Organised by OSGeo, this international annual gathering of location enthusiasts is the largest global gathering for geospatial software. Now in its 15th year, FOSS4G (ie. Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial) brings together developers, users, decision-makers and observers from a broad spectrum of organisations and fields of operation.

Through six days of workshops, presentations, discussions, and cooperation, FOSS4G participants create effective and relevant geospatial products, standards, and protocols. The 2021 event will be focused for the first time on South America and will be held with the close collaboration of the GeoLibres Association in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The Australian Association for Unmanned Systems’ ‘RPAS in Australian Skies 2022’ conference aims to continue discussion on the safe integration of RPAS into Australian airspace. It is supported by key government and industry participants and has established itself as a landmark event in the Australian RPAS calendar.

The 2022 themes will cover:

• Policy and Regulatory updates from the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications, CASA, AirServices Australia and the Australian Defence Force relating to the use of emerging aviation technology in Australia.
• UAS Traffic Management (UTM), low level airspace, integrated airspace systems challenges and opportunities.
• Industry challenges and perspectives
• Continuing development of a professional and safe industry.
• ATSB RPAS data and trends
• Emerging technology and innovative solutions enabling integration or RPAS into Australian airspace.
• Future infrastructure requirements to enable drone delivery and advanced air mobility (AAM).
• Emerging RPAS and AAM applications – benefits, viability and social acceptance.

The conference will be a hybrid event incorporating face to face (live) and online (virtual) choices for participants. It will also include the AAUS Gala Dinner featuring the AAUS Industry Awards.

On behalf of the Locate Australia Conferences it is our pleasure to invite you to join us at Locate22, 24 – 26 May in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory.

Locate22 returns to the Nation’s Capital in the traditional format of a live event at the National Convention Centre Canberra (NCCC). With the ability to be COVID safe, within a socially distanced environment, the NCCC is the perfect venue for Australia’s premier spatial and surveying conference. Canberra brings an incomparable setting with iconic national attractions surrounding Lake Burley Griffin and the Parliamentary Triangle.

This year Locate22 will incorporate dedicated streams into the format of the conference. This will enable focused discussion from across industry sectors on how location technologies and practices are being used, highlighting the fundamental role they play in shaping Australia’s future.

Industry, government, non-profit and academics are demanding new opportunities for innovation, efficiency and improved responsiveness, particularly in location-based information. In the past year alone, we’ve seen how location information can provide societal, environmental and economic benefits to our communities.  Recent national emergencies such as bushfires, drought, floods and COVID-19 all have long-term effects on our cities, towns, land, environment and people. These national, place-based challenges require collaborative solutions that must be data-driven, provide insightful analysis, and be easy for anyone, anywhere to use.

Location in Action is about how we learn, share and connect as a community and with end users to drive deeper insights and aid better decision-making  powered through location data, science and technologies.

Come and join us in Canberra where you will have an opportunity to network with national and international colleagues, have direct access to industry and subject matter experts, see the newest technology, and be introduced to the newest ideas in the spatial and surveying sector.

ALISON ROSE

CONVENOR
LOCATE 22

The 16th annual congress of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation, the non-profit organisation that supports and promotes the collaborative development of free and open source geographic technologies and open geospatial data, will be held in Florence, Italy, at the Palazzo dei Congressi, Palazzo degli Affari and the University of Florence.

FOSS4G (ie. Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial) brings together developers, users, decision-makers and observers from a broad spectrum of organisations and fields of operation.

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