Voices of future

In this article students from around the globe were canvassed on their views on their studies in geomatics and GNSS. Interesting commentaries and views were received from twelve students. There were a number of common threads that run through their views and these include the major challenges of costs of equipment and software, distinctions between geomatic education, training and research, beyond space, time and everyday applications, multidisciplinarity, and commerce versus geomatic research.

Costs

Views here include the cost of the infrastructure, the software and how educational institutions have been unable to keep pace with the rapid changes and developments in the fi eld. Included here are the diffi culties of underwriting the costs while maintaining the accuracy, volume and breadth of the geospatial data generated by GNSS technologies.

Geomatic education, training and research

As geomatics includes other fields such as logistics, intelligent transport

systems, environmental studies and urban planning, it is evident that the study area is both multi- as well as interdisciplinary. This alone makes the study interesting and intriguiging as some students found it diffi cult to distinguish between the discipline area and the study in regards to education, research and training. One identified it as beyond an individual technology but stressed that the technology’s importance in everyday life is paramount. Quality education should give a broad perspective to the methodological aspects and to the variety of applications that deal with time and space. Students also identified the importance of having good basic foundations in the sciences in order to fully benefi t from what geomatics as a discipline has to offer.

Commerce versus geomatic research

It seems that geomatics is seen as a follower rather than a leader. The needs of commerce are quite different from those in research. There is a common lament among some students that the commercial fi eld requires technicians and skilled personnel. However, these do not offer the challenges that bright young minds are capable of. Herein lies the dilemma between commercial needs and the needs of satisfying inquiring minds. The latter fi nd little or no support to further their research aspirations.

As the geomatics fi eld is yet to become a well-known or mainstream study area there are only a small number of established departments or professional discipline areas that can provide employment. However, this is changing rapidly with geomatics becoming an enabler of all fields

of endeavour as well as being a partner in research and commercial applications. There is hope yet that careers may be build out of this field and challenges satisfied.

New skills required to exploit spatial data

		Sheelan Sh.Vaez PhD student, Melbourne University, Australia s.sheikheslamivaez@ pgrad.unimelb.edu.au

While the rapid growth of land and geographic information systems around the world the high level of interest and activity is already causing a major dilemma in the personnel area. However, while the lack of technical and professional personnel is a barrier to the growth of the information industries in general, the public and private sectors must show greater commitment and recognition of the need for better educated and trained people within the industry.
I am currently studying PhD of Geomatics in the Department of Geomatics, University of Melbourne. In my opinion there are many problems and issues facing an educational institution recognizing that Geomatics is a multi disciplinary field. Professional practice in Geomatics faces a number of challenges for the future. The technical development requires new skills to exploit new spatial data sources and make use of new methodology. Furthermore, the growing demand of the society for the spatial related data dictates the multi-disciplinary approach in the practical as well as scientific areas of profession. The new technologies and methodologies in the fi elds of Geomatics are inevitably entering the everyday practice. The university study programmes are not always able to follow the quick development of every segment of this wide profession, also due to expensive equipment, data, specialized knowledge and teaching materials. Nowadays, there are several possibilities for students to gain the additional knowledge, practical experiences and different perspective of the profession, for example e-learning, international mobility etc. A supplementary short-term education such as summer school can be further a nice opportunity to gain a specialized knowledge on selected topics for students and young researchers from different profession.

Need to know capabilities of GNSS

		Deok Won Lim Chungnam National University, Daejeon, Korea hero0710@CSLab.cnu.ac.kr

The studies on geomatics and GNSS cover a broad spectrum of engineering and sciences. These areas require knowledge in electronics, astronomy, geomatics and economics. Students should be fi rstly educated on the system architecture and fundamentals, which are including GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, Beidou/Compass, and other augmentation systems such as WAAS and EGNOS. These GNSS systems offer at least three services which are location-based services (LBS), precise timing and scientific services such as for the monitoring of the Total Electron Content (TEC) of the atmosphere.
Students also need to know capabilities and limitations of GNSS. On a differential mode (DGNSS), GNSS could give positioning accuracy to 2-3 meters only and height to about 5-7 meters. With the use of carrier phase measurements, position accuracy would be up to about several centimeters. Limitations to GNSS services are what interrupt the operation of its system, such as the delays in medium of the signal caused by the atmosphere and troposphere, and signal blockages by dense tree foliage and structures. To reduce these limitations a new generation of GNSS is being developed now. Finally students who are studying GNSS are strongly recommended to know the extent of applications. Actually the GNSS systems are being applied to military services and space vehicles as well as personal navigation. By educating these applications of GNSS, the students should expect the marketability of GNSS. In conclusion, the education for the students who want to research GNSS should provide the fundamentals, capabilities and limitations, and applications of GNSS.

