Prior to using the Nikon Nivo total station, leveling was accomplished with a theodolite and precision leveling rod. The theodolite system was very easy to use, but distances could not be measured, and it required manually calculating the height differences and calculation errors and manually entering the values into a computer.

The municipality of Beijing is encouraging investment in the navigation and locationbased services industry, suggesting there is a market worth at least 50 billion yuan ($8 billion) by 2015 after China put its own satellite navigation network into commercial use.

The essence of INTERGEO can be summed up in the following statement: “We need to turn data into intelligent information and then transform this into knowledge and actions.” The world’s most important conference trade fair for geodesy, geoinformation and land management draws to a close today after three amazing days in Hanover.

9th Annual Geospatial Intelligence Conference and Exhibition,
21 – 23 January,
QEIiConference Centre, London,
www.geoplace.com;

Recently, the arrests of some unsuspecting citizens
For their alleged ‘offensive comments’ in twitter and facebook,
In the biggest democracy of the world,
Triggered a debate on ‘freedom’ of ‘expression’.

UN-GGIM: Global vision and perspectives:
Joobin Im, Paul Cheung, Teo CheeHai, Dr Hiroshi Murakami, Dr Li Pengde, Datuk Prof Sr Dr AbdulKadir Bin Taib, Samuela Naicegucegu;

Measuring effects of mining on surface structure:
Asst Prof Dr Eray CAN, Prof Dr enolKU ÇU, Asst Prof Dr Hakan AKÇIN, Assoc Prof Dr Çetin MEKIK;

In recent years, there has been a rapid increase in the occurrence of natural disasters; for example, earthquake in Haiti and Hurricane Katrina. Taking 2005 Hurricane Katrina of New Orleans in the United States for example, approximately 150,000 human lives were endangered, despite efforts to evacuate residents to safe shelters.

Mining subsidence as a result of mine productions underneath the settlement areas, especially in Western European countries where underground coalmining is of great value, has been long a crucialmining issue with economic, social, technicaland environmentalaspects.

Various nations have passed legislation that makes it possible for ruralcommunities to register their lands as a single legalentity and act as decentralized land administration and management bodies. However, due to various political, financialand capacity constraints, these laws are often not implemented successfully.

Considering its commitment to highlight the user rights issues, Integrated SpatialAnalytics Consultants (ISAC) has teamed up with Portuguese and Dutch academicians to focus in the current paper on the Indian Forest Rights Act from 2006 as the Use Case of indigenous property rights. United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples reaffirmed the importance of the protection of indigenous property rights in Articles 25- 29.