AGILE conference in Hungary: Shaping the future of Geographic Information Science in Europe

AGILE (Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe) groups more than 80 prominent research organisations from 23 different European countries. During its 9 years of existence, the organisation has celebrated this international conference with great success in several locations in Europe. It has become a well established event and is seen as one of the main mechanisms for promoting research on GI Science in Europe and beyond.

This year the College of Geoinformatics, University of West Hungary headed by prof. Béla Márkus has organised the conference. For the conference venue we chose the historical town of Visegrád in the picturesque region of the Danube Bend. All together about 100 people have gathered here for the 3 days conference (20-22 April 2006).

Most popular topics were environmental monitoring, spatial data infrastructures, interoperability and semantics. Two keynotes have been invited. The first – Herve Jeanjean (CNES, France) – has presented remote sensing related issues and plans in the European Space Program. The next keynote – Mike Jackson (Univ. Nottingham, UK) – talked about the nexus between industry and research. Jackson’s speech was followed by an industry roundtable forum with the representatives of leading GIS companies.

In the poster session the participants had the chance to vote for the ‘Best Poster’, an award later taken by János Tamás, professor of Debrecen University.

You can find more details on the presentations, posters and the participants on the conference website: http://www.agile2006.hu

Antal Guszlev

adjunct

College of Geoinformatics

University of West Hungary