Challenge is high cost of equipment

		Ruzinoor Che Mat Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia ruzinoor@rediffmail.com

As a student in this fi eld, in my opinion GNSS/Geomatic educations has great possibilities and challenge to move forward in order to produce an excellent student in this new era. As I go through the course in this fi eld, there are many challenges need to be faced by the students. One of the challenges is that, in order to understand the theory of GNSS/Geomatic, the students should also have a strong knowledge on engineering study. They need to fully understand the operation of satellite in GNSS systems to obtain one coordinate from signal transmit to the suitable receiver. At least four satellites are required during operation.
This kind of operation is very complex in technically and diffi cult to understand by some students as they cannot visualise how the signal was transmitted and received. These problems have high possibilities to be solved by introducing new type of learning by utilising the multimedia tools such as animation, simulation, and video training. The other challenge is that the signal could only be achieved outdoor with the open sky but not indoor. The signal cannot penetrate the building walls and dense foliage. So, the students can only do the practical training in the open space and during the clear weather but not in heavy rain. Sometime, in this type of condition the signal also not available. However, with the possibilities of 78 satellites (24 GPS, 24 GLONASS, and 30 GALILEO) in the orbit by 2018, the above problems could be possibly solved as it will increase the satellite availability and enhanced the accuracy. The positioning inside the building also will be made possible. In my view the most trivial challenge is high cost of equipment and software related to the field. This will make the availability of the equipment during the hands on training is inadequate
that may affect the learning process.

There are unlimited opportunities

		Malambo Moonga Lonesome University of Applied Sciences Stuttgart, Germany mmalambo@gmail.com

I believe that Geomatics is a very rich discipline. It is rich because it is applicable in various fi elds of research and businesses. Generally, information is obtained by providing answers to the “where”, “what” or “why” questions. Geomatics/GNSS meets these needs for researchers, governments and businesses.
We are in a very demanding information age. GNSS or Geomatics in general, together with the Internet, now play an even greater role in the information delivery process. Quick access to spatial information is now possible because of advances in GNSS/Geomatics. Navigation by GPS or finding information using popular web based services like Google maps, Yahoo Maps are some of the notable applications that have emerged from this development. These developments have improved the quality of life for people around the whole world. Being associated with such developments and technologies is a source of great joy for me.
Studying at the University of Applied Sciences Stuttgart (Germany) has exposed me to a variety of technologies in Photogrammetry and Geoinformatics. That has made me fully convinced that there are unlimited opportunities for business and formal employment in the Geomatics profession. As GNSS/ Geomatics become even more applicable to other disciplines, the domain is getting wider. This in effect increases the job opportunities for the discipline.
The Geomatics industry is changing so fast. New instruments, software packages and techniques come on the market every year. The challenge in this fi eld is to keep abreast with these new developments.

A competitive advantage in career

Adam Yau MPhil student The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Hong Kong lsyau@polyu.edu.hk

During my three-year undergraduate study, I learnt a variety of things ranging from theories to applications and from practical techniques to sophisticated technology, developing myself towards a professional. The integration of concepts subjects and variegated applications, such as satellite orbit determination, location-based services (LBS), and natural hazards monitoring has always enlightened me, giving me useful ideas about research topics and further sustainable development.

Our Chief Executive of the HKSAR Government announced in his 2007- 08 Policy Address the undertaking of 10 major infrastructure projects in the coming years. A total of US$32 billion in total expenditure will be committed and around 250,000 new jobs will be created in related industries. The policy anticipates a signifi cant demand for geomatics professionals in the near future.

