Join us for the first session in our ‘Locate Connect’ online learning series! Hear from Scott Dewar, Director, Chris Hewett, Assistant Secretary GEOINT Capability and Development & Phil Shears, Director DEF799 Phase 2.

In this session from 1300 – 1400, the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation (AGO) will be launching the Defence Geospatial-Intelligence (GEOINT) Strategy, a document that addresses how the Defence GEOINT Community will transform to meet the future needs of the Australian Defence Force. The AGO Executive will also provide an update on their GEOINT projects and announce upcoming opportunities for industry and discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the organisation.

Then from 1430 – 1545, AGO, along with Frontier SI will describe how The Analytics Lab Program (AGO Labs) fits into the bigger picture of AGO capability and summarise the outcomes of their 2019 activities. AGO Labs, coordinated through FrontierSI, is investigating a number of ways to better engage and work with industry. Specifically, the AGO is keen to attract a wider pool of companies and technologies to draw on for automated geospatial intelligence. The primary focus of this program is to address AGO capability challenges through a small number of short-term industry projects, with a focus on machine learning and analytics for producing automated imagery analysis, including automated object classification. AGO will announce a new 2020 program of challenges hoping to find innovative solutions through their partnership with FrontierSI.

The Three Day Mini-Conference will be delivered in July, with 21 speakers over 3 days and taking place for 2 hours late in the afternoon. This exciting event will feature highly anticipated keynote speakers such as Bruce Thompson, Dr Karen Joyce and Nyall Dawson covering topics such as smart cities, surveying, sustainable development objectives, key projects and much, much more.

Wednesday 8 July – Friday 10 July 2020  – 1530 – 1730
Program: Download the program HERE
Cost: $90 – Mini-Conference attendee
Full access to all 3 days of the Mini-Conference, and access to the recording post-event

BEYOND THE 2026 AGENDA

The presentation will focus on a major initiative called the 2030 Space and Spatial Industry Growth Roadmap. The Government has set three key objectives for the space industry by 2030; 20,000 new jobs, $12B additional contribution to GDP and an extra one billion dollars into the investment pipeline. The combination of space and spatial working together will make a great contribution to meeting these targets. The space industry sets up critical elements of the communications supply chains (satcoms) together with content (GNSS and EO). The spatial industry provides the vast bulk of the data infrastructure, value-added content and analytics, and the ‘last yard’ delivery channels to customers. Getting this ecosystem right creates a premium competitive advantage for Australia and greatly strengthens our sovereignty and security. The presentation will discuss the next steps in the development of the roadmap; the development of a white paper which sets out the critical issues, the creation of an ecosystem map will help identify key areas for investment, and a risk analysis that will set out Australia’s critical dependence on space based assets and the steps we can take as a nation to improve our resilience, and sovereignty over, these assets. It will also provide an update on the latest developments of the 2026 Spatial Industry Transformation and Growth Agenda and how this initiative will contribute to the roadmap.

The 15th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory, COSIT 2022, will be held in Kobe, Japan, 5 to 9 September, 2022. Established in 1993, the Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT) is a biennial international conference series concerned with theoretical aspects of space and spatial information, aimed at advancing geographic information science and its emerging research frontiers.

The conference offers three (refereed) submission tracks with double-blind reviews: vision papers, full papers, and short papers. Embedded in the conference will also be an on-site mentoring program for doctoral students.

Contributions can cover a broad set of conference-relevant themes such as (but not limited to):

• activity-based models of spatial knowledge
• cognitive aspects of geographic information
• cognitive-behavioural geography, naive geography
• data-driven spatial information theory
• geo-ethics and geo-privacy
• events and processes in geographic space and time
• geographic information visualisation and geovisual analytics
• knowledge representation for space and time
• navigation and wayfinding of sentient beings and robots
• ontology of space and time
• place
• quality and interoperability of geographic information
• social and cultural organisation of space
• spatial and temporal language
• spatial aspects of social networks
• spatial decision support, impact of model design
• spatial (digital) humanities
• theory-driven spatial machine learning, artificial intelligence of space
• theories on volunteered geographic information
• theory and practice of spatial and temporal reasoning
• user interfaces, virtual spaces and collaborative spaces

The US National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC) Annual Conference is the place to enhance geospatial excellence and collaboration for state, local, tribal and federal GIS policymakers and coordinators, private sector partners and other leaders in the geospatial ecosystem.

Providing critical and timely networking opportunities, the conference also offers the chance to connect, collaborate, and share with colleagues and partners.

The agenda will comprise:

Roll Call of States — Where state representatives will share a snapshot of achievements, challenges and upcoming activities.
Plenary Sessions — Presentations by and for the NSGIC community exploring challenges, successes and new approaches for collaboration in the geospatial ecosystem.
State Caucus — A roundtable discussion with state and local government representatives to talk frankly about current pressing issues.
GIO Academy — Leadership sessions and networking for state government GIOs and equivalents only (separate registration is required).
Speed Networking — A fun and fast-paced activity where sponsors, who have allocated points, will rotate to complete the circuit of visiting with state reps.
Annual Business Meeting — Including the election of new board members and leadership transition.
Awards Reception — Recognising exceptional work through the Geospatial Excellence Awards & NSGIC Service Awards.