GIS Seminar Series

Open source adoption: Rainforest Foundation UK and other examples. Full abstract.

10th November 2010 (1-2pm in A19, NGB)

8th December 2010 (1-2pm in A20, NGB)

23rd February 2011 (1-2pm in A19, NGB)

Professor James Campbell (Virginia Tech, US)

Professor Campbell is a member of Faculty of the Department of Geography, Virginia Tech, US, where he teaches remote sensing, geomorphology, and quantitative methods. He served as Department Head 1993-2002. His text, Introduction to Remote Sensing (Guilford Press), now in its fourth edition (2007) is widely used for university courses in several disciplines in the United States and Canada, and is published in Europe by Taylor & Francis.

Ed Parsons (Google Geospatial Technologist)

Ed Parsons is the Geospatial Technologist of Google, with responsibility for evangelising Google's mission to organise the world's information using geography and tools including Google Earth, Google Maps and Google Maps for Mobile. Parsons was the first Chief Technology Officer in the 200-year-old history of Ordnance Survey, and was instrumental in moving the focus of the organisation from mapping to Geographical Information. Parsons developed technology strategy, identified strategic technology partners, and led the Ordnance Survey Research Labs, an overall team of more than 200 people.

Clare Davies (Ordnance Survey Research Labs)

Ordnance Survey Research is a multidisciplinary group of specialist researchers, all trying to help determine the future of geographic information for Great Britain. Underpinning much of the internal, collaborative and external sponsored technical research is a concern for understanding human information needs, so as to design geographic information for real users. Alongside ongoing projects on cognitive science, user needs and information usability, a new research programme focuses on vernacular geography - the way that you and I, away from the map and the GIS, really think about place and space. This talk will try to pull together all the various strands of our current research, with a particular focus on the 'people' perspective.

Professor Andrew Lovett (University of East Anglia)

Professor Lovett is involved in a range of projects concerned with applications of GIS and statistical techniques. He is currently a Steering Committee member of the GIS Research UK Conference Series (including Convenor of the 2004 conference held at UEA), and an Editorial Board member of the journals Computers, Environment & Urban Systems, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, and Health and Place.

Dr. Evtim Peytchev (Nottingham Trent University)

The "Intelligent Simulation, Modelling and Networking Group" at Nottingham Trent University has been involved in several projects with the aim of showing how we can use car-to-car and car-to-roadside communication to deliver web services or location based services over wireless multi-hop networks. Nottingham was chosen to be the place to deploy the research test bed required for the project called "Traffimatics" - a £1.1Mln DTI funded project led by BT. Wireless nodes were deployed across the Nottingham City Centre, so that a car could be driven in a closed loop and be always in the range of one or more access points for car-to-roadside infrastructure communication. This talk describes the basics of the wireless test bed, services and research opportunities it can offer together with reviewing the experience gained in writing Web Services and Location Based Services for deployment in the test bed. 

Dr. Peter Rodgers (University of Kent)

Dr. Peter Rodgers is Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Kent. His work concentrates on the practical use of diagrams in layout systems, graph rewriting programming languages and diagrammatic reasoning.