HUNAGI's contribution to the Annual Report of the Hungarian NMCAs

The Hungarian Association for Geo-information (HUNAGI)  is a non-for-profit  umbrella organisation serving the spatial data interest community in Hungary since 1994. Its major objectives are to encourage and facilitate the availability, accessiblity and usability of geographic information according to the INSPIRE legislation framework. To achieve these goals, using its European and global relations emphasis is given to awareness raising, dissemination of knowledge and best practices in association with EU directives INSPIRE and PSI. also enabling Having about 100 member institutions and organisations, HUNAGI’s multidisciplinary community includes governmental agencies, NGOs, academic and private sector. The Hungarian Mapping and Cadastral Agencies are well represented in HUNAGI since the beginning. Some recent activities and features include:

·       Links and joint actions with non-member NGOs: partnership with ITS Hungary (navigation), MLBKT (Hung. Society of Logistics, Purchase and Inventory), MAGISZ (Hungarian Society of Content Industry), CASCADOSS Hungary Association, Hungarian Space Research Cluster (HUNSPACE), as well as the SZVT (Hung. Society of Management and Organisation).

·       Recently, HUNSPACE and HUNAGI elaborated and submitted a proposal for the Ministry of National Development on a New Space Strategy emphasizing the ESA membership and the role of  the SMEs in space industry and space applications using EO and GNSS technologies

• Promoted by HUNAGI two Hungarians became founding members of the International Geospatial Society (IGS), the organisation established by GSDI Association for individual experts worldwide.
• As far as the international links and activities of HUNAGI during the past year is concerned, four entities should be mentioned: EUROGI, GSDI, ISDE and UNGIWG.

HUNAGI joined EUROGI, the European Umbrella Organisation of Geographical Information in 1996. Between 1998-2000 it had seat in the Executive Committee. Some of the major actions since August 2009 are as follow:

• Organising EUROGI ExCom Meeting hosted by VÁTI, member of HUNAGI in Budapest
• EUROGI supported the first HUNAGI Conference on Geospatial OSS with best practice from Portugal (OGC, DG Info, EU Humboldt project were presented too)
• Participating at the EUROGI Members‘ Day and Annual General Meeting in Brussels hosted by IGN
• Preparation of a comprehensive calendar for EUROGI of GI/SDI-related events in the CEE-SEE Countries for 2010-2011
• Bilateral consultations with CAGI on possible joint actions (e.g. Urban planning and GIS, Exhibition, implemented by the Hungarian Urbanistical Society at the Budapest Corvinus University) and considering opportunities provided by the Visegrad framework
• Based on the suggestion of HUNAGI, EUROGI is ready to co-organize a conference during the Hungarian EU presidency in a topic (European best practice in SDIs, self assessment methodology), which is in line with the host institutions‘ interest. Referring the MoU driven EUROGI-Eurogeographics cooperation a joint one day conference might be considered if the readiness to host is expressed by the Hungarian relevant authorities.

HUNAGI joined GSDI, the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Initiative and later Association in 1996. Since 1998 it has seat in the Advisory Committee, later Executive Committee. The mandate has expired in 2009. Some of the major actions since August 2009  are as follow:

• Representing GSDI Association by presentation at the CEOS WGISS-29 Meeting in Bonn hosted by OOSA SPIDER, (WGISS is for Working Group on Information Systems and Services of the Committee on Earth Observation),
• Co-chairing the GSDI Legal & Socioeconomic Committee,
• Preparation for the GSDI-12 Conference scheduled for October 2010,
• Alternate Head of the GSDI Delegation attending the GEO-VII Plenary and Ministerial Summit in Beijing

By invitation, HUNAGI joined UNSDI, the United Nations Spatial Data Infrastructure Initiative after The Netherlands and the Czech Republic as third country coordinator in 2006. This initiative was orchestrated and supervised by the UN Geographic Working Group (UNGIWG). Since 2007 as partner, HUNAGI is invited to take part the UNGIWG Meetings, which is a forum of delegated experts from about 30 UN agencies and some NGOs.

