9th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION ON GEOINFORMATION (ISG 2010)
1.Introduction
With the theme “Connecting Government and Citizen through Ubiquitous GIS”, Map Asia 2010
and ISG 2010 turned out to be a phenomenal success where there was an active and dynamic
participation of over 1358 members (801 registered delegates and 557 exhibition visitors) of GIS
community from over 41 countries. An elegant ceremony marked the inaugural of Map Asia 2010
and ISG 2010 conference at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre while recognising the
significance of geospatial technology for development and vowing to raise the profile of geospatial
industry in the Asian continent.
Inaugurating the 9th Annual Asian Conference and Exhibition on Geospatial Information
Technology and Applications, Minister YB Dato Sri Douglas Uggah Embas, Ministry of
Natural Resources and Environment, set the tone of the conference saying that Malaysia is moving
towards spatially enabled governance and building spatially enabled society. “Today, we are
witnessing an increasing use of geospatial technologies at local government level. Many local bodies
are generating spatial data in silos resulting in duplication of data.We need connected systems to
remove such redundancies and focus on public service delivery mechanisms.This can be achieved by
building efficient standards and interoperability mechanisms to integrate location information and
associated data", he argued.
Highlighting various initiatives taken by Malaysian government in the past few years, the minister
remarked that Malaysia is now moving towards being a spatially enabled government and spatially
enabled society. “Many government agencies like JUPEM, Department of Agriculture, Malaysian
Remote Sensing Agency, Economic Planning Unit and many others have long been using these
technologies.NALISwas developed in 1997. In 2002,MaCGDIwas established to replaceNALIS
Secretariat. MaCGDI became a platform for geospatial data sharing among government agencies
and today, Malaysian SDI is on par with those of many other countries in the region. It is now
important to encourage data sharing not only among government agencies but also in private sector.
The minister then made a mention of several enterprise level projects currently being undertaken by
various government departments - LASIS by the government of Sarawak, GeoSys by the Dept of
Mineral and Geosciences, an integrated, centralised and web-based project, AGRIS for soil, rainfall and land-use information, the procurement of mobile GIS software that enables quick data collection and easy data management by ICU under the Prime Minister's Department. He said government is actively working on creating a policy and legal framework to improve geospatial data management in the country and also provide a comprehensive data dissemination mechanism.
Earlier, Sr Hj. Saharuddin Saat, Deputy Chairman, ISG Steering Committee, welcomed the gathering.He said the coming together of twomega events has helped in broadening the spectrum by bringing together professionals in surveying, cartography and geodesy on one hand and government, industry and academicians on the other hand.This will facilitate knowledge sharing, policy discussion and help in evolve strategies to improve service delivery system to enable a
connected government. Remarking that this conference has become a comprehensive platform to
bring a wide range of technologies and stakeholders together,Dr. M. P. Narayanan, Chairman, GIS
Development said the event aims to create and provide value and bring forward a collective approach
to raise the profile of geospatial technologies in Asia. This apart, the conference helps in
positioning geospatial industry an important stakeholder in geospatial value chain as it is the
industry that develops the technologies and provides to the users.
The event marked the presentation of Geospatial Excellence awards to the exemplary use and
application of geospatial technologies in the Asian continent.
The awardswere conferred to:
• Tenaga Nasional Berhad
• Seoul Metropolitan Government
• Osaka Gas Co. Ltd.
• Sujala Project,ANTRIX– ISRO
• Brunei Shell Petroleum Company
• LAMP,Department of Environment and NaturalResources, Philippines
• Ministry ofTransportation, Indonesia
MinisterY. B. Dato Sri Douglas Uggah Embas also inaugurated GeospatialWorld, the new avatar
of GIS Development magazine, the global geospatial magazine. The inaugural ended with a vote of
thanks by Kavitha Seras,Regional Manager-Asia Pacific, GIS Development
