FIG Bulletin

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No. 72, March 2001

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Contents

Editorial
FIG Working Week 2001
Bureau
International Co-operation
Task Forces
Commissions
News
Short Notices

Chunwoo Chon, President of the Korea Cadastral Survey Corporation and the Korea Confederation of Surveyors and Robert Foster at the Headquarters of KCSC during the FIG visit to Korea in December 2000.

Korean Surveyors welcome FIG

The FIG Working Week in 2001 will be held in Seoul, Korea 6–11 May 2001. The venue will be the Sheraton Walker Hill Hotel and Congress Centre with a view to the Han River that is bisecting the city.

The week is hosted by Korean Confederation of Surveyors associated with the Korea Cadastral Survey Corporation (KCSC) and Korea Association of Surveying and Mapping. The event is further sponsored by the Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs and the National Geography Institute.

More on FIG Working Week in Seoul

Also in this issue…

• FIG Bureau meeting in Providence. FIG Bureau met in Providence in December in conjunction to the ACSM/ASPRS Annual Congress. The discussions focussed on the new statutes and the future strategies of FIG including the new commission structure. The FIG Agenda 21 was approved for adoption at the General Assembly in Seoul, May 2001.
• Mediterranean Surveyor. Mediterranean Surveyor in the New Millennium was the theme of the first FIG regional seminar in the Mediterranean region that was arranged in Malta in September 2000. The seminar was led by FIG Commission 5 and supported by four other commissions and several professional partners.
• Commission 2 meeting in Rosario. FIG activities in South America got an important addition when Commission 2 organised a seminar with local partners in Rosario, Argentina in October 2000. The seminar focussed on education and professional topics of special interest to the region. Almost 130 delegates from 10 countries participated. Final statement urges FIG for further actions on the region.
• Annual meeting in Athens. Commission 3 Annual Meeting was held in Athens in October. The country reports on spatial data infrastructure turned to be the most interesting part of the seminar together with insight view on the reformation of the Greek cadastre.
• CLGE–FIG Seminar on Professional Competence. The first CLGE–FIG Seminar on enhancing professional competence of surveyors in Europe attracted 50 participants from 17 European countries to Delft in November 2000. This expert seminar focussed on three issues: threshold standards for professional competence, the idea of core syllabus and models for curricula content.

Towards Increasing Participation

by Robert W. Foster, President of FIG

A main objective of the US Bureau, since its earliest days as a shadow bureau, has been to involve the member associations of FIG more in the work of the Federation. The members assign delegates to the commissions and to the General Assembly but all too often those delegates fail to report either the work of their commissions or the deliberations of the General Assembly back to their home associations. And all too often the member associations show little or no interest in the work of the commissions or the deliberations of the General Assembly.

It is true that not all subjects of deliberation of the General Assembly require instruction from the member associations to their delegates. But there are issues that merit careful consideration by all the member associations. The current change being made in the way FIG is governed is a case in point. The new governance procedures of FIG are designed to enable a more democratic selection of its leadership. These changes should be important to both the largest and richest, and to the smallest and poorest of the member associations. All should be fully aware of their significance and all delegates to the General Assembly in Seoul should come with clear instructions from their home associations as we seek to change the statutes and internal rules accordingly. The draft proposal is already available on the FIG home page for consideration and comments.

Perhaps some of the reasons for member associations not to fully participate in the decision making process of the General Assemblies have been problems with language and in understanding the way of handling the administrative meetings. General Assembly in Prague, therefore, strongly called for a study of the languages and cultures of FIG with a view to encouraging inclusiveness in our deliberations. The action of the General Assembly was to form an ad hoc Commission on cultures and languages but a review of the FIG statutes and other, practical considerations have convinced us that a task force is more appropriate for the purpose. Accordingly, the Task Force on the Cultures and Languages of FIG has been formed (the General Assembly in Seoul will be asked to rescind its vote taken in Prague to form an ad hoc commission in favor of a task force) and will

• identify and clarify the cultural and linguistic issues facing our members
• promote the establishment of a set of guiding principles to assist with the implementation of this
• study the need for and support the establishment of a wider political Advisory Board to ensure that cultural issues are recognized
• identify how to encourage the increased participation of more countries in the work of FIG by recognizing the importance of cultural issues and linguistic differences.

