Volume 3 Number 5, October 1995
CONTENTS
Volume 3 Number 5, October 1995
Dear members,
In this issue of Newsletter, you will find a lot of information about this year's presidential election and also the ballot for you to vote. Thank you all for active participation. We have two very strong candidates for this year's presidential campaign. Both Dr. LI Bin and Dr. PAN Heping have been actively involving in CPGIS administration, decision-making, and other activities. You will find their campaign speeches in the newsletter and their vision, goals, and actual plans for the future of CPGIS. I encourage you to use your power as a member of CPGIS association to vote for your favorite candidate to be the president of next term. I hope CPGIS will go to a higher level under the new leadership.
Congratulations to Dr. DI Liping and the other three members. They have won the first CPGIS Best Paper Reward this year in three places. I have sent them the official certificates and checks for the award. You can find the details in the newsletter. I hope we will have more members to participate and to be awarded in this activity next year and in the future. Thanks to the Annual Awards Committee and all reviewers in the activity for their excellent job.
Currently the BOD is discussing and planning to organize several activities, such as workshops, projects, and technical tours in and outside of China. We hope it will provide our members more opportunities to be involved in the GIS development in China. Please keep tuned.
Thank you for your continuous support!
Yuemin Ding, Ph.D.
President, CPGIS
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The committee for the Presidential Election'95 announced that the election for the Fourth-term CPGIS President started from Sep. 1 and will last until the end of October. The committee hopes that each and every member of CPGIS actively participates in the election.
The Election Committee (thereafter "the Committee") was nominated by the incumbent President, Dr. DING Yuemin, and approved by the Board of Directors of CPGIS. The Committee is co-chaired by ZHANG Bin and ZHANG Zhihui, teamed with DING Yuemin and ZHENG Xiaoming as the Committee members. Should you have any question regarding the election, please direct it to the Committee or to CPGIS-L.
I. Regulations
In compliance with Article IV of the CPGIS Bylaws that "the official term of the officers shall commence the first day of November", the President of CPGIS must be elected no later than the last day of October. Due to the global nature of our membership distribution, the election is mainly conducted through e-mail, in order to best utilize the available time and resources. Current and perspective CPGIS members not on the computer net will receive registration and election documents through surface mail.
Every CPGIS member is eligible for participating in the election, either as a candidate or a voter or both. A recruiting campaign for new members shall be started on the net to increase the number of participants for the election. The confirmation of existing members is also included in this stage. This should be done prior to the election. The member who returns the filled registration/membership form and paid the membership dues by the deadline (see below) will be automatically considered a registered voter. A registration/membership form is attached to this document.
II. Process and Schedule
The election process is divided into several stages. Each stage has a deadline.
1. Registration -- September 1 to October 10
Accepting new members and renewing/confirming existing members. These members become registered voters.
2. Nomination -- September 1 to September 20
Members of the Association may be nominated either by other members or by themselves for the Presidency. There will be no limit on the number of nominees entering the election campaign. Nomination can be sent either to the election contacting addresses or to the CPGIS list (CPGIS-L). Nomination will be closed on the said date to leave time for nominee inventory and further election preparation.
3. Nominees' Acknowledgment -- September 1 to September 25
Nominees have the right to enter or not to enter the campaign, thus they shall make a formal announcement on their willingness of campaigning for the Presidency, in the net or by other means. Those who have made affirmative replies will be listed as the Presidential Candidates. A nominee who does not make the announcement for any reason by the deadline will be regarded as waiving his/her right to enter the campaign, thus will not be listed as a candidate.
4. Candidates' Campaigning -- September 10 to October 5
A presidential candidate shall prepare and publicize through any communication channel a campaign speech within the given time frame. The speech shall report on a candidate's credential for the position and shall be in the form of a proposal for the future development of CPGIS and the fulfillment of its goals. Important issues also shall be addressed. At this stage, a candidate shall send to the Committee a copy of his/her speech and resume tailored to fit the requirements of the campaign. In order to reach out as many as possible members, the Committee requests the prospective candidates send in their campaign speeches and resumes (at least in a high-lighted manner) by September 30 so that they can be arranged for distribution in the CPGIS Newsletter.
5. Public Debate -- September 10 to October 10
Members and registered voters have the right to question the candidates on the points made in their speeches and important issues related to CPGIS. Wholesome debates between candidates are also encouraged.
6. Voting and Ballot Collection -- October 11 to October 30
One person one vote. If sent by the net, votes (ballots) shall be directed to the Committee's designated voting account/addresses or the Committee members' E-mail addresses, but shall not be sent to CPGIS-L discussion list.
The unnetted voters may use phone/fax/surface mail to send their votes. If a vote is sent by surface mail, it must be received (NOT post marked) by the Committee no later than October 30.
7. Announcing Final Results of the Election -- October 31
The Committee shall assemble and count the votes received from various channels. Majority rules will apply to determine the candidate for the Presidential position. The Announcement of voting statistics and election results will be posted in the net on the said date and sent to unnetted members by surface mail.
