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Geographical Information Systems (GIS) represents
one of the most rapidly expanding areas in Information Technology. GIS is seen increasingly
as an essential tool in many areas of government and business.
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Before you you have the electronic UNIGIS Newsletter, edition January 2010.
Another fresh group of UNIGIS students will start their studies next month!
What do we have for you in this newsletter? We have some updates and announcements, a short story on a nice MSc. thesis, some SPINlab research highlights, and much more.
Enjoy reading your UNIGIS news!
Unigis Amsterdam General News
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Developments in GIS at the VU
by Henk Scholten
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GIS developments at the VU have jumped to the next phase of development. What does that mean?
We are very proud that the VU has taken the decision to have GIS as part of the general infrastructure of the VU.
That means that all students and all stafmemebers will have access to this infrastructure: - ESRI software, Geographical Data (GDI) and a first- and second line helpdesk.
This is great news and the VU will be one of the first universities around the world which has made this step.
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The library organization has taken this responsibility, and they are proud and keen to take this responsibility. It goes even one step further, they also have bought the Microsoft SURFACE (a big Iphone) to unlock the hugh historical data (map) collection which will be digitized and georeferenced.
At the same moment we received the grant from the NWO, Dutch Science Foundation, to start the development of a GDI for academic research together with the universities of Wageningen and Delft and in close cooperation with Geonovum.
Why are these developments so important/ Because it means that our growth models we teached you about the developments in ICT (NOLAN) are not just theory.
It means that we have reached 'volwassenheid' in the application of GIS. It means that we have proven, as described in our book of the Role of Location in Science (Scholten et al 2009) that GIS can play a successful role in many sciences.
And above all, it means that it was a good decision from your perspective to start with the UNGIS course, the future is bright!
The Spinlab will have many new activities in 2010, and we like to get you involved. I will mention a few:
It will be 25 years ago that the faculty of social geography was closed at our university. This lead to two former VU employees forming a start-up company called Geodan, I was one of them. Now we have 130 collegues, and what is even more important, a close cooperation with the Spinlab. I think we have about 10 former UNIGIS students within our Geodan team.
For this occasion, we have decided to set up a sort of Geo-ICT Timeline of the past 25 years. Of course, UNIGIS will have an important place in this timeline.
In March, there is the Geomarketing Conference, a result of one year of close co-operation of the VU and Geodan in setting up a Geomarketing Knowledge Centre.
Another Knowledge Centre we have recently established at the VU, in co-operation with the 'Nationaal Instituut Fysieke Veiligheid' (NIFV) is a knowledge centre on public safety.
We expect a lot from these centres for the coming months! And we expect soon to have our Knowledge Centre on Landuse Modelling.
I am really looking forward to our Annual Conference.
Elsewhere in this newsletter you will find more information, but I can tell you that I really love the idea of having everybody together at one conference every year.
Everybody means students, alumni, staff members and also our industrial partners.
Henk
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New Intake will start
by Jasper Dekkers
The February Intake 2010 will start next month. We used to have an intake in September and in March, but we decided the study schedule for the March intake wasn't optimal for them to finish their first two modules in time before the start of the June conference.
Therefore, from this intake onwards we wil have a September and a February intake. The new intake will start with workshop 1 on Friday 5 February, so if you have colleagues or friends who might be interested to join this intake, please notify them!
On behalf of the UNIGIS team, we wish the new students lots of success with their studies.
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Firefox browser issues
Due to some server-side software updates, it is currently not possible to log in to the UNIGIS website using the Firefox browser.
Several students have already experienced some discomfort in this respect, but found a solution by using Internet Explorer instead. Other browser alternatives that work fine are Chrome (from Google) and Safari.
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Server maintenance: Taking old modules off-line
As part of the server maintenance procedures of our university we need to keep the amount of gigabytes we occupy on the faculties server within limits.
Therefore, we will remove some of the older modules from our server. This will take place in the first week of February.
The removal of these modules means that students who have taken these modules do no longer have on-line access to the contents of these modules. We therefore ask students from intakes before March 2004 to think about whether they want to download the module contents before we remove it from the server.
If you want to keep the contents, you can download the sections print files of all the modules that you have taken.
We will remove two versions of old first year modules and older versions of some second year modules (GIS and Organisations, Applications Development, GIS and Modelling, Database Theory II, Remote Sensing and GIS). We want to emphasize once more that only students from before intake March 2004 are influenced by the removal of these modules.
Students of more recent intakes will still have on-line access to their module contents.
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More and more students continuing with MSc
by Jasper Dekkers
Over the past two years, we have seen the number of students completing their MSc studies increasing, which is a good sign.
At the moment, we have 8 MSc students and 7 applications of students who want to start with their MSc project within the coming weeks/months.
We are pleased with this development and encourage all students to consider to opportunity to write their thesis with us.
If you want to know more about this thrid year of the Unigis programme, what it's like to write a thesis and whether it is difficult or not, feel free to contact any one of your fellow UNIGIS students or alumni to ask them about their expriences.
And of course you can always contact the UNIGIS office to ask questions or to make an appointment.
In August 2009, Johannes Luberichs, or Jojo as many of you know him, completed his thesis. A short story on his thesis is included below. Enjoy reading!
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GIS and Tourist Consumer Research: The Spatial Profile of German Low-Cost Carrier Passengers in Mallorca
by Johannes Luberichs
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Johannes Luberichs MSc.
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In August 2009 I completed my MSc dissertation handling this aspect with the title mentioned above. The main questions of this research were:
Which tourism spaces the German LCCP occupy, how do they differentiate from other tourists and what might be the influencing factors.