Members have been assigned to the Task Force with as broad a representation of languages and cultures as possible, and the Task Force is expected to deliver at least a preliminary report to the General Assembly in Seoul, Korea in May.

Another point that I want to emphasize is that the Commissions of FIG are the main reason for the existence of FIG. But all too often the delegates to the commissions fail to bring the results of the commissions’ work back to their home associations. Further, it is sadly true that some delegates contribute little or nothing to the work of the commissions to which they have accepted assignment. A member association has three levels of responsibility in regard to the work of the commissions: Firstly, they should appoint delegates to the commissions in which they have most interest. Secondly, they should support their delegates technically and to the extent practicable, financially. Thirdly, they should require prompt and thorough reporting by their delegates of their activities.

I am further confident that the increasing number of regional seminars and Commission meetings in different continents will help the national delegates to participate in the FIG activities much more often than has been the case in past years. When discussing the future strategies of FIG in Providence in December 2000 the Bureau strongly supported the development of regional activities within the Federation.

The current Bureau will continue to visit the member associations in the attempt to involve them in FIG activities. But even if we could, during our tenure, make a visit to every FIG member association, a single visit in 3 or 4 years hardly qualifies as “involvement” or “participation”. The best way for member associations to be involved is through the active participation of their delegates and a vital interest in all the activities of the Federation, at the Commission level, the GA level, the Task Force level and the Permanent Institution level.

Finally, I will continue the practice of my predecessor President Peter Dale, of meeting with the presidents of the member associations, or their representatives, during the Working Weeks and our Congress in 2002. I invite you all to the 2001 Working Week in Seoul, Korea, where we may discuss together our concerns for a vigorous and healthy surveying profession on the global scale as represented by FIG and all our members.

Largest Technical programme ever
at an FIG Working Week

The Organising Committee for WW 2001 together with the FIG technical commissions has assembled a program consisting of two plenary sessions and more than 30 technical sessions and workshops. In these sessions more than 150 papers will be presented. The Working Week in Korea will offer an extraordinary possibility to learn about surveying in Korea and in Asia. The open call for papers that was for the first time used for an FIG Working Week resulted with excellent feedback from the region.

In the technical programme there are several papers from Japan, China, Vietnam and, of course, many papers from the hosting country. In addition there will be papers from Cambodia, Philippines and Malaysia but also from countries that have not so often been attending FIG events like Iran and India. The increasing interest in Arab countries is also encouraging. Korea is also the last Working Week before the Congress in Washington so most of the working groups will meet in Korea to finalise their reports for Washington.

For the General Assembly the meeting in Seoul will be an interesting gathering when the details of the new governance scheme for FIG will be worked out. The week will also be an exciting social and cultural experience.

Robert Foster, President of FIG expressed his impressions after visiting Seoul in December 2000 saying that “the social and cultural program for the Seoul meeting may prove to be one of the best ever. Korea is an economic marvel of our time and in spite of a lingering recession in Southeast Asia, Seoul shows no signs of slowing down. But the history and unique culture of the area are readily accessible and will be fascinating to all. An evening at traditional Korea House, a day trip to a Korean folk village or a post-conference tour to Chejudo Island, among other possibilities, will afford many wonderful memories of this exotic country. When I visited Seoul and Chejudo in December together with Markku Villikka, Director of FIG office, we experienced Korean hospitality first hand. We recommend it to you.”

The venue of the Working Week, Sheraton Walker Hill Hotel and Convention Centre, is excellent for a conference in a city whose over-loaded traffic causes big logistic problems.

The Working Week programme and registration forms are available on the conference web site at www.fww2001.or.kr while the detailed programme for technical sessions and administrative meetings can be found on the FIG web site at www.fig.net.

FIG Bureau meets at the ACSM/ASPRS Conference
in Providence

Prof. James P. Reilly, President of ACSM and Robert W. Foster, President of FIG at a ACSM/ASPRS Conference in Providence.