(from ZHANG Bin)
Election Committee
CPGIS BOD approved an election committee for 1995/1996 presidential election. The committee consists of four members who are organizing the election.
Co-chairs:
Mr. ZHANG Bin, Institute for Urban
Research, Morgan State University,
Baltimore.
Mr. ZHANG Zhihui, College of
Architecture, University of Florida.
Members:
Mr. ZHENG Xiaoming and DING Yuemin.
Please send your suggestions regarding the election to the committee. The committee members can be contacted at:
Dr. Yuemin Ding
NYNEX Science & Technology
Phone: (914)-644-2315
FAX: (914)-644-2237
Email: ding@nynexst.com
Mr. Bin Zhang
Institute for Urban Research
Morgan State University
Baltimore, MD 21239
Phone: (410) 319-3004
Fax: (410) 319-3718
Email: r1jh018@moe.morgan.edu
Mr. Zhihui Zhang
College of Architecture
University of Florida
Phone: (904)-338-7642
Fax: (904)-392-3308
Email: frankz@geo6lab.geoplan.ufl.edu
Mr. Xiaoming Zheng
Department of ESPM
145 Mulford Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-3114
Phone: (510) 642-1351
Fax: (510) 643-5438
Email: xzheng@ced.berkeley.edu
The Committee's designated voting account is:
cpgis@freenet.ufl.edu
(from ZHENG Xiaoming)
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(Amended on January 26, 1995, Passed on March 3, 1995)
ARTICLE III. Membership
Section 1. Members contain individual members and sustaining members.
Section 2. An individual member shall be a person who is presently engaged or has been engaged in GIS related work, is willing to recognize and follow the bylaws, and has paid the annual membership dues as specified.
Section 4. An individual member shall be eligible to hold offices and to vote on the Association matters.
Section 5. The membership shall be terminated when (a) The member gives up on his or her own, provided that a written statement of giving up membership has been received and approved by the Board of Directors; or (b) The annual dues have not been paid for three months after the due date.
ARTICLE IV. Officers
Section 1. Officers and Term
The officers shall consist of a President, a Vice President, a Treasurer, and a Secretary General. The official term of the officers shall commence the first day of November and shall continue until the last day of October of the next year.
Section 2. President
The President shall be annually elected by a majority vote of all members. The President shall appoint other officers and take such actions as deemed appropriate to complete goals as President of the Association and further the interests of the organization. The President is the official spokesperson of the Association. The President shall deliver an address to the membership in the beginning and by the end of his or her term.
ARTICLE VI. Election and Impeachment of the President
Section 1. The Board of Directors shall form and authorize an Election Committee to coordinate the Presidential Election.
Section 2. The Election Committee shall prepare a list of presidential candidates which shall be nominated or self-nominated by members, endorsed by other members and accepted by the nominees. It shall conduct authorized mail/e-mail ballots in which an introduction and a statement of each candidate shall be included. Four weeks shall be allowed for the return of the ballots.
Section 3. The Board of Directors shall organize a vote when at least half of all members signed the petition for president impeachment. The President shall be impeached by a two-third majority vote of all cast ballots in four weeks.
(from ZHANG Zhihui)
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The nomination for this year's presidential election started September 1 and lasted to September 25. Thirteen members were nominated as the presidential candidates. They are: GONG Peng, GUAN Weihe, LI Rongxing, LI Yuanjun, LIN Nancy, LIU Lin, LIU Rei, PAN Heping, SUI Daniel, XIA Zong-Guo, XIAO Yanni, ZHOU Qiming, and ZHU A-Xing. Among them, Dr. PAN Heping first accepted the nomination, and was followed by Dr. LI Bin. The election committee cheers for their encouragement of standing out to campaign for the presidential office and their commitment to leading the CPGIS to a new era.
As many nominees and members always said, we all will continue our efforts to enhance the CPGIS and to lead the CPGIS to a higher level. All members, please give your support to the candidates and to make this a successful election.
The Presidential Election Committee
(from DING Yuemin)
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Dr. LI Bin and Dr. PAN Heping are the candidates for this year's presidential campaign. The following are the biosketches about these two excellent candidates.
He has served as a BOD member for the first three years of CPGIS. Working in his research institute, he is free from teaching, free from strict office timetable. Thus, he has more freedom and time to care for CPGIS and also for his family (his two children, wife, and parents live together with him in a suburb of Adelaide).
Major publications since 1994:
Image Resituation: Initial Theory. He-Ping Pan, Mike Brooks, and Garry Newsam. Oral Presentation at Videometrics IV, a part of SPIE's Photonics East Conference, Philadelphia, USA, 1995, published in SPIE Proceedings Volume 2599.
Two-Image Resituation: Practical Algorithms. He-Ping Pan, Du Huynh, Garry Hamlyn. Oral Presentation, ibid.
Segmentation of Remotely Sensed Image by MDL-principled Polygon Map Grammar. He-Ping Pan and W. Foerstner. Oral presentation at ISPRS Comm. III Symposium: Spatial Information from Digital Photogrammetry and Computer Vision, Munich, 1994, published in International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Volume 30, Part 3/2, pp. 648-655.
