Geomundus is an international symposium held by the students from the consortium of Erasmus Mundus (EM) International Master's program in Geospatial Technologies. It is a free conference organized by students, for students. This year (2015) the conference will be held in Lisbon, Portugal from 20th to 21st of November.

This year, the focus of the conference will be Smart Cities. However, the conference welcomes the discussion of a wide range of topics to geospatial technologies and geoinformatics, and their application areas such as geography, environmental science, urban planning, landscape ecology, etc.

The world's urban population is predicted to double by 2050 – which means we're adding the equivalent of seven New York Cities to the planet every single year. As our planet urbanizes, our cities need to get smarter. To handle this large scale urbanization, mankind will need to find new ways to manage complexity, increase efficiency, reduce expenses, and improve quality of life.

In light of this rapid growth, imagine if our cities could talk-if they could give us live status updates on traffic patterns, pollution, parking spaces, water, power and light. Imagine how that kind of information could improve the economic and environmental health of the city for residents, businesses, and visitors. Imagine how it could improve work conditions and productivity for the people who maintain the city.

Smart Cities envisage providing digital infrastructure as a utility to individuals, providing feedback for better governance and public services while enabling the empowerment of citizens. They are a place where traditional networks are made more efficient with digital technologies for the benefit of all.

Emerging technologies have already deeply impacted our urban environments. The use of basic sensors, wireless networks, and web and mobile-based applications have spurred the growth of Smart City initiatives across the world, particularly in Europe. With the European Union investing more and more in ICT research and innovation to improve the quality of life of citizens, and with Portugal at the forefront of this movement, there is no better time to present novel ideas that advance our management of urban spaces.

The focus of this year's GeoMundus conference is smarter cities. An implicit goal of developing smart cities is to increase the quality of life, or the general wellbeing of individuals and society as a whole. The term "quality of life" (QOL) can be broadly interpreted and does not have a universally accepted formal definition or standard, however experts agree that economic indicators should be secondary.

Nowadays a variety of indices are used to assess QOL. The most prominent include the UNDP's Human Development Index, which was created to emphasize people and their capabilities over economic indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP ), while in Europe the OECD's Better Life Index was created to compare wellbeing across countries.

By emphasizing novel forms of participation, open source data, and training the next generation of smart citizens, this conference hopes to illuminate new forms of crowd sourcing technology and open databases of environmental and social parameters. As open forum focused on GIS technology, we hope to learn more about how smart city initiatives can maximize the utility of instantaneous location and spatiotemporal measurements. The possibility of visualization and spatial analysis distinguish GIS from other information systems and provide unique opportunities for its use in smart city projects.