The FIG Bureau had its last year’s third full Bureau meeting in Providence, Rhode Island USA during the Annual Conference of the American Congress of Surveying and Mapping (ACSM) and the American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) 1–3 December 2000. The ACSM/ASPRS Conference was attended by about 1,000 American surveyors.

The FIG Bureau used two and a half days to discuss both administrative issues and the future strategies of FIG. A lot of time was spent also to discuss the topics of the incoming General Assembly in Seoul, Korea 6–11 May 2001.

New members joining FIG

The increase in the number of FIG member associations seems to be a permanent trend. The Bureau agreed to propose to the General Assembly that it admit two Armenian associations the Association of Private Surveyors (APS) and the Professional Association of Real Estate Specialists and Surveyors (PARESS) as member associations of FIG. Armenia becomes a new member country of FIG. Further Maanmittausalan ammattikorkeakoulu- ja opistoteknisten Liitto MAKLI ry from Finland and Colegio de Ingenieros y Agrimensores de Puerto Rico were proposed to be admitted to become new members of FIG.

The Bureau noted also with a pleasure that the Nigerian Institute of Surveyors has paid its arrears after the expulsion at the General Assembly in Prague and its membership has been restored.

New statutes and internal rules to be adopted in Seoul

The General Assembly agreed in Prague on the principles of changing the FIG statutes and internal rules based on the proposal of the Task Force on the Future Governance of FIG. The draft statutes were discussed in Providence and they have after that been finalised based on the comments received from member associations and the decisions of the Bureau.

In the new statutes no changes are proposed to the commission or task force structure. These will be reconsidered after the recommendations from the Task force on these issues. The Bureau decided that the future commission structure is one of the three topics at the breakout sessions at the General Assembly in Seoul. The other two topics will be the proposal from the German Bureau for the future strategy of FIG and the discussion paper prepared by the Task force on cultures and languages in FIG.

The proposal for the new statutes and internal rules is posted on the FIG web site at www.fig.net.

New Strategy under preparation

The Bureau used quite a lot of time in brainstorming the future strategies of FIG. This includes both the strategies of the German Bureau but also issues like how to improve the coordination between the work plans of the Bureau and Commissions without forgetting the long-term financial impacts. The draft strategy will be discussed at one of the breakout sessions in Seoul.

The Bureau will also prepare a follow-up report on the implementation of the of the current work plan for the General Assembly. Especially increased activities in South and Latin America should be mentioned as an example on results from the past months.

Vice Presidents Charles Challstrom and Jerome Ives and Deputy Congress Director John Hohol discussing the future strategies of the Federation.

Agenda 21 and Women’s Access to Land

FIG activities with UN have focussed on the preparations for Istanbul+5 and Rio+10 follow-up conferences. FIG Task force on sustainable development has finalised the FIG Agenda 21 that is FIG response to the implementation of Agenda 21 and Habitat Agenda. This report will be used already in February at the Habitat meetings and will be adopted at the General Assembly in Seoul in May. It will be launched during the Istanbul+5 in New York in June 2001. The Bureau approved the FIG Agenda 21 in Providence.

Commission 7 working group has finalised its report on Women’s Access to Land. The Bureau agreed to support the proposal of Commission 7 to publish FIG guidelines on Women’s Access to Land and to get adoption from the General Assembly in Seoul.

Among other reports that are under preparation and that will be discussed at the next General Assembly are the FIG guidelines on international standardization organizations and standards.

The Bureau further decided to combine the FIG Annual Review and Bulletin. The Annual Review of 2000 will therefore be published together with the next FIG Bulletin in April 2001. This allows better resources for the Bulletin allowing e.g. use of more colours in the printing. All publications are also posted on the FIG web site. In addition to the Bulletin news is posted frequently on the web site to give the member associations the option to cut short news to their own journals.

Joint CIB/FIG Project
on Performance Indicators

Based on the Memorandum of Understanding between FIG and International Research Council for Building Studies and Documentation (CIB) the associations have started a joint project to identify performance indicators for urban sustainability. The two co-ordinators of the project are Stephen Brown from RICS (UK) and Prof. Peter Dale from FIG, who are now looking for interested persons to participate into the project.