Minimum-Description-Length Criterion for Image Interpretation and Data Analysis in Spatial Informatics. He-Ping Pan. A short version presented at CPGIS'94, Calgary, Canada, June 1994. A long version published by the Journal of Geographic Information Science.
Two-Level Global Optimization for Image Segmentation. He-Ping Pan. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, vol. 49(2): 21-32, 1994.
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LI Bin has been enthusiastically involved in organizing and participating CPGIS activities. He is currently the vice president of CPGIS and has been a member of the BOD for three years. He has devoted much effort to contribute to the GIS development in China. This summer, he gave a lecture in the Urban GIS Workshop in Beijing and was involved in drafting a number of research proposals with colleagues at Beijing University. Later this year, he will lead the CPGIS team to carry out the nation-wide GIS software technical evaluation in China. Next year, in addition to organizing GEOINFORMATICS'96, he will co-chair the Workshop on Access China's Geospatial Data for Environment and Sustainable Development to be held at CIESIN. He also manages the WEB server for CPGIS and maintains network communication for the BOD and other special groups of CPGIS.
LI Bin is now living in South Miami with his wife and a six-year old daughter. Working in a university, he has a busy but flexible schedule. He believes being the president of CPGIS would enrich his life and enhance his professional career. He loves music, movies, computers, and cars. He plays ping-pong and likes other outdoor sports.
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I am honored to be a presidential candidate of CPGIS. Thank you for giving me the support and encouragement. It is now my obligation to share with you my vision of CPGIS and the primary organizational agendas for the coming year.
Three years ago, I joined the Buffalo group led by LIN Hui to form CPGIS. We had an extremely successful first conference at Buffalo, with more than a hundred participants from North America, China, and around the world. With the strong leadership and enthusiastic supports from members, CPGIS has ever since grown into a professional organization. Today, we have our by-laws that defines the nature of the organization and the guidelines for operation. We have a well structured administrative framework to manage organizational activities. We have our own referred journal, newsletter, and network servers to facilitate information exchange. Through conferences, workshops, and projects, CPGIS is making concrete contributions to the development of GIS in China and has become an influential professional organization.
Like most of you, I joined CPGIS mainly because it is a professional organization for GIS development in China. Like you, I want to do something for our motherland. Like you, I come to CPGIS to find friends who share similar academic backgrounds and with common interests. Like you, I come to CPGIS to seek help with and opportunities for my own career development. I am grateful that I have been able to achieve most of these with CPGIS. And I want to make sure CPGIS will continue serving the needs of its members.
LIN Hui, GONG Peng, and DING Yuemin have built a solid ground to ensure a healthy organization. To continue the excellence of CPGIS, I identify the following as the primary agendas for a better professional organization:
1. Improve Member Participation
Active member participation is key to a successful organization. CPGIS has developed various mechanisms for members to initiate and participate in professional activities. For example, if a member wants to initiate a project, he/she could submit a brief proposal to the BOD for approval and subsequently forms a work group to carry out the project. Many of the projects were initiated this way. Most of you, however, are either not aware of this mechanism or lack of sufficient information to develop project ideas. As a result, most of the projects have been initiated by members of the BOD, Regional Coordinators, and Chairs of special committees, who are better informed from regular monthly meetings. Discussions and approvals once again are conducted within this group and not dissipated to members until decisions are made.
Members of the BOD, Regional Coordinators, and the special committees are the backbone of CPGIS. They form the leadership in the organization. They are naturally more involved. While continue relying on this leadership group to organize activities, I want to make sure the majority of you not to be left out. I will do so with the following concrete measures:
(1) Increase the awareness of the procedures to submit project proposals to CPGIS.
(2) The Information Exchange Committee will collect and distribute call-for-proposals from a variety of sources, including government agencies and companies in China, and such international organizations as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, as well as foreign funding agencies. Should individual member consider using CPGIS to apply for funding, the member would submit a brief proposal to the BOD for approval. The Academic Development Committee will assist formal writing and submission of the proposal. And the Public Relations Committee will help promote the project and obtain timely feedback from funding agencies.
(3) Periodically, CPGIS will identify a set of key project initiatives that have strategic significance to the organization. Members will be asked to submit initiative proposals and given sufficient time for open discussion. The Academic Development Committee will monitor the process and evaluate each proposal. Once approved by the BOD, the initiatives will be announced and members are encouraged to join specific projects. Project leaders will be selected by the BOD to organized each initiative. They will give progress reports periodically. An annual report will be given by each initiative at the CPGIS annual conference.
(4) Expand the member database to include academic background and specialty so that we can better match member's interest and expertise.
2. Membership Services
Additional steps to improve membership services:
Issue formal reminder of membership status.
Set up PPP servers in each country to provide INTERNET service to members who currently do not have INTERNET access. The PPP server enables INTERNET connection through regular phone lines. The Information Exchange Committee will study the feasibility of this approach.