Furthermore, due to advances in computer technology and the improvement of spatial data handling algorithms, the number of GIS users in other fi elds including Logistics, Intelligent Transport Systems, Environmental Studies and Urban Planning has increased dramatically over recent years. I am confi dent that our graduate will have a competitive advantage in their career development.

Economic crisis will lead to innovation

Simone Savasta Ph. D. Student Politecnico di Torino, Italy simone.savasta@polito.it

The GNSS education is not a simple “science per se”: it is interdisciplinary and it can be extremely rich of interactions with different private companies. The specialization in GNSS/Geomatics topics might be today the right answer for a young student in this so critical world-wide period. I hope economical crisis would lead to a burst for a new innovation rush that rewards the more productive sectors for the medium and short time market period. University masters or Ph. D. programs focused on the localization/navigation field introduce to a very active scientifi c community, both for the basic research and for the R&D areas. Obviously, our future strictly depends on the interest of small medium enterprises in investment for new services and products ICT oriented. Nevertheless, the acquisition of personal skills on the navigation fi eld can create competitive profi les for production and management of innovative navigation-oriented applications, in a world-wide market that today reach out from the USA to the Australia via China and India. Among the topics in Satellite Navigation I had the chance to face several interesting opportunity: the Galileo advent and in particular its Safety of Life services, will contribute to the development of applications focused on security aspects and on certifi cation of the GNSS signal. The fully-software migration from traditional hardware technologies represents one of the major fascinating challenge of the last years, assuring more fl exibility, more system control and easier integration for embedded applications. This will integrate dedicated software for the quality signal monitoring, for example for interference detection and mitigation, assuring reliability for the future GNSS based services.

The challenge is to increase the accuracy

Xiaofan Li University of Colorado at Boulder, USA xiaofan.li@live.com

I am a Chinese student studying GNSS at University of Colorado at Boulder. GNSS caught my eyes initially through its application in car navigation system. Believing that the civilian applications of GNSS will have promising future, I started my research journey of GNSS in Japan and now continue it in US.
I personally believe that students in the fi eld of GNSS will have a great career in future no matter in academia or industry. The GNSS applications, from personal navigation in cell phones to precise applications in precise agriculture and seismic monitoring have enormous industrial values and attract interests from both government and private companies.
Besides, the family of GNSS is growing that Europe is building the Galileo Navigation Satellite System, and China will implement the Beidou (Compass) Navigation Satellite System. The science and engineering of GNSS is becoming a world wide hot topic, as a student in this domain, I am very confident about its future and my own.
The challenges of the GNSS technology are how to increase the sensitivity and accuracy of the GNSS receiver without largely increasing the cost or introducing any latency. In future, the cooperation of GPS, Galileo, GLONASS and even Beidou could bring more visible satellites to the user, thus the dilution of precision will be greatly improved.
The indoor navigation or GNSS navigation under urban environment are also the challenging parts for the GNSS scientists and engineers.

An endless source of discovery

Chris Goodall PhD student University of Calgary, Canadaclgoodal@ucalgary.ca

From my perspective, as a PhD student planning to fi nish in less than a month, the Geomatics realm goes far beyond individual technologies, such as GNSS. There are many different fi elds such as geodesy, mapping/ surveying, positioning & location, atmospheric study etc.
The point here is that all these fields deal with time and/or space in some way, which means their importance to everyday life is paramount. The measurement of space and time brings about nearly all of the applications that are widely grouped into Geomatics. While this description is broad, it should be appreciated that a focused education
gives a student many of the details for a single application. A quality education not only does this but also gives the student a broader perspective of how the methods can be applied to a variety of applications dealing with time and space. Geomatics does exactly this by combining elements of electrical, mechanical, civil, aerospace, systems design and computer engineering. Since Geomatics is so wide reaching the challenge here is to stay focused long enough to understand the details of one’s research before being lured off to learn about something new and exciting. My particular fi eld, positioning and location, is an enabler of other services that are required on a daily basis. The Geomatics education I have received has given me an opportunity to pursue my own product development that will be rolled into a business. Even in uncertain economic times people still need to know where their UPS parcel is, if their holiday fl ight is on time, where the closest gas station is, or where their children are.
My education has given me the knowledge, confi dence and networking
abilities to push my academic learning into actual products. To me knowledge is everything, and from my experience Geomatics is an endless source of discovery which will only grow faster as more ideas are put forward. Staying current with all this information is the hard part, but there’s nothing wrong with lifelong learning.

