Global Geospatial Conference 2012

The joint GSDI World Conference (GSDI 13), the 14th GEOIDE Annual Scientific Conference, the 7th 3DGeoInfo Conference , and the Canadian Geomatics Conference 2012 will take place in historic Québec City, Canada at the Québec City Conference Center in the heart of the city. Primary partners in organizing this conference include the GSDI Association and GEOIDE.

The theme for this conference is Spatially Enabling Government, Industry and Citizens.

The main program of the joint world conference starts on Monday, 13 May 2012 with a choice of free technical and policy workshops for conference registrants during the first session in the morning followed by the opening plenary and lunch. The second featured plenary starts after lunch and is shortened to allow for the official opening of the exhibits. After coffee the first set of parallel sessions starts in mid-afternoon and the day is capped off with the opening icebreaker

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday will include three ninety-minute featured plenary sessions and 8 ninety-minute parallel technical sessions with in up to 7 rooms concurrently. Thus there will be up to a total of 56 sessions with a maximum of 5 presentations per session allowing for up to 280 oral presentations. Posters will be displayed in a digital show in the exhibit hall throughout the conference and featured on paper posters during the late afternoon Tuesday Poster Forum and Lightning Round Presentations session. The conference dinner and cruise occurs on wednesday evening and the closing plenary session begins at mid-afternoon on Thursday 16 May.

Keynote and featured speakers will be updated as they confirmed their participation. The title and abstract for each presentation may be found in the detailed program.

Geographic information technologies and spatial data infrastructure play critical roles in allowing governments, local communities, non-government organizations, the commercial sector, the academic community and common people to make progress in addressing many of the world's most pressing problems. Further, use of spatial data in conjunction with mobile technologies is becoming pervasive within many nations. While mapping and spatial data infrastructure development was previously accomplished only by governments, this is no longer the case. All sectors of society are becoming spatially enabled and contributing to the development of the global spatial data infrastructure. Whether using hand-held devices incorporating phones, cameras, GPS, maps and location services or using sensors and wireless communications embedded within our homes, offices, stores, vehicles and along our travel paths, citizens are helping to build the next generations of spatial data infrastructure through their contributions of location and descriptive data.

This conference will explore the complementary roles of government, private industry and the academic community in realizing better means for sharing geographic data and technologies and developing improved location-based services for meeting real world needs.

Québec City is a dynamic city rich in contrast and color, you'll find a harmonious blend of culture, cuisine, arts and architecture here. We invite you to come and engage yourself in intellectual exchange with leaders and experts in the geospatial industry.