Ian Masser to receive GSDI Global Citizen Award

Masser’s acceptance speech, which will be entitled ‘Looking back on SDI developments with an eye to the future,’ will draw upon his own experiences over the last 30 years and will reconsider the four Brave New GIS Worlds scenarios of future developments put forward in 1996 in the light of subsequent events, with particular reference to the diffusion of SDIs that has taken place throughout the world and the impacts of technological innovation and the development of the GIS industry on society as a whole.

The GSDI Association occasionally recognizes globally an individual who has provided exemplary thought leadership and substantive worldwide contributions in promoting informed and responsible use of geographic information and geospatial technologies for the benefit of society and fostering spatial data infrastructure developments that support sustainable social, economic, and environmental systems integrated from local to global scales. The recipient, if any, is selected by past recipients of the award and the GSDI Association executive committee which consists of its past president, president, and president-elect. Professor Masser is only the fourth person to be nominated for the Award.

Educated in geography and town planning at Liverpool University, he held senior positions at the University of Liverpool, the State University of Utrecht, the University of Sheffield and the University of Twente in the Netherlands. Nearly half his time was spent in Sheffield where he was Professor of Town Regional Planning at the University of Sheffield for nearly 20 years. During a career that spans more than 60 years, Masser has visited more than fifty countries in all five continents. Born in York and, like a true Yorkshireman, he notes with some pleasure that most of the costs of his travels were born by government bodies and universities.

The latest information on GSDI 15 is available from the conference website at http://gsdi15.org.tw, and registration is open at http://gsdi15.org.tw/Registration. For further information, contact [email protected] or [email protected].

Further information

Emeritus Professor Ian Masser

Emeritus Professor Ian Masser retired from the position of Professor of Urban Planning and Management at ITC in the University of Twente in the Netherlands in September 2002. He was the Founder Chairman of the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe (AGILE) from 1998 to 1999, President of the European Umbrella Organisation for Geographic Information (EUROGI) from 1999 to 2003, and the first President of the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association from September 2002 to February 2004.

He was the National Coordinator of the UK Economic and Social Research Council’s Regional Research Laboratory initiative from1986 to 1991and co-directed the European Science Foundation’s GISDATA scientific programme from 1992 to 1997. His publications include twenty books and more than 300 contributions to conference proceedings, books and scientific journals.

Prof Masser has held visiting positions at universities in Australia, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, Iraq, Japan, Switzerland and the United States and at government research centres in Korea and Malaysia. He has also acted as advisor to a large number of national and international agencies including the European Commission, Eurostat, OECD, UNCRD and the World Bank.

The GSDI Association

The Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) Association was formed in 2004 as an inclusive networking organization of academic and research institutions, government agencies, commercial geomatics firms, national and regional GI associations and individuals (geo professionals and students) from around the world. The purpose of the Association is to promote international cooperation and collaboration in support of local, national and international spatial data infrastructure (SDI) research and implementations that will allow nations to better address social, economic, and environmental issues of pressing importance, including sustainable development. It has 38 Organisational Members from 20 countries and over 400 individual members from 55 countries with a high concentration in developing nations. GSDI is involved in SDI capacity building activities throughput the less developed world in several ways. These include a small grants programme with the US Urban and Regional Information Association’s GIS Corps volunteers as well as SDI focused workshops and seminars offered by members globally, and SDI-related GSDI projects co-funded by the Association and implemented by its members.