From May 28 to June 1, 2023, the FIG Working Week took place in Orlando, Florida, under the theme “Protecting Our World—Conquering New Frontiers.” The week-long conference, which brings together the international community of surveying, geoinformatics, and spatial planning professionals, combines the annual General Assembly of the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) with technical sessions and workshops, a trade exhibition, and a variety of side events and social gatherings. i3mainz was represented by active contributions from Hartmut Müller and Markus Schaffert.
Markus Schaffert chaired the session “Technological Advances in Spatial Data Handling.” Anna Shnaidman, Markus Schaffert, Naa Dedei Tagoe, Ho Sin-Yi, Sagi Dalyot (from right to left), Photo: Leonardo Franchi, all rights reserved
As early as Sunday, Hartmut Müller presented the scope of work for the new FIG Task Force “The Role of FIG in International Trends and the Future Geospatial Information Ecosystem” to the FIG General Assembly. He is a member of this task force and represented its chair, Abbas Rajabifard, who was unable to attend.
The task force’s practical work began the following Tuesday with the forum of the directors-general of the FIG member associations. Hartmut Müller played an active role in shaping the forum, which specifically incorporated input from the audience to be included in the task force’s future strategy.
On Monday, Markus Schaffert and Hartmut Müller played a key role in shaping the Technical Session “Advances in GEOAI” by delivering two of the three presentations. The lively discussion with the expert audience in attendance demonstrated that i3mainz, with its research topics, is at the forefront of international developments.
Markus Schaffert spoke about demographic change in rural Germany, which is characterized by an aging population and population decline and poses major challenges for all levels of government—for example, with regard to medical, social, and technical infrastructure. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) serve as a technical foundation for software solutions that help successfully manage such changes. A case study demonstrated the contributions that fuzzy logic and scenario planning can make as extensions of GIS.
In his presentation, Hartmut Müller outlined considerations regarding the potential impacts of artificial intelligence on the work of surveying engineers. He highlighted the various roles of a “Surveying Engineer 2.0”—such as knowledge manager, geodesist, information manager, data collector, system designer, field engineer, and quality manager, and explored the extent to which these various roles might change—or even be replaced—in the coming years due to the influence of artificial intelligence.
On May 30, Markus Schaffert chaired the session “Technological Advances in Spatial Data Handling.” The goal of this technical session was to present current developments in the processing of geodata and to convey the relevant skills and knowledge to specialist departments both within and outside the geodata field, in order to more effectively leverage geodata expertise for sustainable developments in socio-technical systems.
At the Annual Meeting—FIG Commission 3, five new working groups presented their strategies and objectives for the next four years. Hartmut Müller had chaired Commission 3 from 2019 to 2022. i3mainz will continue to actively shape the Commission’s work in the coming years. For example, Markus Schaffert will lead the working group “Geospatial Data: Professionalism, Technology, and Services ” from 2023 to 2026.
