Dubai Municipality and GIS Development, a company that promotes geospatial technologies, on Monday announced the launch of Map Middle East conference in Dubai scheduled to be held in April 2005.

Eng. Mohammed Zaffin, Director of Dubai GIS Centre

In his inaugural address during the launching ceremony of the conference, Eng. Mohammed Zaffin, Director of GIS Centre at Dubai Municipality said that the Middle East region has its unique geographical advantage of being located in the middle of East and West.

“The region a whole has been witnessing a speedy development and progress, and all set to convert itself into knowledge based economy. Geospatial information constitutes a key component of knowledge economy,” he said.

“Advancement in geospatial technology and its application for improving quality of life by providing improved and efficient infrastructure, and optimum utilization of resources have and would further contribute towards building knowledge economy. Over the years, sizeable investments have been made towards development of infrastructure and facilitation of services to make Dubai as the world’s best work and business environment,” said Zaffin.

“Every human activity has some kind of spatial outlook inherent in itself and today significance of geospatial information has increased manifold. Geospatial information holds the key to understand ones natural resources and harness the same to its optimum level to serve the best interest of the nation and its citizens. In a way it is becoming a public utility for the human being,” he said.

Objective: Map Middle East series of conference would provide a unique platform to mapping community comprising map producers, users, academic institutions, industry, technology developers and policy makers to interact, understand each other’s requirements and discuss, deliberate and formulate strategies for achieving the common objectives.

Contribution: Map Middle East would create a great level of awareness amongst common man about the potential usage of maps. It would bring necessary awareness amongst senior level administrative and technical officials through keynote talks, seminars and workshops. It would evolve itself as a regional platform for discussion on various critical and important issues of mapping community in Middle East region. It would also bring in awareness about the latest technology and application developments through state of art exhibition. And it would act as business opportunity for various regional and international organizations and provide excellent collaborative atmosphere through its business delegations and meetings.

Theme: Map Middle East 2005 has a theme of Geosptial Information and Knowledge Economy. Geospatial technologies have emerged as strategic tools for development. Middle East region is also fast emerging as a center for GIS-related projects and applications for development. Map Middle East would showcase the capability that geospatial technology provides to develop sustainable solutions, and how it helps the region better understand the processes leading to changes.

Highlights: Map Middle East 2005 comprises of the following major activities:

• Conference
• Application Specific Seminars
• Issue oriented Workshop and Panel Discussions
• State of the Art Exhibition
• User Meetings / Collaboration Meeting
• Social programmes

For more information please visit: www.mapmiddleeast.org