Graduates need to “market” themselves strategically

		Karla Edwards PhD Candidate Ohio State University, USA edwards.582@gmail.com

I have been a student and instructor in the field of Geomatics/GNSS for over 15 years and I readily admit I am a certified geospatial data junkie! I specialize in Geodesy and GPS; the former having been substantially revolutionized over the last 2 decades by the latter. Consider, for example, that Geodesy is defined as the science of measuring both the shape and the gravity field of the earth. However, because of GPS, determination of the Earth’s shape is less difficult than it used to be. Plus, with the increasing numbers of orbiting satellites, gravity field determination is also morphing. The inevitable result? An implicit redefinition of geodesy and the role of the geodesist. This is but one example of an area of Geomatics that is changing the face of the profession at an amazing rate and placing a greater demand upon us as students to stay relevant.
A significant challenge to our students is the fact that Geomatics is not a well-known or mainstream engineering or science discipline. Therefore, the skill of a graduate may not be readily recognized or solicited, requiring that our graduates “market” themselves all the more strategically.
In this regard, presenting both a challenge and an opportunity is the need for geomaticians to function on multi-disciplinary teams. Consider that, electrical engineers have made a significant contribution to the advance of GNSS; and various types of geo-scientists and engineers have also been able to capitalize on the use of GPS technology. However, given the ease with which GPS promotes a “push-button, black box” mentality, the geomatician’s expertise could potentially be overlooked.
Be that as it may, I still see Geomatics/GNSS as an extremely practical field which melds seamlessly with other disciplines. Hopefully, therefore, graduates will not be “pigeon-holed” into the traditional surveying and GIS roles but will increasingly be given opportunities to function in less traditional arenas.

Educational institutions should be in tandem with latest

technologies

Thilantha Lakmal Dammalage PhD fellow, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand st105206@ait.ac.th

As a postgraduate student of AIT, I realize that the limitation of advanced instrumentation, lack of experts specialized in the field and very less number of workshops, seminars, conferences and forums through which students can earn new knowledge and improve their research methodologies catering the present technical and commercial needs are critical issues and challenges that need utmost attention for further development of the fi eld of GNSS in the region. Moreover, in developing countries like Sri Lanka the benefi ts of the development and integrated applications of GNSS are not fully recognized for a variety of reasons; such as security issues, auxiliary equipment, and the un-matching cost of required instrumentation including computer hardware and software economic levels. Conclusively, I firmly believe that with infrastructure development of GNSS at educational institutions

should be in tandem with latest and upto- date technologies in order to ensure prospective carrier opportunities in the fi eld of GNSS in this region of the world.