3. Concrete Projects on GIS Development in China
The BOD has just approved a number of concrete projects on GIS development in China. These include:
(1) Technical evaluation of GIS software in China
(2) Shanghai urban GIS workshop
(3) Workshop on access China's geospatial data for environment and sustainable development
(4) Land use study
CPGIS is also involved in other GIS projects in China such as the National Spatial Information Infrastructure project, the Hainan Sustainable Development project, and the Huaihe Watershed Management project. Most of these projects are still in a very early stage and will likely extend beyond next year. As president of CPGIS, what I will do is to establish the mechanisms to ensure you the opportunity to participate in these projects. I will also use organizational effort to help those who want to develop other GIS projects related to China.
There are two crucial elements in developing and conducting GIS projects in China. One is the collaborations and communications with individuals and institutions in China. We must know what China need and be known what we are capable of. I will advise the Public Relations Committee to maintain connections with the various government agencies and research institutes. The PRC will also help individual making professional connections with colleagues in China.
The other problem has to do with project management. Currently, we don't have a clearly defined guideline for project management, particularly for financial management. We have basically been relied on individual project leaders to handle all matters. This is not healthy and should be corrected as soon as possible. To achieve a successful project management, I seek to establish thefollowing:
(1) A bank account in China to facilitate financial transaction.
(2) Financial regulations drafted by the Treasurer and approved by the BOD.
(3) Project regulations drafted by either the Business Development Committee or the Academic Development Committee.
4. Permanent establishment in China
CPGIS needs permanent establishment in China. We have been actively pursuing the possibility of setting up a CPGIS Station in China. The National Natural Science Foundation of China is very supportive of the idea. GONG Peng has been leading the efforts to pursue this highly complex project. The proposal will be formally submitted to NNSFC later this year. I consider this project the most important task for the coming year and will allocate organizational resources to ensure its success.
The above are agendas that appear to me as most important for the coming year. I hope I have given you some ideas what I would do if you elect me as the next president of CPGIS. If you have any questions, I will be delighted to discuss them with you. Please feel free to contact me through email
(bli@umgis.merrick.miami.edu),
phone (305-284-4087),
FAX (305-284-5430).
Sincerely,
LI, Bin
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Dear CPGIS Members and Friends,
It is a great pleasure for me to talk to you again, on looking forward to the next term and long-term future of CPGIS. The thoughts I shall present to you are based on my observation to and consideration on CPGIS' practical experiences, discussions in the BOD meetings, and surveys on members opinions and suggestions in the last three years, as well as references from other national and international professional associations.
1. Regularization of CPGIS' Organizational Structure
In the first three years of CPGIS (including this term), we have established a number of committees or groups, and in different terms, we have different sets of groups. It is natural to consider these events as trials and adaptive self-organization of CPGIS. After these three years, we now have a basic idea and confidence on what we should have and should keep continued, and what we still lack and should establish or enhance.
Clearly, the basic structure of the President Office (President, Vice President, Past President, Treasurer, and General Secretary), the Board of Directors, and the Regional Coordinators have proved to be adequate. Five major points on improving the efficiency of this structure are given below:
(1) Clear Definition on the Responsibility of Each BOD member
For each BOD member, the responsibility and right should be clearly defined by the president and vice presidents. In addition to the decision-making for the general interests, it would be more efficient if each BOD member could be appointed to lead or coordinate a special committee, or a specialty group, or an aspect of the association. For each committee or group, we should appoint a chair and a vice chair instead of two equal co-chairs.
(2) Improving BOD's Decision-Making
For BOD meeting, after sufficient discussions on any proposal, it would be more desirable if the final decision could be made via a robust estimation approach. For example, we could use fuzzy-logic measure (score) for attitude (e.g. +1.0 means most support, -1.0 for most opposition), and take the median of the collected scores. In this way, we could avoid gross errors. This is only one example. We may consider more aspects in the future along this direction.
(3) Active Roles of Regional Coordinators (RC)
Currently, RC members are mainly responsible of collecting membership fees, distributing newsletters, and coordinating other routine activities. It would be better if RC members could actively speak in the BOD meetings for conveying the demands and opinions of ordinary members for any proposal discussed in the BOD. Normally at the beginning of each BOD monthly meeting, there is an agenda listing the issues and items to be discussed. We should also publish this agenda to our members, not only the results of the BOD meeting.
(4) Enhancement of Existing Special Committees and Groups
Under the President Office and the BOD, we now have a number of special committees or groups. The committees or groups for Membership Database Management, Information Sharing and Exchanging Promotion, Hong Kong Information Exchange Station, Journal and Newsletter Editorials are for routine operations. Bylaws Amendment Committee is fundamental. Annual Award Committee should cover all kinds of awards within CPGIS. We may need to consider specialty-oriented awards as papers of different specialties (disciplines) may be difficult to compare. The Committees for Business Development, Public Relations, and Fundraising are more dynamic, and mutually supportive. All these committees and groups are the basic units of the organizational structure of CPGIS, and their continuity should be maintained.
