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Upcoming u_Lecture Webinars

UNIGIS u_Lecture webinars are presented by invited speakers from academia, the GI industry, public administration, NGOs and other actors in the field of Geoinformatics and GIScience. Although this online lecture series is primarily designed for UNIGIS alumni and active UNIGIS students, participation is free for everybody. u_Lectures autumn/winter: 21 October 2014:Ed Parsons, Google Google Maps: Reinventing Cartography 25 November 2014:Darren Ruddell, University of Southern CaliforniaGeospatial Technologies and Urban Resilience: Building a Better World 16 December 2014:Muki Haklay, University College LondonWhat geographic information science got to do with citizen science? 27 January 2015 (double feature, MSc work):Heidi El-Hosaini, MSc student @ …

UNIGIS Day Switzerland

No matter if you listen to experts from the domain of environmental or regional planning, the administration of agricultural subsidies or the simulation and visualization of urban masterplans – GIS plays and will play a significant role. And thus fundamental GIS education is widely demanded. This is the essence of this year’s UNIGIS Day Switzerland which took place last Friday (09-19) at the University of Applied Sciences in Rapperswil (HSR). This is the place to be at UNIGIS Day Switzerland! Approximately 50 UNIGIS alumni and students, active members of the Swiss GIS community and experts from industry, administration and academia …

UNIGIS MSc Days in Nepal

UNIGIS@Kathmandu organised a week long intensive workshop from September 1-6, 2014 at Kathmandu Forestry College (KAFCOL), Nepal. The workshop focussed on enhancing the geospatial analytical competences of UNIGIS MSc candidates by critically discussing their Master theses currently being prepared by 9 students. The students presented preliminary findings of their research encompassing a range of topics highly relevant to the environment and society in the Himalayas.  Their research areas covered land use / land cover changes, forest biomass estimation in various ecological zones, soil carbon estimation, habitat suitability for particular tree and animal species as well as applications of GIS for evaluating …

First Graduate with Salzburg-Quito Dual Degree

On June 18th, Diego Xavier Morales Jadán, the first Latin American graduate of the UNIGIS Dual Degree program established between Z_GIS, University of Salzburg and USFQ Quito, Ecuador, had the chance to participate in the official graduation ceremony taking place at the Great Hall (Aula) of Salzburg University. The degree award document was presented by Salzburg Rector Prof. Heinrich Schmidinger. Diego has earned this degree with fulfilling all course requirements and completing his Master Thesis on “Development of a spatial load forecasting module for optimizing planning of electricity supply” in Ecuador. On behalf of the UNIGIS team in Ecuador and …

UNIGIS professionals @ work

This weekend a group of 16 professionals from various disciplines got together in Salzburg to participate in an introductory workshop of the UNIGIS professional certificate distance learning program in Geoinformatics. …Wait a minute, did you say WORKshop? Look at the pictures! Hm, yes, there was work done, but the pictures illustrate the probably most important part of this event: Getting to know each other to go together into a year of intensive learning, requiring discussion and mutual support!

Registration countdown for the 5th Open Source Opportunities in GIS Summer School

The 5th Open Source Opportunities in GIS Summer School focused on Open Web Services and Web Map Applications will take place from 7th to 11th of July 2014 in Girona. It’s organized by SIGTE of the University of Girona with the contribution of Prodevelop (partner de OpenGeo) and the Nottingham Geoespatial Institute of the University of Nottingham. The Open Source Opportunities in GIS Summer School is an initiative aimed to meet the GIS professional demands related to free and open solutions, and we are working on this vision from the start. The Summer School 2014 will be focused on the …

Winners: UNIGIS Master Thesis Award 2014

We congratulate all finalists – Marco Saner, Keith Peterson and Bernd Härtwig – to being selected as the top MSc theses in 2013! In a public vote following brief presentations in an online webinar format  Keith Peterson was identified as the overall winner. In his master thesis he presents an approach for Monitoring Mangrove Reforestation with TerraSAR-X in Senegal.  Learn more about this exciting research on our UNIGIS Alumni Website! Congratulations to Keith from the entire UNIGIS team. We are looking forward to welcoming Keith at the AGIT / GI_Forum Symposium (July 2-4 2014) in Salzburg. 

A step towards better maps

Good maps require more than just displaying your data, add a legend, a scale bar and the “obligatory” north arrow. If you want to “hook” your audience and tell your “location based story” in an intuitive way, there is a lot to consider: The nature of the phenomenon you are portraying, the application context, the target audience or the chosen technology are only a few of the multitude of variables to take care of.  The latest release of the UNIGIS Module on Cartography and Visualization provides essential information on how to transform your data into appealing, yet effective maps “that …

Capacity Building Initiatives of UNIGIS Latin America

During the last weeks, UNIGIS in Latin America carried out a series of capacity building initiatives in Ecuador and Colombia. By beginning of March, a new residential program for GIS-based Management of Indigenous Territories in the Amazon Lowlands was initiated under the lead of Richard Resl, UNIGIS program director at USFQ. He and his highly motivated staff welcomed a first group of members of the indigenous communities of Woarani, Siona, A’ I (Cofan), Siekopaai, Shuar, Kichwa, and Achuars to become part of this initative over the next five months. For further information please see: http://amazongisnet.blogspot.com In cooperation with the UNIGIS …

GIS for managing vulnerable environments of the Galapagos-Islands

Over the last decades, the Galapagos Islands have faced a considerable rise in human activities (tourism, population growth and migration, exploitation of natural resources like fishing and agriculture) which has resulted in increased pressure on both, the marine and terrestrial ecological system of the islands. In order to develop a GIS-based information-management system that allows controlling of human interaction with the islands’ environment and adjusting human activities to its limited capacities, a group an international group of GIS-experts under the lead of ZGIS was invited by local authorities and the UNIGIS-partner in Ecuador USFQ to participate in a 7-day workshop …