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PAST ACTIVITIES
Aside from the educational and research aspects of the ATLANTIC INSITUTE holding annual sessions of the graduate students of the three universities, displaying and debating with each other their individual graduate and/or research assignments, the ATLANTIC INSITUTE partners and their closely related global friends pride themselves on their regular visionary activities, promoting new ideas and concepts to others. A major concern is the dramatically rapid change in technology, but also the changes impacting the economy and social reform in the information/knowledge era.
The ATLANTIC INSITUTE shares its findings and accomplishments not only with a national but global audience.
Even prior to the founding of the Institute, individuals of the three universities authored, announced and promoted in the early 1980s the SDI-Spatial Data Infrastructure concept.
As Dr. John McLaughlin, now President of the UNB and his colleagues in 1982 quoted: “An infrastructure will not only include the databases themselves, but also the communication facilities and protocols, the user interfaces, and the institutional arrangements necessary for the effective flow and exchange of spatial information.” He went on to say, that our focus on infrastructure is leading to a new way of thinking about the nature and role of spatial information and about the participants and institutions involved in managing the information.
From 1982 to 2003 was a long road, but the ATLANTIC INSTITUTE became a partner, sponsor and promoter of the first GSDI-Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Conference in 1996, Koenigswinter Bohn, Germany with EUROGI and DDGI of Germany, with the Institute representing Canada and the United States on the Program Directorate.
The ATLANTIC INSTITUTE was asked to play the lead role for the next GSDI Conference in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
While the world slowly discovered the SDI Concept between 1982 and 1996, the ATLANTIC INSTITUTE became very concerned, recognizing major changes to be addressed and to act upon in education, particularly in the United States where spatial information engineering and mapping sciences professional disciplines were almost non-existent.
Starting in 1991 the ATLANTIC INSITUTE began a series of “Think Tank” sessions, by special invitation with a group of individual academics and professionals from around the world on the following subjects:
• The Need for Change in Surveying and Mapping Education-1991 Berlin, Germany
• The Process of Change in Surveying and Mapping-1993 Campobello Island, Canada
• Identifying and Describing Future Educational Requirements-1994 Vienna, Austria
• Applied and Academic Geomatics into the Twenty-First Century-1995 Quebec, Canada
• Global Education Paradigms in Geomatics-1996 Paris, France
A summary of the 5 (five) Think Tanks was published by the ATLANTIC INSTITUTE and copies can be obtained of the paper:
“Applied and Academic Geomatics into the Twenty-First Century”
This “White Paper” was first introduced during the second GSDI conference in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA and received from a highly intellectual audience the following endorsement:
The paper “Applied and Academic Geomatics into the Twenty-First Century” which was produced by the Atlantic Institute as a result of a series of think tank conferences, should be accepted as a discussion document for government, academic, and private sector initiatives to enhance research, education, and training at the local, national, regional, and global levels.
In September of 2000 the ATLANTIC INSTITUTE was invited by the State of North Rhine Westphalia, Germany and North Carolina, USA (both states are partners in a “Sister State Agreement”) to become active and extend their ongoing activity towards a partnership among the States, Microsoft, Intergraph, the ATLANTIC INSTITUTE and the Federal Geographic Data Committee.
This partnership established by Memorandum of Understanding executed and signed October 5, 2000 called for program to:
Compare and contrast NRW and NC GEO-portals for capability, interoperability, customer satisfaction, ability to provide state services overall, and conformance with Global Spatial Data Infrastructure endorsed standards and practices. Review will be both technical and policy enforced.
This partnership highly endorsed by the Prime Minister of NRW, Wolfgang Clement, now Federal Secretary of Economics of Germany and the then Governor of North Carolina, USA James B. Hunt, Jr., is looking at the development of both states’ geospatial website development and should in time address institutional, legal and many other cultural differences, beneficial to a similar worldwide audience.
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