(5) Regular Care for Members on Professional Development
In addition to the regular functions of all these existing committees, an extremely important thing is the professional development and economic survival of our members. We should have a unit (an existing committee or a new committee or a manager) to take care of the job problem for our members, as the majority of our members are MS and Ph.D. students, postdoctorals, and contract-dependent employees. The job problem includes not only permanent or tenure track positions, but also any kind of project positions, fellowships and scholarships. A member can contact this unit for help on his/her particular job problem while the privacy is kept, without going to CPGIS-L. We not only could provide job information, but also could help our members on personal career planning. Our senior members who are already in powerful positions could even create new jobs for other members.
2. Regularization of CPGIS' Technical Structure
CPGIS as an academic and professional association is different from other non-professional associations, first of all, on the point that it should have its own technical specialty structure. This point was formalized in my last-year's campaign speech as a structure of seven Technical Commissions, each containing a few Working Groups. While that actual categorization for Geoinformatics may represent my viewpoints, this general technical specialty structure is referred from most national and international academic and professional associations (not my invention). For example, our national CAGIS has implemented its own technical specialty structure consisting of five technical commissions from very beginning. Having such a specialty structure is a key step in gaining recognition and respect from other GIS-related professional associations, and is also a basic source of our self-recognition, self-respect, and confidence. Our members need in-depth technical communications and cooperations. Also there is a great number of our friends still wandering outside the door of CPGIS because they are not sure if their specialties are considered as a part of ours because we have not provided to the public an official declaration on the technical contents of GIS or Geoinformatics.
In recent BOD meetings, this point has also been raised by BOD members. There was no objection to the establishment of such a technical structure. The differences are mainly on whether we should have specialty-oriented groups or project-oriented groups. Obviously, there could also be professor- or leader-centered groups. My opinion is that we should have specialty-oriented groups as the basis upon which project-oriented activities could then be carried out. Note that Geoinformatics science and technology is a long-term endeavor of CPGIS, while projects are mostly short-term but provide practical benefits and satisfaction of shortly visible successes.
For specialty groups, we could consider three major categories:
(1) Geoinformation Acquisition (photogrammetry, remote sensing, map digitization, field survey, GPS, etc.)
(2) Geoinformation Management and Presentation (spatial database, cartography, multimedia, etc.)
(3) Geoinformation Applications (urban, rural, environmental, natural resources, cultural, etc.)
Again, what specialty groups should be established will be depending very much on the active proposals from our members including the BOD members under dynamically changing situations and opportunities in the future. Naturally the chairpersons of specialty groups should also serve as academic and technical authorities on paper review for the CPGIS Journal, annual award committee and annual conferences.
For project-oriented activities, a few proposals have been made in recent BOD meetings such as China's landuse mapping and investigation proposed by LIU Chuang, China's GIS software evaluation proposed by LI Bin, etc. I would like to see more proposals of this kind to come.
An important step for CPGIS's development in China will be the CPGIS GIS Station in China, which was proposed by GONG Peng and approved by the BOD. This station will be put in Beijing as a central base of CPGIS for expansion to other major cities. It is reasonable to expect that Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Wuhan could be the first four major nodes of CPGIS in China, our motherland. Hong Kong Information Exchange Station headed by LIN Hui is already there, playing a special and important role. Beijing CPGIS station will be set up soon. The contact with Shanghai has been accelerated recently through LIN Hui and LI Rongxing. Our contact with Wuhan is traditional and solid through WTUSM and Academician Prof. LI Deren, as well as many other friends. I fully support these developments.
3. The Continued Development and Open Future for CPGIS
Just to summarize, for the next term and the long-term future of CPGIS, I suggest that we should keep the continuity of the existing organizational structure and step by step establish our technical structure (specialty- and project-oriented groups). It would be adequate if the ideas presented above could be understood as generic and adaptive instead of static and fixed. It is known that more detailed and specialized ideas are mostly coming from the active members including BOD members. The future of CPGIS is open and, I am sure, will be more successful.
The active participation and contribution of our members is always of the first importance to a successful future of CPGIS. I am always proud of being one of you.
Thank you very much for your attention !
Best wishes !
PAN Heping
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Participants: PAN Heping, DING Yuemin, LI Yuanjun, LI Bin, TANG Qin, LIN Hui, YAN Wanglin, LIU Chuang, GONG Peng, LIU Lin, TANG Liang, ZHANG Aining, and ZHENG Xiaoming.
1. The recruiting of and the benefits for sustaining members (Based on the discussion from the July BOD meeting).
Sustaining membership was included in the latest amended Bylaws. Sustaining membership will be a good source of support for CPGIS. We need to have a good plan to recruit sustaining members.
(1) We need to target some companies and institutions and survey what they are interested in.
(2) CPGIS Potential Resources & Benefits for Sustainable Membership
Free CPGIS Journal and Newsletter
Discount of ads in CPGIS Journal
Discount of exhibition in CPGIS conferences
Discount of ads in CPGIS Newsletters
Discount of Co-sponsor fees for any CPGIS activities
Free CPGIS membership information
Discount of registration fees for attending CPGIS conferences
2. The Proposal for Establishing CPGIS Lab (Station) in China
The proposal was originated by Dr. GONG Peng, and was discussed at the Hong Kong BOD meeting
(1) The objective is to select or involve GISers all over the world to work in the lab to serve China in helping solve critical GIS related problems in academic, technical, training, and application areas.
