Datuk Ahmad Fauzi bin Nordin, Director General of Department of Surveying and Mapping, Malaysia (JUPEM) explains why you need to be in Malaysia next month for the UN-GGIM International Forum on Policy and Legal Frameworks
Malaysia is all set to play host to the UN-GGIM International Forum on Policy and Legal Frameworks for Geospatial Information Management. The forum is being jointly organized by the Secretariat of the United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) and the Regional Committee of United Nations Global Geospatial Inf
ormation Management for Asia and the Pacific (UN-GGIM-AP). With collaboration from the Government of Malaysia, through the Department of Survey and Mapping Malaysia (JUPEM), the forum will be held from October 16-20, 2016, in conjunction with the Fifth UN-GGIM-AP Plenary Meeting in Kuala Lumpur.
According to Datuk Ahmad Fauzi bin Nordin, Director General of JUPEM, “This opportunity is quite unique because the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) wants to collaborate with us and have a meeting sandwiched between our events. The member countries of the Asia Southeast division would get a chance to discuss the productivities of standardizing geographical names as well.”
However, the main attraction of the event would be the forum on policy and legal frameworks. A first-of-its-kind, the forum would provide a platform for the global geospatial information community to discuss the legislative and regulatory processes, and their implications pertaining to geospatial data.
Fauzi explains, “Currently, if a foreign satellite takes a picture of India without its consent, there is no legislation telling India what options it has to form some sort of control over the skies. This issue would attract interest from a lot of countries from across the world.”
The forum would also give a chance to global geospatial and legal policy experts to discuss unique experiences, practices, approaches and challenges towards the release of open data by geospatial agencies. “If the national mapping agencies want to survive, they need a model where they can show the government how much revenue they are losing by providing data for free, and recover that from the state,” believes Fauzi. “At the same time, we apply certain levels of checks and filtering for the protection of geoinformation.”
One technology that has captured the interest of national geospatial information authorities is unmanned aerial systems (UAS) or drones. Several countries in the Asia South still do not have proper rules and regulations in place when it comes to the use of drones for commercial purposes. “There haven’t been any major accidents in Malaysia because of drones, but we definitely need tighter rules to control the use of UAS in the country,” insists Fauzi. Legal and regulatory frameworks regarding UAS for governmental use would also be discussed at the forum.
Other topics on the agenda include data protection concerns associated with governmental geospatial information and understanding the components of a geospatial license sharing agreement.
