World-renowned former NASA and UN Chief Environmental Scientist, Dr Tim Foresman, will be the special guest speaker at the Canberra SIBA breakfast event, which coincides with the Locate14 conference on the morning of Tuesday 8 April.
Dr Foresman is the inaugural SIBA Chair of Spatial Information at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia. He has previously served as a senior Science, Engineering and Education leader in the US, and has been very instrumental in leading the technology in the use of scientific visualisation and spatial information systems.
He has had the good fortune to be present at interesting milestones in the development of today’s spatial industry. As a young research scientist-engineer, he led the Department of Defense bench tests for spatial information systems that resulted in ESRI’s selection in 1980 for the US Marine Corps land use management system. This GIS system remains operational 35 years later as the GeoFidelis program. He led the introduction of ERDAS into the US government for remote sensing on a PC in the early 1980s.
His many exploits, including NASA, the US EPA- Las Vegas, the University of Maryland, and the United Nations, are captured in his book, The History of Geographic Information Systems (Prentice Hall). On the international scene, he led the UN Environment Programme’s development of spatial information systems for early warning, disaster relief, and environmental assessments, which included providing Google Earth with their first contract for the World Summit on Sustainable Development. He is a founding member of the International Society for Digital Earth. His latest textbook, Visualizing Physical Geography (Wiley Pub) embeds spatial awareness and tools throughout collegiate Earth science curriculum. He continues to view space, or spatial, as the final frontier. Today, he works on interesting projects as president of the International Centre for Remote Sensing Education and the Earth Party.
This breakfast offers an excellent opportunity to personally meet Dr Foresman, and to network with high-level stakeholders in the spatial industries. Dr Foresman will share his experiences and vision for Australia’s future. He will impart his distinctive perspective on the spatial industries and the innovations that are very rapidly changing the way we experience places and identify ourselves.
The breakfast event is proudly sponsored by HERE maps.
Tickets can be booked through Eventbrite.
Locate14 will run from 7-9 April 2014 at the National Convention Centre, in Canberra.