(2) NNSFC is very interested in and supportive to this proposal
(3) It is a long term goal. GONG Peng will take the lead to coordinate the CPGIS China Station project.
(4) Potential issues to be considered:
site and personnel
funding and sponsors
concrete projects to be undertaken
in the station
maintenance and management
(5) BOD supports the proposal of advanced training of GIS professionals and holding more workshops in China
3. Site Selection for CPGIS'97 (based on July meeting)
(1) Taipei is an attractive site for holding CPGIS'97.
(2) The main problem is obtaining entrance visa to Taiwan. A potential solution is that people from the mainland of China can enter Taiwan for the purpose of "academic and cultural exchange" between two sides.
(3) Another potential place is Australia as suggested by Dr. PAN Heping.
4. Membership Issues
(1) We may need to send out a reminder to our members to pay the dues
(2) To post a name list who have paid their dues.
(3) People who have not paid their dues may not receive free CPGIS Journal and other benefits
5. Academic Development Committee and Plans for the future (Based on Dr. PAN Heping's Proposal)
(1) Dr. Pan has spent a considerable amount of time in shaping the plans for the Academic Development Committee. Some of the proposed ideas are under BOD discussion.
(2) The BOD decided to post the proposal for member discussion.
(from ZHENG Xiaoming)
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First place winner:
DI Liping (Global Change Data Systems, US) -- "Modeling relationships between NDVI and precipitation during vegetative growth circles," Int. J. Remote Sensing, 1994, Vol.15, No.10.
Second place winner:
PAN Heping (Signal Processing Research Institute, Australia) -- "Image resituation: initial theory & Two-image resituation: practical algorithm in SPIE Proceedings `95.
Co-third place winners:
ZHU Zhiliang (EROS Data Center, US) -- "U.S. forest types and predicted percent forest cover from AVHRR data," Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing, Vol. 60, No. 5, May 1994.
SHAO Juliang (Univ. of Melbourne, Australia) -- "Wavelet models for image mosaicking and restoration," Proceedings of GeoInformatics `95.
The original call for application was announced on CPGIS-L. Seven applicants submitted their papers before the deadline (July 31).
(from LIU Lin)
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After a year-long preparation, the first issue of the journal of CPGIS, Geographic Information Sciences, is in press now. Before the end of October, every member who paid this year's membership fee will receive a copy. It is printed in Canada. Designed to meet the international standard, this issue includes 5 articles and a research note:
Future Directions for Geographic Information Science: Michael F. Goodchild
Modeling Urban/Wildland Interface Fire Hazards within a Geographic Information System: John R. Radke
An Algorithm for Searching Boundary Octants in 3D Geological Subsurface Modeling: Rongxing Li and Changshi Xu
A Hybrid Geometric Optical and Radiative Transfer Approach for Modeling Pyranometer Measurements under a Jack Pine Forest: Xiaowen Li, Curtis Woodcock, and Robert Davis
Minimum-Description-Length Criterion for Image Interpretation and Data Analysis in Spatial Informatics: Heping Pan
Spatial Information System and Golden Bridge Engineering: Li Qi, Cheng Jicheng and Tang Shiwei
The editorial board looks forward to your comments and contributions.
(from GONG Peng)
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(1) Dr. Y.C. Lee, CPGIS member and member of the Editorial Board of CPGIS Journal "Geographic Information Sciences", joined CPGIS Hong Kong Group and accepted a teaching position in the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, taking two-year leave from the Dept. of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering of University of New Brunswick, Canada. Attracted by the development of GIS program in Hong Kong. Dr. Lee would like to work closely with CPGIS members in HK to promote this program.
(2) Dr. ZHOU Qiming, Treasurer of CPGIS, paid a 10-day visit to the Department of Geography, The Chinese University of Hong Kong in September. Dr. ZHOU presented a seminar in the afternoon of September 22, on his research about the integration of GIS and expert system on urban planning applications.
(3) Dr. LIN Hui of Chinese University of Hong Kong was invited by the East China Normal University and the Urban Planning Bureau of Shanghai City for a one-week visiting program in Shanghai. Dr. LIN presented the research done by his team on the GIS-based Investment Environment Information System.
(from LIN Hui)
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The proposal on "Evaluation of Chinese GIS Software" has been approved by the Commission of Science and Technology of China. This proposal was originally written by LI Bin on behalf of CPGIS, and subsequently modified by ZHOU Qimin. The project will be conducted by CPGIS with assistance from the Remote Sensing and GIS Research Institute at Beijing University and the National Lab of GIS. The amount of funding for CPGIS will cover travel expenses, hotel and meals, as well as project activities. CSTC is managing the budget and the exact amount available to CPGIS will be finalized soon.
