FIG President Stig Enemark visits Havana, Cuba
at V International Congress GEOMATICA 2007

Havana, Cuba, 12-17 February 2007

President Stig Enemark visited Havana, Cuba, 12-17 February 2007 as invited keynote speaker at the International Congress GEOMATICA 2007. The congress was organized as as part of the XII Convention on INFORMATICA 2007 that included a range of sub congresses and symposia with more than 1000 participants. The convention was headed by Commander of the Revolution Ramiro Valdés Menendéz, Minister of Information Sciences and Communications.

The Congress GEOMATICA 2007 was organized by Dr. Tatiana Delgado who is well known throughout the international world of geospatial sciences. The congress included about 20 session with about 80 presentations, with a special focus on geospatial data infrastructures. President Enemark gave a welcome address at the opening session and a key note presentation on “Land Management in Support of the Global Agenda” that included an overview of the FIG organization current policies in a global perspective.

The keynote sessions also included presentations from Jarmo Ratia, President of GSDI; Alexandro Maratos, Secretary General of IHO; John Trinder, Vicepresident of ISPRS, Harold Moellering, ICA, Keith Murray, Ordinance Survey, UK; Abbas Rajabifjard, Universiy of Melbourne, Joep Crompvoets, University of Vagenen, and Tatiana Delgado, Cuba.

President Enemark also chaired a session on Cadastral Systems. This issue is very actual in Cuba that is currently building a cadastral database for both the rural and urban areas. The cadastre will mainly serve administrative purposes as there is no private ownership to land in Cuba. However, this is good example of the need for cadastral identification at the parcel level even if this is not used as a basis for the legal security of land rights. Instead the cadastre serves the purposes administering the governmental allocation of rights of land use as well as registering the actual use of land and assessing the value of this use. It was suggested that Cuba offers a presentation of this system preferable to be included in the FIG cadastral template (see: www.cadastraltemplate.org)

More information can be found at the Conference website
http://www.informaticahabana.com/?q=en 

During the conference President Enemark also had the opportunity to meet with the national surveying organization UNAICC and discuss about relevant future co-operations.

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