Nordic GIS Conference 2009 in Stockholm

The conference was held over only two days, something the participants seemed to like. ULI had made an abundant programme, with as much as four parallel sessions and a workshop at the same time.

Ralph Monö from ULI opened the conference and GI Norden's president Þorbjörg Kr. Kjartansdottir gave an overview over GI Norden's most important tasks. She was announcing that this year’s Award of honour was given to FIG’s president Stig Enemark. The award has earlier been given to Olaf Østensen, Bengt Rystedt, and Jan Terje Bjørke. She also gave a present to Lars Hansen for his long effort for GI Norden, both in the board and through arranging a wide range of seminaries in Sweden. During the opening of the conference there were also short presentations from GI Norden’s representatives from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.

The Key note speakers during the opening were Markus Erhard from the European Environment Agency (EEA) and Krister Olson from the European Commission.

The most important sessions during the conference were Spatial Planning, Health, Climate and Water, INSPIRE, and ScanGIS. There were also sessions for the Energy Business, GIS in Non Traditional Business Areas, and Standards. The workshops covered GIS in larger cities, Plans against Flooding, and User Orientation. There were also study visits at the City of Stockholm and the Office of Regional Planning.

Most of the presentations are available here.

A lot of companies were presenting themselves and their products in the exhibition.

The next year’s conference is planned to be in mid June 2010 in Selfoss in Iceland.

GI Norden is 20 years old in the beginning of December 2009. The organisation was founded at Beitostølen in Norway, during the first Nordic GIS Conference in 1989.