Since working with spatial data in tourist social science is an unattended field questions regarding the geospatial anaylsis have been answered concerning topics like the sampling,
the spatial scale of analysis, the data requirements and the risks and pitfalls of working with spatial data.
Read more...
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Alumni Invitation for 2010
UNIGIS Alumni - please note in your agenda's: June 18 2010, Amsterdam: UNIGIS Annual Conference 2010. We will organise
a special session for the alumni on this day to discuss Alumni access to new study material and other interesting issues.
Alumni, be realistic: you simply can't afford to miss this event!
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Module tutor changes
by Jasper Dekkers
As long as any UNIGIS student can remember, Alfred Wagtendonk has been the tutor of the first-year module on Geodata Sources, in the new curriculum known as Geodata Capture, Standards & Quality.
Alfred has been pursuing the writing of a PhD. Dissertation for some time now, and is currently entering an important phase in this respect.
Therefore, the UNIGIS Management Board has offered him the opportunity to temporarily resign his tasks as a UNIGIS tutor in order to be able to focus 100% on finishing his PhD studies.
We wish Alfred all the best with this important task!
From February onwards, Jasper Dekkers will take over Alfred's position as tutor of the Geodata module.
This means that Jasper will no longer be the tutor of Assignment 2 in Module 1.
We are very happy to announce that Nils de Reus has been found willing to take over these duties from Jasper.
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New face at SPINlab-UNIGIS: Chequita Bhikhi
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My name is Chequita Bhikhi. I studied plant ecology and biodiversity (MSc) at the Utrecht University and have a background in forestry.
I participated in many biodiversity research projects in the tropical Amazon forest. I also have a special interest for GIS and started the UNIGIS program in September 2009.
In the future, I am hoping to combine my GIS knowledge with biodiversity conservation and planning in order to save the world beautiful environment.
At the Spinlab I am working as assistant in research/teaching and I also support the UNIGIS office.
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EduGIS project wins Geo-Innovation Award 2009
September 2009
EduGIS, the GIS portal for education in the Netherlands, has won the Societal Geo-Innovation Award 2009. EduGIS was chosen as the best from a selection of 24 projects.
See the EduGIS website for an item on the award.
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Green Space from Different Perspectives
December 2009 - Interview with SPINlab researchers on open space
Open, green space in a crowded Randstad. How much is it worth to us? This space does not remain green and empty by itself. Research shows that even with a government that leaves plenty of freedom to the market, a restrictive government policy works best.
See the website of NWO for the interview.
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PhD Thesis: Externalities, land use planning and urban expansion
SPINlab researcher Jasper Dekkers finishes his PhD. Dissertation
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Today, more than fifty per cent of the world's population lives in urban areas. In case of urban growth, both in terms of densification and in terms of expansion, a resident may experience a decrease in his quality of life: higher population density or a reduction of the amount of green open areas nearby available for recreation. An important question is whether or not, and if so, to what extent the government should intervene in the process of urban growth.
This dissertation contains a number of studies in which from different perspectives the relation between the land market (segments), land use and spatial planning is examined. The main focus is on three themes:
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- How can spatial externalities be expressed in monetary terms?
- How effective are specific spatial policies in steering spatial developments?
- Which factors have an impact on the location of rural-urban transitions?
The analyses of externalities (theme 1) aim to attach a monetary value to the phenomena under investigation, so that policy makers can use this value in policy decisions. The studies on policy effectiveness (theme 2) focus on the Green Heart and the 'Rijksbufferzones' and aim to contribute to the policy debates on the future of the Randstad, the highly-urbanised western part of the Netherlands. The final chapters (theme 3) explain what factors influence rural land prices and describe a model that can be used to calculate rural-urban transition probabilities.
The use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and spatial-econometric methods plays an important role throughout the dissertation.
The public defense of this dissertation will take place on Friday 19 February 2010, 11.45 in the aula of the Vrije Universiteit. After the defense there will be a reception.
UNIGIS students and alumni are of course welcome to witness this event.
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Calendar &
Activities
February 2010
Start Intake February 2010
The new intake will start at Friday 5 February 2010 at the campus of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam with Workshop 1.
Information will be made available through our website in the next few weeks.
And of course you can always contact us, through our website or by phone should you not be able to visit us.
PhD Defense Jasper Dekkers
Jasper Dekkers will defend his PhD thesis titled 'Externalities, land use planning and urban expansion' on Friday February 19 2010, 11.45 in the aula of the Vrije Universiteit. After the defense there will be a reception. All UNIGIS students and alumni are invited for this event.
March 2010
Geomarketing Conference
In 2009, the Vrije Universiteit together with Geodan have started the Geomarketing Knowledge Centre (GKC). The GRC researches Geomarketing-related matters with the goal to further develop Geomarketing as a field of study. During the conference, that is specifically aimed at the business market, results of Geomarketing research and interesting business cases will be presented.
For more information, visit the GKC website. More information about the programme will be made available in two weeks.
June 2009
UNIGIS Conference
Monday 14 through Friday 18th of June 2010, the Annual UNIGIS Conference will be held at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.
Workshops 2 and 3, plenary sessions and an Alumni event will be all part of the Conference.
Information will be made available through our website in due time.
And of course you can always contact us, through our website or by phone should you not be able to visit us.
Alumni event 2010
Friday 18th of June 2010, an Alumni day will be organised at the UNIGIS Conference. Special guest speakers will be invited.
Information will be made available through our website in due time.
And of course you can always contact us, through our website or by phone should you not be able to visit us.
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