The overall objective of the working group is to help bring about a common understanding, acceptance and use among all parties to the urban development process as to the appropriate performance indicators to be used for assessing and measuring urban sustainability. These shall be considered in the context of national, regional, local, organisation and project levels.

In this context, it is viewed as being of particular importance to encourage and facilitate effective communication between and within the different levels of decision-making, from the policy level to the operational level.

The group has the following tasks:

• To identify the context within which urban development currently takes place. The aim of this is to provide a benchmark of current practice of the various private and public sector players involved in urban development.
• To establish a conceptual framework for performance indicators for urban sustainability. This task seeks to establish a theoretically ideal set of indicators that could be used to assess urban sustainability in order to see the extent to which current practice differs from this notional set of performance indicators.
• To assess the relationship between current performance indicators of urban sustainability and the theoretical ideal set. The purpose would be to identify and analyse the reasons for the broad areas of convergence and divergence between the indicators used and the notional set of indicators drawn up above.
• Develop a strategy for improving the current performance measures. This task will consider how existing measures can be re-aligned to those proposed. The barriers to change will be identified and best practice guidelines are prepared.

The project will have the following output:

• Summary report of findings related to The Benchmark of current practices (2001)
• Draft specification of desirable set of performance indicators (two sets – one for change, one for performance) (2002)
• Report of findings on Identification of barriers/values/drivers/etc for change (2002)
• Final Report on Best practice guidelines and presentation at Conferences (2003).

Those interested in this project should contact the FIG office.

Enhancing Professional Competence of Surveyors in Europe

By Stig Enemark,
Chair of the FIG Task Force on Mutual Recognition

A joint FIG/CLGE seminar on Enhancing Professional Competence was held 3 November at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. The aim of the seminar was to develop a suitable framework for the surveying profession in Europe as a basis for enhancing professional competence through the principle of mutual recognition of professional qualifications, which has been established in law at the European level. This is the first joint activity to combine the efforts of FIG and CLGE (The Council of European Geodetic Surveyors). The seminar was by invitation only and attracted some 50 participants from 17 countries representing the educational sector and the professional surveying community in the European region.

The general EU Directive on the mutual recognition of professional qualifications established the concept of a BAC + 3 (BSc) level of higher education as a basic criteria for the exchange of professionals between EU member states. This concept of mutual recognition and the legal framework imposed by the EU’s Directive has resulted in some difficulties of implementation at national level. The EU Directive is currently under review but the host organisations recognise the broad principles on which mutual recognition should be based. These three principles are:

• Transparency – of the procedures within the process of mutual recognition
• Justification – of the need for restrictions
• Proportionality – to ensure equivalent standards.

The seminar aimed to develop a concept based on these three principles and suitable for the surveying profession in Europe. The seminar was focused on three issues:

• Threshold standards for professional competence – how to compare and assess professional competence in different areas of surveying?
• The idea of a core syllabus – is this a possible and suitable approach for the surveying profession in Europe?
• Models for curricula content – how to compare and assess curricula content between different countries?

The seminar is part of an on-going process of investigation and debate within both the CLGE and FIG. In 1998, FIG established a task force on the mutual recognition of professional qualifications and the CLGE established a working party on a core syllabus. FIG and CLGE decided to collaborate on the project in 2000, and CLGE awarded two research grants to provide:

• the evidence and arguments to stimulate improvement of curricula, in order to assist the convergence of standards across Europe
• information to assist the determination of equivalence of qualifications to facilitate the mobility of surveying professionals between European countries.

Specifically, the intention of this seminar was to widen the debate among the academic surveying community in Europe and to elicit their opinions and ideas.

The seminar was jointly organised by the CLGE President, Paddy Prendergast and the Chair of the FIG Task Force on Mutual Recognition, Prof. Stig Enemark. The sessions were chaired by Prof. Kirsi Virrantaus, the current chair of FIG Commission 2.