LI Bin will coordinate the project and is in charge of forming a team of four experts/specialists who are familiar with GIS software evaluations. LI Jing and ZHOU Chenghu will form a team of eight people in China to assist the project.
Some specifics:
Oct. 95: funding available.
Nov. 95: detailed methodology and procedures for GIS software evaluation prepared by CPGIS; submit applications for evaluation by software companies in China.
Mid Dec. 95 - Mid Jan. 96: On site evaluation and exhibition.
Feb. 96: draft of evaluation report.
Mar. 96: final report, approved and distributed by CSTC.
(from LI Bin)
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Invited by Dr. GONG Peng, Mr. GUO Huadong, the head of the Institute of Remote Sensing, Chinese Academy of Sciences, leaded a delegation and visited Berkeley's remote sensing and GIS lab. The delegation consisted of LI Shukai, from the Institute of Remote Sensing, WU Ping, from The State Science & Technology Commission of China, KUANG Dingbo, an famous academician from Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and YANG Zhi, from Institute of Acoustics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
(from ZHENG Xiaoming)
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The University of California at Berkeley is located in the city of Berkeley and directly faces with the Gold Gate Bridge between San Francisco and Marin Country. Directly to the south is Oakland. Across the bay lies San Francisco. Berkeley is attractive not only because it is "the best balanced distinguished university in the nation" and "has both the largest number and the highest percentage of top-ranked doctoral programs", but also it has a beautiful campus with the preservation of many acres of natural greenery, with tall eucalyptus trees, a meandering creek, and wide grassy glades enhancing the 178-acre site which slopes dramatically downhill toward San Francisco Bay.
The Remote Sensing and GIS Lab, directed by Dr. GONG Peng, is in Mulford Hall near the west gate of the Berkeley campus. CPGIS Headquarters is presently operating there.
Who are the runners?
CPGIS Headquarters is run by ZHENG Xiaoming, PU Ruiliang, and GONG Peng, with the help of many voluntary CPGIS members at Berkeley, such as CHEN Jun, ZHOU Yi, ZHANG Ming, CHEN Mo-Mei, and XIA Weiping. Daily operation is handled by ZHENG Xiaoming, the Secretary General of CPGIS.
What are the functions?
CPGIS Headquarters processes CPGIS routine work including managing and updating CPGIS membership database, managing CPGIS accounts, copying and distributing CPGIS Newsletters, editing the CPGIS journal, and communicating with CPGIS members and other individuals and organizations.
There are about 420 records in the CPGIS membership database. Most of the members are from North America, Mainland China, Europe, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, and other countries and areas. CPGIS Headquarters keeps and updates professional information in the database for all the members. In order to communicate with our colleagues in China, we are trying to store their information in Chinese.
CPGIS finance is supervised by the Treasurer, the President, and the BOD, and managed by the CPGIS Headquarters. Any large payment exceeding $100 US dollars must be approved by the Treasurer, the President, or the BOD. A check must be cosigned by GONG Peng and ZHENG Xiaoming. The membership fees from all the CPGIS members in North America and other main finances are managed in Berkeley.
The CPGIS Newsletter is distributed from Berkeley. Each issue of the newsletter is usually prepared by a Newsletter editor sent to Berkeley in postscript format. Then, we make the copies and mail them to the members in the United States, Mainland China, and some countries where there are only a few members. For other countries, we prepare some original copies and send to the RCs, and then the RCs distribute the newsletters.
The CPGIS journal, Geographic Information Sciences, is edited and typeset in CPGIS Headquarters. Because the journal is published in either Chinese or English, the typesetting and layout costs are very expensive. Presently, PU Ruiliang is serving as the Assistant Editor. The first issue of the journal will be sent to every CPGIS member before the end of October.
Email is one of the main communicating tools at the Headquarters. We communicate daily with CPGIS members and others interested in CPGIS activities, and answer their questions. Telephone, fax, and surface mail and other communication costs are presently supported by GONG Peng.
One of the objectives of CPGIS is to promote the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and scientific development in GIS and related sciences and technologies between Chinese GIS professionals abroad and those in China. We have been undertaking the tasks of arranging, accompanying, and hosting some GIS and Remote Sensing related delegations from China when they visit Berkeley We try our best to demonstrate the advanced technology, arrange seminars, discussions and other activities. CPGIS materials and newsletters are among the items to be given to the visitors. Since last April, we received more than 150 visitors from Mainland China, some visitors from Taiwan, Denmark, Russia, Canada and the United States. We introduced CPGIS activities to the visitors.
CPGIS is a young organization and we lack experiences to operate professionally. CPGIS Headquarters' work needs to be improved. You are welcome to visit the Headquarters when you have a chance to visit the San Francisco Bay Area. We will appreciate any of your suggestions and advice so as to serve our association better.
We are 35 km, 20 km and 90 km away from San Francisco Airport, Oakland Airport, and San Jose Airport, respectively. From Berkeley, it is 15 min drive to the downtown of San Francisco. It is within one hour drive to the Silicon Valley of the United States. We will be pleased to assist you to make your visit to this area an unforgettable one.
