GIScience symposium 2013

The Doctoral College GIScience successfully organized a symposium at the University of Salzburg’s outstanding Edmundsburg premises. This two-day symposium offered insights to research projects, achievements and intermediate results of Doctoral candidates.  Several world leading scientists in GIScience including David Mark, Paul Longley, Stephan Winter, Laxmi Ramasubramanian as well as a dozen external supervisors provided stimulus and feedback to the PhD candidates in a creative atmosphere.

This exchange of ideas and experi­ences between early stage researchers and experienced researchers is at the core of the Doctoral College programme hosted by the Department of Geoinformatics – Z_GIS.  

The three thematic research clusters presented achievements regarding methods and methodologies which are crosscutting individual projects and received critical feedback. PhD students presented their work within an interactive poster-session including a best-poster award. All presented posters at our symposium you can find at: http://giscience-symposium.blogspot.com/

YouthMap5020 KickOff-Event – „…it all started with a Big Bang“

At the beginning of the school year 2013/14 on September 12^th the productive work on the project You^thMap5020 started with a big KickOff-Event at UniPark Nonntal hosted by Robert Kleindienst as representative from the “SchülerUniSalzburg”. All school partners have been invited and fortunately participated, so the project team happily welcomed approximately 150 pupils (7 classes from 6 partner schools).

• Robert Vogler (Z_GIS) introduced the project, 
• Prof. Dr. Josef Strobl (Z_GIS) gave a delightful talk on the background of the project (i.e. geomedia in everyday life), 
• Isabel Bojanovski (Jugendbüro Salzburg) also welcomed the audience and 
• Dr. Sabine Hennig (Z_GIS) explained the detailed project structure and further activities.
• Finally, Lisa Antonia Rajsp, Leonie Einfalt and Johannes Brötzner provided some insights in their project internships which they finished recently.  

...more pictures HERE

As a next project step, the first school workshops will start at the end of September 2013.

'Landscape Lab' opening in Koppl, Austria

Hermann Klug opened the ‘landscape lab’ sensor web infrastructure, - one of ZGIS’ contribution to the SMART (Smart characterisation of New Zealand's aquifers) project in Koppl, Austria.

The geoscientific measuring station with its wireless sensor web infrastructure was presented to the public on September 8th 2013. The opening was part of the local autumn festival and attracted around 400 people who took the opportunity to get a better understanding of the climatological, pedological and hydrological situation of the area, the complex measuring system and the sensors providing environmental information directly visible and retrievable on the internet.

environSEA Workshop in Bandung, Indonesia

The Interfaculty Department of Geoinformatics - Z_GIS, University of Salzburg, Austria completed a week-long international workshop entitled 'Geospatial Analysis of Environmental Vulnerability in Southeast Asia (environSEA)' from 2nd to 6th September, 2013 in Bandung, Indonesia. It was hosted and co-organised by the Remote Sensing and GIScience Research Group, Faculty of Earth Science & Technology, Institute of Technology Bandung (ITB), Bandung Indonesia and was co-funded by ASEA Uninet, Austria.

Dr. Shahnawaz from Z_GIS conducted the workshop assisted by Ms. Riantini Virtriana from ITB. Prof. Ketut Wikantika (Head, RS & GIS) inaugurated the workshop and Prof. Riqqi Akhmad (Head, ISD) presented the certificates of successful completion to workshop participants.

Focusing on interdisciplinary faculty development, 18 teachers and graduate students from 12 universities located in 4 countries (i.e. Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand) participated in the workshop. During the workshop, participants developed individual projects covering  various aspects of environmental vulnerability in Southeast Asia and performed geospatial analysis using ArcGIS Desktop software.

Comenius Course "Spatial Citizenship" opens for application

Education for spatial citizenship, a Comenius project developing teacher training coordinated by the Interfaculty Department of Geoinformatics - ZGIS at the University of Salzburg is open for application from June, 12th, 2013. The one-week-course is held in IASI, Romania, from April 27 - May 4, 2014, and is fully supported by the national agencies. 

Interested? Apply at the Teacher Training Database until September 14^th 2013 under http://ec.europa.eu/education/trainingdatabase/ reference number: AT-2014-373-001. Get more information here: http://www.spatialcitizenship.org/ict-geoinformation-education/