Perspective", Prof. Martien Molenaar,
Rector of ITC
matured and are fully accepted as tools
for spatial management. A geo-informa-
tion community has developed, consis-
ting increasingly of highly educated pro-
fessionals who can be categorised into
three major groups:
- experts in the field of spatial informa-
tion handling,
- users of geo-information,
- professionals and policy makers, who
are aware of the importance of geo-infor-
mation for the civil society. A similar
trend of processes is evident in Africa but
the technological and institutional condi-
tions in many regions of Africa are far
from optimal for the creation of an infor-
mation infrastructure. Therefore, great
investments should be complemented by
institutional and organisational develop-
ments to ensure the adequacy and effec-
tiveness of investments.
tance of geo-information data infrastruc-
tures (GDIs) for good governance, which
entails implications for national (public)
organisations responsible for establi-
shing and operating the GDIs. Therefore,
the education of individuals should be
accompanied by institutional capacity
building. Most institutional capacity
building in Africa in the past was project-
based and the support stopped upon com-
pletion of such projects. In the new ITC
approach, partners are expected to com-
mit themselves to continue the collabora-
tion, using their own core funding
sources, and scholarships/fellowships
should be funded from external sources,
involving the development of regional
networks.
have influenced EIS development in sub-
Saharan Africa. Such key factors inclu-
ded: Cultural profile; Lack of develop-
Poor tradition in surveying and map-
ping; Few institutions providing geode-
tic education; Limited support for
geode-tic networking; Limited educa-
tion and training in Earth observation
systems in Africa; Role of donors and
NGOs in EIS development in Africa
with va-rying interests and emphasis at
diffe-rent times.
Extraction from Remote Sensing
Data", Prof. Peter Zeil and Stefan
Lang , Centre for Geographical
Information Processing (ZGIS),
University of Salzburg, Austria.
The lecturers stressed that the classifi-
cation of single pixels in a multi-
dimensional feature space is still very
common. But extracting meaningful
objects requires the use of context-
information from the images based e.g.
on texture or fractal dimension, an
object-oriented image analysis
approach and subsequent application-
specific analyses taking into account
the object attributes. A comparison
between pixel- and object-based
approaches was given, mentioning the
limitations of the former and explai-
ning the key procedures for object-
based ones, including shape and texture
parameters.
Prof. M. R. Inggs, Radar Remote
Sensing Group, Department of
Electrical Engineering, University of
Cape Town
lowing topics: applications of imaging
radar, introduction to the theory of
imaging radar, examples of geological
applications and existing airborne and
spaceborne data sources and pricing.
The second section dwelt on map ge-
neration using SAR, as well as on a
wide range of imaging radar applica-
tions, especially on environmental and
resource monitoring, and African expe-
riences. Regarding costs, it was men-
tioned that airborne data are expensive
due to mobilisation costs, reaching
more than US$ 50/km
es, e.g. about US$ 0.1/km
and DEM generation) is highly technical
and tedious and requires skill and experi-
ence.
H. Ruther and Dr G. Begni, were:
Education and Training,
Technology Transfer.
- it is necessary to create networks
(South-South and North-South) to facili-
tate the sharing of human and training
material resources,
- it is important to train and retrain per-
sonnel at various levels: technician, pro-
fessional, management and career offi-
cer,
- it is necessary to launch vigorous
awareness campaigns in the area of geo-
information to increase involvement.
core profession courses supported by
geo-information.
international) should facilitate job
creation so as to create opportunities for
those trained in geo-information.
creation of critical technical masses.
These critical masses should be created
while building teams of core professio-
nals.
network, thus hindering information
exchange and international co-operation.
The role played by EIS-Africa in brin-
ging together players and stakeholders in
geo-information was recognised and
other institutions (particularly technical
ones) were asked to play leading roles in
the use of geo-information.