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The (Department of Public Development and Maintenance) Dienst Ruimtelijke Ontwikkeling en Beheer of the municipality of Gouda has been using an Océ TCS500 large format colour-system (printer with scanner) for the past six months. Geo-information employee Ben van Eijk, CAD-GIS- employee Jeroen Rijkse, and data manager for road and water works Lex Rietbroek, tell us more.

A new technique allows the printing of particles as small as 60 nanometers - roughly 100 times smaller than a human red blood cell - in complex patterns at a resolution of 100,000 dots per inch. The level of control offered by the nanoprinting technique could lead to breakthroughs in nanoscale biosensors, ultratiny lenses inside future optical chips, and the fabrication of nanowires for next-generation computer chips.

The Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association’s SDI (Spatial Data Infrastructure) Cookbook (www.gsdi.org) defines SDI as “the relevant base collection of technologies, policies and institutional arrangements that facilitate the availability of and access to spatial data.”

The quality of spatial data has always been an important component of mapping and spatial data handling. In Enschede, the Netherlands, it was the subject of the fifth Spatial Data Quality Conference, held June 13 to 15. Hosted by the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), it was organized by ITC and the ISPRS commission II, working group 7. The symposium brought together experts from around the world to present the latest developments in spatial data quality.

A curious trait found within most moments of progress is that any technological advancement saves work and yet, at the same time, creates more work. Airborne surveying is no exception. Pessimists reading this should not assume that more work is a bad thing and proof of a failed idea. On the contrary, it illustrates that airborne surveillance work, much like nature, abhors a vacuum. With developments in processing speed and simplicity come reduced costs, new applications, and rising demand for airborne-derived data resources – in short, the opportunity for more work.

As of the 15th of May 2007 the European directive called INSPIRE will be in force. Its purpose is to come to a ‘infrastructure for geographic information in Europe’. The ambition is great an will, once implemented in national legislation, have a considerable impact on the information management of government organizations.

Geoff Zeiss is a man of broad geospatial and IT knowledge with a great talent to transform it into clear and inspiring thoughts. Being a chief technology guru at Autodesk his thoughts and ideas reach far beyond the limits of his company. In the interview we discussed about several critical trends, thus enabling you to get an excellent first hand insight in the present and future developments in the geospatial industry.

Germany has the largest resources of timber in the European Union, more than Scandinavia. As during the last decades the consumption of timber has decreased, the growth was not harvested. Thus, at many places forest management often only insufficiently know how much harvestable timber is situated in their woods.

The availability of digital spatial data is essential for the functioning of modern societies. This has been recognized by many international initiatives, such as the recent INSPIRE directive in Europe and global GSDI or thematic GMES or GBIF. Such initiatives focus primarily on setting up basic infrastructures for the delivery of spatially referenced data or their metadata. The value of these technical infrastructures is, however, finally evaluated on the basis of the added value of the user-oriented interface services that they are able to support and enable.