Collaborations, Cross and Multi-Disciplinary Research in Science and Technology and Capacity Building to advance Geomatics Research.

The five-day Advances in Geomatics Research Conference called for forging Collaborations, Cross and Multi-disciplinary research in science and technology and Capacity building.

The Conference under the theme Celebrating 25 years of Geomatics Education: Building for the Future” brought together scholars from different parts of the world to share their research findings about advances in Geomatics research.

In his address, the Guest of Honor, the Principal CEDAT, Dr Henry Alinaitwe, urged the participants to do more collaborations and interdisciplinary research in Geomatics.

He was speaking during the 3rd Conference on Advances in Geomatics Research (AGRC 2015).

“Geomatics encompasses disciplines like land surveying, remote sensing GIS, engineering surveying, land management among others and all these are prime movers of our country and there are  key issues that most of our societies are grappling with that can be handled by these areas” Dr Alinaitwe argued.

He singled out common problems such as land grabbing and wrangles by families over land inherited from their parents, saying these disciplines have a lot to contribute in such areas.

Dr Alinaitwe also noted that the Department has grown from 2 full staff members in 1990 to the current 16 or so full time members. He also gratified in the fact that the geomatics conference that began as a fledging event has slowly but surely taken root and become a calendar event for the Department, the College and the University.

He thanked the organizers of what he called the 3rd version of the Geomatics Conference for commemorating the Silver Jubilee at College of Engineering Design Art and Technology Makerere University.

In addition, the Principal appealed to the Department to make advance in their teaching, research and collaborations.

“My appeal to you is that you build on the previous success so that the next 25 years see you on the international scene in teaching and research. This will be possible if you start the process of forging collaborations now,” he said.

In his Key note address Prof Ben Maathuis gave an elaborate discussion on the requirements of capacity building. These, he said, are  free/open access (near real time) data, free/ open source software tools, support to training at ITC, building networks and supporting academia and execution of trainings and provision of relevant training materials.

Dr Moses Musinguzi, the Dean of School of The Built Environment, highlighted the problems that affect the World to which Geomatics is a platform for researchers to raise ideas and knowledge about these problems and bring solutions. These included poverty, planning challenges, housing, slums, informal settlement and cases of natural resource management with associated problems such as climate change, land degradation and conflicts that arise from land management.

Participants included researchers, academicians and consultants from several institutions, and countries all over the world.

The AGRC addressed several topics among which are climate changes driven by rapid growth of cities, climate variability patterns, Algorithm for Geo-spatial objects adjustment , errors associated with the computerization of cadastral records, new height for Uganda, integration of Geographic information technologies in management of districts in Uganda, estimating carbon sequestration of Mabira Forest Using Landsat ETM and Meteorological Data, comparison of in-situ and satellite derived water quality parameters.

Others included integration of geographic information technologies in management of District roads in Uganda, the potential use of structures from motion (Sfm) in the photogrammetry and remote sensing classroom, land tenure and access to land by the Urban poor in Uganda, social economic vulnerability assessment to impacts of climate change in Uganda and solar resource modeling using satellite images.

The Conference started on Monday August 3, 2015 and run up to Friday 07th, August, 2015.