In the introduction Paddy Prendergast discussed some of the main influences on surveying education, which include the changing commercial environment and the intensive application of technology in surveying. He stated that the surveying education in Europe is still focused on national markets, and that changes are needed to prepare for new international markets at regional and global levels. CLGE has been involved in research into the varied nature of surveying within Europe, as demonstrated by the Allan Report (http://www.ge.ucl.ac.uk/clge/allan_report/). Stig Enemark described the seminar as paving the way for professional competence in Europe, which is a goal shared by both the CLGE and FIG. He discussed the changes in the profession within Europe and in employment patterns and emphasised that “the only constant is change”. In such a dynamic professional environment, the educational base must be flexible and interdisciplinary, and the graduates must be adaptable to cope with these future changes. University graduation should therefore be seen as only the first step in a lifelong educational carrier.

Dr. Frances Plimmer from the University of Glamorgan gave a presentation, which outlined the methodology applied by the EU Directive to the process of achieving the mutual recognition of professional qualifications. She explained that the directive does not directly affect employment or the process of licensing surveyors; it only gives surveyors from another EU country the right to have their professional qualifications treated as equivalent to those acquired by the nationals from any other EU country. The process of becoming “qualified” varies throughout Europe. In some countries, it is merely by holding an academic qualification that a surveyor is “qualified”, although to undertake certain surveying tasks, it is also necessary to become licensed, a process often controlled by the state. In other countries, there are sub-state private organisations, which regulate both education and professional qualifications. The delegates at the seminar agreed to contribute further detailed information in this area. One of the outcomes of the ongoing research will be to identify and publicise the different national models for becoming a “qualified” surveyor in Europe. This should improve the understanding of the processes and thereby enable appropriate organisations to administer the terms of the mutual recognition directive effectively within the field of surveying.

Rob Ledger from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors described the CLGE project to identify a core syllabus. The aim was to raise the baseline quality of surveying education and also improve the mobility of surveyors in practice. He outlined the problems of listing common subjects in all EU universities to create a core syllabus. These problems relate to market diversity and cultures. Course content is based on market requirements and academic institutions are concerned to equip students to meet market needs. Also, the definition of a “surveyor” does not always reflect the nature and activities of “surveying” in a given market; and professional work varies in different countries according to the way professions have developed over time in different European countries. In terms of educational policies there is an input/output debate, with the “input” basis concentrating on topics and hours studied; whereas the “output” focused on the competencies of the graduates who leave universities. Professional course assessment models ranged from self-assessment to accreditation. The inter-relationship between education, industry, profession and government is very different throughout Europe. All this diversity has an implication for a core syllabus. The profession, instead, needs to understand and provide information on different competency and educational models that have been successful in meeting evolving market needs.

Professor Hans Mattsson from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm presented his ongoing research on surveying curricula in Europe. His analysis is based on the Allan Report providing information on the educational programmes and the professional duties of land surveyors in the European countries. Despite some identified drawbacks in the methodology of this report the information was used to identify different models for curricula content compared to professional practice. The analysis also included comparison of the university course structures in Sweden, Spain, Germany, Denmark and Ireland on the basis of subject content and hours studied. Some European countries have a “broad” surveying profession (e.g. the Nordic countries), while others have a more “narrow” profession. He identified the dichotomy of a narrow education and a broad profession and discussed how professional education could be changed and who should guide such changes. Professor Mattsson considered that the differences in university curricula models provide a valuable source of information for universities to learn from each other and to expand and develop the professional education they offer. He concluded that it would be valuable within Europe to develop academic teaching networks for surveying schools in parallel with professional networks.

It seems evident from the debate at the seminar that “the only constant is change” and that we must continue to ensure that our graduates are educated for a changing profession in a changing market. It is important to provide future surveyors with the necessary professional education and training and the administrative procedures to work anywhere in Europe. While our marketplace is, currently, Europe, there is a clear indication from the World Trade Organisation, that the marketplace will soon be global.

There was a clear indication of a future educational profile composed by the areas of Measurement Science and Land Administration and supported by and embedding in a broad interdisciplinary paradigm of Geographic Information Management. There was also a clear indication that a better understanding of different educational and competence models can establish a general improvement of the educational base and enhancement of professional competence in the broad surveying discipline throughout Europe and also at a more global scale.

The proceedings from the seminar including the final research papers, discussions and recommendations will be available from the FIG office around April 2001. The background papers are available on the home page of the Task force on Mutual Recognition at http://www.ddl.org/figtree/tf/mut-recog.

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