GeoMundus Conference Archive

The 16th edition of the conference was held at the University of Münster, Münster, Germany. The approach of students organising a conference for students was quite unique. However, the participants included experts, researchers, professionals, policymakers, and the general public. Anyone who was curious or enthusiastic about geospatial technologies and their applications could participate in this conference. It was a fantastic opportunity to engage with this exciting and fast-growing field and to network with a diverse group of people at the cutting edge. As students and future members of the geospatial community, the organisers wanted to bring together a representative group of professionals to share their experience and critically discuss the role of geospatial technologies experts in the industry, academia, government, and NGO positions where students were most likely to develop a career. That year’s conference featured keynote speakers, workshops, paper and poster presentations, career development, and networking events. Past keynotes had included illustrious names from the Geospatial space, such as Dr. Michael Goodchild, Dr. Werner Kuhn, and John Nelson.

This year's conference focus was on Geospatial Intelligence for a Sustainable Future. As the world is gradually approaching the deadline for achieving the 17 sets of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) defined by the United Nations (UN) to guide countries to sustainable futures, we are keen to know how geospatial data and technologies have been contributing to achieving and monitoring the progress of these global goals. This conference will allow researchers, academics, students, policymakers, and professionals to share their latest research, activities and perspectives on the roles that geospatial information and technologies are playing in the efforts to accomplish these SDGs. Also, it will provoke discussions on how we can speed up the progress of fulfilling the SDGs by leveraging big Earth observation (EO) data and the rapidly advancing geospatial technologies to address several challenges, such as climate change, disasters, food insecurity, and conflicts, which are hindering the realization of the SDGs.

As students and members of the geospatial community, we want to engage participants in critical reflection about the goals and motivations of geospatial innovation. Thus, we present this year’s theme GI & AI: It’s a match! to critically discuss the ever-growing importance of machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence for processing and analyzing Big Data in the geographic realm. Past sponsors have included ESRI, Conterra, and AGILE. Past keynotes have included illustrious names from the Geospatial and GIS space such as Dr. Michael Goodchild, John Nelson, and Dr. Werner Kuhn. Activities in this year’s conference will include career-development workshops, product demonstrations, a paper contest, Mapathon, and networking events.

Previous editions have not had a particular thematic focus. However, this year we want to spice up discussions with a guiding theme. As students and members of the geospatial community, we want to engage participants in critical reflection about the goals and motivations of geospatial innovation. Is geospatial innovation driven by a desire for technological advancement (for the sake of technological advancement), or is it driven by a pressing societal need for geospatial solutions? Provocatively we ask the open-ended question: “Geospatial Technologies: Fancy Toys or Tangible Outcomes?”. Recent decades have seen an explosion of creativity in geospatial technologies, applications and methodologies. With these rapid developments we believe that it is important to stop and reconsider the tangible utility of these new innovations, and find out how we can ensure that our professional efforts fit some of the most pressing societal needs. Thus, this year’s conference will focus on and provoke participants to engage in constructive discussion and to ask themselves what the value of their work is in the world.

GeoMundus is a free international Conference organized by students for students. The organizing committee is the students from the Erasmus Mundus Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies. The conference aims to share cutting-edge scientific research, knowledge, and skills in the fields of Geospatial Technologies, Geoinformatics, and Geosciences, including but not limited to geographic information systems and sciences, spatial cognition, geography, and spatial data sciences. GeoMundus is an opportunity to learn about and share scientific research, knowledge, and skills with other students and researchers of all things ‘Geo’. Every year it will give participants the chance to learn about technological advancements of GI, research activities and applications of geospatial technologies in today’s world. GeoMundus is unique, featuring workshops where participants can experience first-hand the future of the field as well as a career session specially designed for students interested in a geospatial career.