Some of the major actions since August 2009 are as follow:

• Conference on Disaster Management using satellite based technologies and UNGIWG-10 Anniversary Plenary hosted by OOSA in the SPIDER Office in Bonn, where the VINGIS poster of FÖMI was also displayed.
• HUNAGI promotes UNGIWG and UNSDI/SPIDER actions regularly in English at the HUNAGI/UNSDI newsblog: http://unsdihu.blogspot.com

For actions related to any abbrevation above, please use the blog‘s search function.

HUNAGI joined ISDE, the International Digital Earth Initiative – later International Society of Digital Earth - in 2003. Since 2008 it has seat in the Executive Committee. Some of the major actions since August 2009 are as follow:

• Participatied the ISDE-6 Symposium and ExCom Meetings and contributed to the Beijing Declaration directly emphasizing the role of SDI and technologies such as sensorwebs, RFID and LBS.
• HUNAGI representative was invited to and voted by the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Digital Earth (IJDE) which is registered by the Thompson Science Citation Index in its third year!
• Taking part the brainstorming hosted by the DG JRC in the subject Europe and the Digital Earth inviting the European ExCom members of ISDE and other prominent experts.
• Participated the 3nd Digital Earth Summit devoted to „Digital Earth In The Service Of Society:

             Sharing Information, Building Knowledge“ and  organised by the Sofia University of Architecture,

             Civil Engineering and Geodesy in conjuction with ISDE and EC DG JRC.

• Recent meetings with the Director General of the Department of Land Administration of  the Ministry of Rural Development as well as the Director General of the Institute of Geodesy, Cartography and Remote Sensing (FÖMI) promoting the opportunity to host the ISDE-8 in Budapest in 2013.

Other international networking activity of HUNAGI includes:

Taking part in the following European projects: EURADIN (organising with FÖMI and Geox two times National Workshops in the theme European harmonisation of addresses),  eSDI-NET+ (dissemination of best practices in sub-national SDIs and re-use, evaluation methodology and self assessment techniques to be applied on national level), NatureSDI+ (contribution by taking part National Workshop and discussions), HUMBOLDT the harmonisation of spatial data in Europe (taking part in the review process), LAPSI legal aspects of the public sector information re-use (taking part as consortium member and setting up a HUNAGI LAPSI Team where both the Dept. of Land Administration and FÖMI are represented), PLAN4all the European Network of Best Practices for Interoperability of Spatial Planning Information (participated in project discussion by invitation and applied successfully for hosting National Plan4all Workshop in Hungary), SME4SPACE the enterprises in space industry (taking part in the open day organized by HUNSPACE).

Another networking events where HUNAGI was actively involved by invited or contributing presentation, organisation, discussion since October 2009:

Esri User Conference, Society and GIS Conference hosted by ELTE, GIS in Higher Education Conference with partners, Light-Space-Imagery Conference of GeoiQ and Hung. Society of Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, IYPE National Board Meeting of the International Year of the Planet Earth, MÜT-ÜTT Joint Board Meeting of the Hungarian Space Research  Council and the Space Scientific Council, HUNAGI Conference on Opensource softwares  and free spatial data for Local Governments, INSPIRE Conference in Krakow, ISPRS Centennial Conference in Vienna and the International SDI Conference for the SEE Countries held in Skopje, FAO Workshop on ICT in Agriculture in Budapest, Geospatial Intelligence Summit, a Jacob Fleming Conference in Vienna, Austria.

Fig. nn. Invited by  the organizer, HUNAGI was introduced at the Geospatial Intelligence Summit

Another important actions were the successfully completed first two phases of the contract signed with the State Audit Office in the anti corruption fight context, the cooperation with the CASCADOSS Hungary Association as well as the MoU with HUNSPACE, the Space Industry Cluster and organising the first Space Industry Workshop with international participation.

The daily refreshed HUNAGI blogs  linked from www.hunagi.hu report on all these activities.