Source: School of Geography and Planning
Author: Guo Taisheng

On December 1-3, the 7th National Conference on Cartography and Geographic Information System (GIS) was successfully held on south campus, SYSU. This meeting was cosponsored by the Cartography and GIS Committee of the Geographical Society of China, the Cartography and GIS Committee of the Chinese Society for Geodesy Photogrammetry and Cartography, and the Geological Cartography Committee of the Geological Society of China, and was organized by the School of Geography and Planning, Sun Yat-sen University and the Guangzhou Urban Planning & Design Survey Research Institute.

The theme of this meeting is “Digital City for Better Life”, consisting of keynote speeches, thematic reports, specialty forums and round-table summit. Distinguished experts, professors and enterprise delegates presented their cutting-edge studies at the meeting. It demonstrated the research frontier and the development direction of Cartography and GIS, and discussed how the next generation information and GIS technology can serve human activities, such as business travel, traffic commute, tourism and shopping, health and medicare, and etc.

The meeting invited Wang Guangtao, Chairman of the Environment Protection and Resources Preservation Committee of the National People’s Congress, and Academician of the International Eurasia Academy of Sciences; Wang Jiayao, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering at Information Engineering University; Tong Qingxi, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences at Peking University; and Gong Jianya, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences at Wuhan University to give keynote speeches on digital city, reviewing the development process of Cartography and GIS and looking forward to the future of digital city from various aspects.

This meeting emphasizes the interactions between universities, institutes and enterprises. The 15 thematic reports cover the hot topics of theoretic research, enterprise applications, and the development of Cartography and GIS. There were also three specialty forums on cartography, GIS techniques and applications, and digital city, offering full communication and discussion on the technological innovation of Cartography and GIS, digital city construction, and public GIS service.

The last session of the meeting was the round-table summit attended by distinguished experts, professors and enterprisers. The summit discussed two themes, “Revitalization and Development of Cartography” and “Future of Digital City”. The heated discussions and active interactions among experts and attendees sparked ideas on Cartography and GIS, improved their understanding of and confidence in the grand future of digital city and smart city.

In summary, the 7th Conference on Cartography and Geographic Information System promoted communication among experts, professors and enterprisers. The keynote speeches demonstrated the grand future of digital city; the thematic reports summarized the frontier of theoretic research and applications; the specialty forums illustrated specific applications of Cartography and GIS; and the round-table summit sparked a series of new ideas on digital city. The meeting described a new development blueprint for Cartography and GIS and for service model of GIS enterprises, and interpreted the kernel concept of urbanization, “Digital City for Better Life”.