GISNet ‘11 TRAN VINH TRUNG

The conference GISNet’11 was held in Hochiminh City, Vietnam by DITAGIS in two days August 8 and 9, 2005. It received the sponsorships of Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Education and Training, Vietnam National University – HCMC, University of Technology, Center of IT Development, VIDAGIS company, VietCad company, and ThanhQuang company. The mission of this GISnet conference was to promote the applications, education, and services of GIS, GPS, and RS in Vietnam. It popularized the geographic information science and technology, the spatial science and technology to students, researchers and users in Vietnam.

This year, GISNet welcomed the presentation of Professor Doctor Nguyen Tan Phat, Vice Minister of Ministry of Education and Training, and President of Vietnam National University – Hochiminh City, of Doctor Bui Van Quyen, Head of Southern Offi ce of Ministry of Science and Technology, of Associate Professor. Doctor Nguyen Minh Dan, Director General of Department of Science and Technology, of Associate Professor Doctor Phan Thi Tuoi, Rector of the University of Technology, of Professor Doctor of Science Truong Minh Ve, former Vice President of Vietnam National University – Hochiminh City, and other offi cers of Provincial Agencies, Director of Departments of Science and Technology, Departments of Post and Telecommunication, Departments of Science and Technology, Departments of Agriculture and Rural Development, Departments of Construction from many cities or provinces of Vietnam. Besides, there were 567 participants who were offi cers, researchers, scientists, graduate students, undergraduate students, technicians of GIS organizations and offi cials of governmental agencies in Vietnam. The conference also welcomed professors and researchers from Thailand and Canada.

The conference had keynote session in the morning and two technical sessions in the afternoon of the fi rst day. The MEKOGIS meeting and workshop were held in the morning and afternoon of the second day.In the keynote session, Doctor Bui Van Quyen had a speech about the rapid development of GIS. He said century 21 is a century of information and integration. Spatial information has been playing an important role. In order to help Vietnam to integrate to the world successfully, spatial information of the homeland should be controlled well. Therefore, geographic information science and technology, and space science and technology must be considered carefully. He recommended that GISNet should be an international GIS conference from 2006. In this session, the presentation of An overview of GIS development in Vietnam to 2005 of Professor Tran Vinh Phuoc was interested by many people. It was written on data from various departments and agencies in Vietnam. The short report of MEKOGIS also attracted participants’ attention.

The sessions of Research with GIS and Research on GIS were opened with 30 papers which had been scored by a Board of Science of GISNet. Many interesting issues were presented there.

In the MEKOGIS meeting, many issues of MEKOGIS system were discussed. At the end of the meeting, researchers and offi cers agreed that the results of MEKOGIS should be deployed into the real world. Besides, internet should be used to learn flood events by everyone. Moreover, the government should promulgate a common regulation for agencies to use and share data of MEKOGIS system. In addition, the meeting concluded that MEKOGIS should be invested more and more to link other systems and to upgrade its capability.

The workshop about The development of Information Technology and Geographic Information System whose author was Professor Hoang Kiem was held in the afternoon of the second day. There were 36 participants in this workshop.

The magazine of Coordinates and International Journal of Geoinformatics were also circulated.