS technology and applications
• To share experiences regarding GIS implementation and management issues
• To establish new relationships with the vendor/consultant community
• To provide workshops and sessions that are application driven, and are relevant to the Caribbean community of GIS users
• To foster a Caribbean GIS network
• To assess the state of readiness of national and regional Spatial Data Infrastructures

URISA is pleased to announce three important keynote speakers:
• Wednesday, 14 November: Vanessa Lawrence - Director General and Chief Executive of Ordnance Survey, Great Britain's national mapping agency
• Thursday, 15 November: Georg Gartner – President, International Cartographic Association
• Friday, 16 November: E.G. Hunter – CEO, National Works Agency
 
A GIS poster competition will take place in memory of long-time committee member and Caribbean GIS advocate, Dr. Edsel Daniel.

More than two dozen sessions will be presented during the conference, including such important and timely topics as:
• Geoinformatics in Disaster Risk Assessment
• Climate Change Adaptation
• Improving Public Health Care
• NSDI Principles and Practices in Small Island Developing States
• Innovative GIS Solutions for Crime and Emergency Management
• Participatory and Open Source GIS Application
• GIS-based Solutions for National Planning and Management