The problems in the dual-use of GPS and GLONASS remain

Hedeki Yamada PhD. Candidate, Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, Japan damaya2000jp@yahoo.co.jp I have been studying GNSS technology for 3 years as a post graduate student. The beginning was to take a seminar at the Laboratory of Satellite Navigation as a preparation for the graduation research, when I was a junior of the under graduate. I just had the knowledge about GPS that it was a tool of the car navigation devices. But I was interested in the mechanism of the GPS positioning. It was the first time to study about GPS as a student of Logistics Department, although there are some lectures on satellite navigation for the students at Maritime Systems Department. Reading the fundamental text in English and presenting what we presented each other at the small member seminar for half a year, we studied the fundamental principle of the positioning and GPS terminology. It was very helpful to understand the mechanism of the satellite positioning deeply to tackle the task to develop a positioning program using the pseudo-range measurements of GPS and GLONASS in the graduation research and also master course research. As the positioning mechanism in GLONASS is different from that of GPS and the papers on GLONASS were few, it takes a long time to solve the problems. But it helps me to deepen the understanding on the satellite positioning. And it will help to solve the problems in the multiuse of the GNSS including Galileo, Compass and QZSS in the near future. As there remain the problems in the dual-use of GPS and GLONASS, I will continue to study to solve the problems. In thinking about the educational problem, because the satellite navigation engineering needs the in-depth knowledge of physics, mechanics, electronic engineering and the communication engineering, it is necessary to learn the base of general engineering firmly in the faculty. And besides, studying there the mechanism of the GPS positioning as an applied problem of engineering helps the smoothly advance to the GNSS technical research. Firms to take up a PhD student for meaningful research are highly rare Suddhasheel Ghosh Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India shudh@iitk.ac.in, Susham Biswas Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India susham@iitk.ac.in Geoinformatics or Geomatics has been an emerging industry and a fi eld of research in the world at large since the last decade of the previous century. Geoinformatics research and developments have been spurred by the needs of the industry throughout. Modern data acquisition systems have facilitated the procurement of high resolution data and the reduction of the prices in storage devices have economised their storage. Unfortunately, the geomatics industry in India has been primarily catering to the demands of set trends rather than bringing up a new trend or new technology. The economical but skilled man power produced is liable to large scale exploitation satisfying vested interests of limited groups. Predominant jobs are now available which are based on the migration of data which is not very challenging to bright minds, thus causing an exodus of trained and highly skilled human resource to foreign lands. Firms that would like to take up a PhD student for meaningful research and development are highly rare. Although the repository of the data is huge, there is a lack of research and/ or development in terms of processing algorithms in order to extract information from them. In addition, lack of complete metadata creates hurdles in the path of researchers for development of processing methods. A data providing agency for a country should encourage researchers to work on its data either by inviting internships at their premises or by providing good quality data free of cost to one or many of the research and development organisations in that country. There seems to be a big competition in the market between those who would prefer to have knowledge of software and those who prefer to procure the basics of geomatics. Some of the organisations in the country cater to the human resource requirement in the fi eld by provision of explicit training on popular software, which may or may not be present in the organisation in which the student would be fi nally placed in. On the other hand, young people who have strong fundamentals in the field, fi nd themselves handicapped as far as software training is concerned. Further, a rather large number of unskilled graduates are being churned out of newer engineering colleges cropping up every other day, with unspecialized faculty members and practically negligible infrastructure. These students need to be properly trained in Geomatics to make them more employable. Opportunities for developing new products or services related to geoinformatics technology are abundant. Yet, most of the cities in India do not have high resolution maps, our transport and navigational system is not gaining benefi ts from GNSS, we are not coming up with indigenous data processing and managing software, there is no signifi cant integration between GPS, Remote Sensing, GIS etc. which implies that there is a vast untapped related application areas required to be explored. Recognising this imbalance, many geomatics professionals have suggested that education in this domain be taken to the school level. However, this would evidently trigger the redraft of the syllabi of the other basic courses taught in junior schools, as most of the topics in geomatics need the basic knowledge of physics, mathematics and computer science. Since geomatics is a very powerful tool and is being used in diverse fields of core research like forestry, hydraulics and water resources, agriculture, human settlements analysis etc., and domains of applications such as environmental impact assessment, decision support systems, spatial planning etc., contemporary educational institutes and organisations should consider a redraft of their syllabi in terms of theory as well their applications in these fields. Ideally one could target the research in an area which requires geospatial inputs and having business potential. The creation of a geospatial consortium where students, knowledge and best practice methods would be exchanged, along with the presence of sufficient funds, access to quality data and infrastructure would help spur research, development and also create a team of trained and upgradeable manpower which would help create services, processing algorithms and also shape products and deliver it to the world market. As on date, Indian institutions should look forward to participate and collaborate in international fora like the ISPRS, and encourage the students to work on international research projects. The geoinformatics division, under the aegis of the Department of Civil Engineering at IIT Kanpur, stresses largely on the theoretical understanding of the subject and gives freewill to the student about learning of the software. However, in the post graduate level programmes, working on software is seriously not seen in a very good perspective unless the amount of work done is really huge or there has been a development in terms of data processing and information extraction algorithms. The division is currently looking forward to forge developments and garner relationships in hitherto largely unexplored domains in India like archaeology, sound modelling and immersive visualization.