News in 2004

  • Expert Group Meeting on Secure Land Tenure: "New legal frameworks and tools" - UN-Gigiri, Nairobi, Kenya, 10 - 12 November 2004

Expert Group Meeting on Secure Land Tenure: "New legal frameworks and tools" was held at the UN Headquarters in Gigiri, Nairobi, November 10-12, 2004. The meeting was organised by FIG Commission 7, UN-HABITAT, the Institution of Surveyors of Kenya (ISK) and the Commonwealth Association of Surveying and Land Economy (CASLE). It was supported by: Austrian Development Agency (ADA), Austria; Cadastre, Land Registry and Mapping Agency, The Netherlands; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Netherlands; and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH, Germany.

For a hard copy of the proceedings, please contact Pauline van Elsland, email: pauline.vanelsland@kadaster.nl (ISBN 87-90907-39-6)

Click picture for bigger format As a result of the 2nd FIG Regional Conference “Urban-Rural Interrelationship for Sustainable Environment”, which was held in Marrakech, Morocco, 2–5 December 2003, FIG together with the partners has published the Marrakech Declaration (Urban-Rural Interrelationship for Sustainable Development). The Marrakech Declaration was launched at the 2nd World Urban Forum in Barcelona, September 13-17, 2004 and at the Symposium on Urban-Rural Interrelationship organised by UN-Habitat in Nairobi during the World Habitat Day celebrations, October 1-4, 2004. The Marrakech Declaration is now available in .pdf-form.
Commission 7 Annual Meeting 2004 and international symposium on Modern Land Consolidation (Amenagement Foncier Moderne) were held in Clermont-Ferrand, France, 8-14 September 2004. Proceedings and pictures from the events are available on Commission 7 web site at www.fig.net/commission7/france_2004.

Exhibition - Ancient Greek Technology - Measuring Instruments. During the FIG Working Week there was an exhibition organised in collaboration with the Association for Ancient Greek Technology Studies. The exhibition displayed some indicative technical achievements of the Ancient Greece, together with models of several measuring devices used in topography and astronomy.

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Congress Director Ahmed Boukri, Prof. Holger Magel, FIG President and Aziz Hilali, ONIGT President.

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President Holger Magel.

The 2nd FIG Regional Conference - Urban-Rural Interrelationship for Sustainable Environment was held in Marrakech, Morocco, December 2-5, 2003. The conference was organised by FIG and the Ordre National des Ingénieurs Géomètres-Topographes ONIGT and it was co-sponsored by FAO, UN-HABITAT, UNEP, UN ECA and the Arab Urban Development Institute and the Arab Federation of Surveyors AUDI. The conference was attended by 420 participants from more than 40 countries.

In addition to the opening ceremony and three plenary sessions the technical programme included 24 technical sessions in which almost 90 papers were presented. The conference proceedings are available at www.fig.net/figtree/pub/morocco. They include totally almost 130 papers from 37 countries and the representatives of the United Nations. All technical sessions were very well attended maximum attendance to parallel sessions exceeded 120. Each day was concluded with a round table discussion on the topics of the day.

The Conference further included:

  • FIG Roundtable on Surveying and GIS Education in Africa
  • FIG Commissions 3 Annual Meeting
  • FIG Commission 5 Open Meetings
  • Interoperability workshop: An Intergraph contribution. Workshop organised by Intergraph and chaired by Peter Bartak, Program Manager, Spatial Data Infrastructures.
  • Meetings of the Arab Union of Surveyors (AUS)

The conference web site includes practical information about the conference. Proceedings of the conference are now available including all papers.

The FIG Council agreed in Marrakech in December 2003 to bring the FIG Information Policy to the General Assembly in Athens for its endorsement. Before the final version will be circulated to the members, a draft document for discussion is published on this web site for comments. You are invited to send your comments by 29 February 2004 to the FIG office, email: fig@fig.net.