Since April 1995, many important figures have visited the CPGIS Headquarters. These include the Vice Minister of the Committee on Science and Technology of China, Professor XU Guanhua - Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences; Professor KUANG Dingbo - Academician of the CAS; Professor GUO Huadong - General Director of the Institute of Remote Sensing Applications, Chinese Academy of Science; Dr. LIN Hui - Lecturer of the Chinese University Hong Kong and the first President of CPGIS; Dr. LI Rongxing, Associate Professor of The University of Calgary, and the BOD member of CPGIS; Ms. LI Yuanjun - former member of CPGIS BOD. Dr. SHI Peijun, Professor and Associate Dean of the College of Resources and Environment at Beijing Normal University, the BOD member of CPGIS, and Editor of the Geographic Information Sciences, is visiting Berkeley for 9 months.
Example results from visits
While Dr. LIN Hui was visiting Berkeley during August, more than 12 CPGIS members in the San Francisco Bay Area gathered to meet with him during a Sunday Bar-B-Que at the Alameda Beach on August 20th. Members at the Bay area has expertise in GIS, remote sensing as well as GPS. For example, Dr. LIN visited Dr. LU Gang at Trimble and bought GPS receivers from that company. GONG Peng made the arrangement and visited the University of California at Santa Barbara with Dr. LIN Hui. At Santa Barbara, they met Dr. Michael Goodchild and Dr. Max Egenhofer from the University of Maine. At the end of his visit, Drs. GONG and LIN worked out a joint proposal submitted to the research council of Hong Kong. They initiated the idea of holding an Urban GIS Workshop in Shanghai and establishing concrete example projects for CPGIS members in China.
(from ZHENG Xiaoming)
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Our new members:
(from ZHENG Xiaoming)
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Editor-in-Chief:
GUAN Weihe (weihe.guan@sfwmd.gov)
Editors:
BAO Shuming
(sbao@clemson.edu)
LIU Lin
(lliu@cs.uno.edu)
SHI Zhongchao
(shizc@shunji.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp)
TANG Qin
(a-qinta@microsoft.com)
TU Hanming
(htu@gic2.r03.epa.gov)
ZHANG Zhihui
(frank@geoplan.ufl.edu)
Editor of this issue:
Executive Editor: TANG Qin
Hypertext Version: BAO Shuming
Editor-in-Chief: GUAN Weihe
Last Update: October 25, 1995
Announcement
Nomination
Candidate - PAN Heping
PAN Heping was born on November 5, 1961, in Xi'an, where he grew up and finished high school. Since 1978, he studied for BS and MS in the Department of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing of Wuhan Technical University of Surveying and Mapping, also worked there as a teacher on remote sensing up to 1987. About two years in that period he spent in Beijing for learning French. From 1987 to 1990, he studied in the International Institute for Aerospace Survey and Earth Sciences, and gained a PhD from the University of Twente, the Netherlands. Immediately after that, he moved to Bonn, Germany, and worked in the Institute for Photogrammetry, University of Bonn. November of last year, he moved to Australia and joined the Cooperative Research Center for Sensor Signal and Information Processing, Adelaide. His main experiences are on the geometric foundation and image understanding for Photogrammetry and remote sensing. His current work mainly involves automatic recovery of imaging geometry and topology of an image network, image matching and registration, map digitization and understanding, digital terrain mapping from high-resolution (e.g. 1 meter) satellite images.
Candidate - LI Bin
LI Bin was born in 1961. He started college in 1978 at the South China Normal University and obtained a BS in 1982. Afterwards he taught Economic Geography for three years at SCNU before going to the University of Nebraska for his MA in Geography. Two years later, he became a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography, Maxwell School of Public Affairs and Citizenship at Syracuse University. He completed his Ph.D. in 1993 and has been an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Miami since then. LI Bin has a broad interest in studying the spatial relations of human and physical processes. His academic background is primary in computational geography and economic geography. His recent research has been focused on high performance computing in spatial information processing and spatial statistics. He is also interested in application-oriented problems. In the past two years, he has conducted funded research in oil spill information management and tourist information system. Recently, he submitted a proposal to study spatial and temporal patterns of marine toxin diseases. His recent publications appeared in the Practical Handbooks of Spatial Statistics, GIS/LIS, GEOINFORMATICS'95, and AutoCarto 11.
Dear Members of CPGIS,
Campaign Speeches - PAN Heping
Regularization of Technical and Organizational Structures for the Continued Development of CPGIS
BEST PAPER REWARD'95
The CPGIS Annual Award Committee announced the result of the 1995 CPGIS Best Paper Award Competition. Congratulations to DI Liping, PAN Heping, ZHU Zhiliang, and SHAO Juliang, who won the rewards. Each winner received a certificate and a monetary award.
Software Evaluation Project Approved
Delegation From China Visited Berkeley
CPGIS Headquarters: Where About, How It Functions
CPGIS Headquarters is at Berkeley
New Member List
CPGIS Newsletter Editorial Board