US Ambassador Betty King Addresses GIS Conference in Geneva

More than 200 attendees from the United Nations, academic fields, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector participated in the GIS for the United Nations and the International Community Conference held in Geneva, Switzerland, April 3–5, 2012, at the World Meteorological Organization headquarters. The conference opened with a keynote from Ambassador Betty E. King, the United States' permanent representative to the United Nations Offices in Geneva. Ambassador King spoke on the role of technology and information as a transformative tool empowering local actors to address global challenges and development opportunities.

"On behalf of the US government and President Obama, I applaud your use of technology in your work," stated Ambassador King. "The world's current resources are insufficient to address all the major global development and humanitarian crises that we face. Through the use of science and technology, including innovative uses of GIS applications, we can become more effective and efficient in this endeavor and stretch the power of limited resources."

Attendees participated in 10 sessions focused on advancing the use of GIS and spatial analysis for the missions that humanitarian and international agencies commonly undertake. A postconference workshop demonstrated how organizations can collaborate online to create and share hundreds of mission-focused maps using Esri's ArcGIS Online cloud solution.

"I was inspired by the eagerness of the geospatial experts, information workers, and decision makers at this conference," said Jack Dangermond, Esri president. "Their effort in working together promotes data sharing and transparency. It also encourages greater participation at every level in an organization to find solutions to global problems."

The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT) and Esri jointly organized the conference. Astrium, Esri Suisse SA, GeoEye, and TomTom sponsored the event.

The conference will be held next year and will include humanitarian and development senior executives, practitioners, researchers, nonprofit consortia, and others. To learn more, visit gisfortheun.com.

UNOSAT is a programme of UNITAR that uses specialized skills to perform satellite imagery analysis, design integrated solutions in GIS and geopositioning, and develop the capacity of agencies and counties via training and technical support. UNOSAT is designed to produce concrete output for identified users and beneficiaries by turning technology into concrete and usable applications for UN agencies, member states, and communities in a variety of areas, with prime focus on humanitarian affairs and relief coordination, damage and impact assessment, human security and human rights, and territorial planning and monitoring.

LizardTech Exhibits at Esri Federal GIS Conference and Reflects on 20 Years in Business

LizardTech^®, a provider of software solutions for managing and distributing geospatial content, is exhibiting this week at the 2012 Esri Federal GIS Conference in Washington, D.C. in booth #401. This year the company celebrates its 20^th anniversary, a milestone that is both exciting and reassuring.
Founded in 1992, LizardTech pioneered the MrSID^® file format, which became the de facto standard among the geospatial community. Before MrSID came along, dealing with geospatial imagery required specialized workstations, since datasets that were hundreds of megabytes in size were completely unwieldy, and imagery resolution was in the tens of meters. Imagery was practically unusable. The introduction of the MrSID format in 1992, which compressed georeferenced image data at high ratios without sacrificing the visual quality of the image, opened up the field of geospatial image use.
“I think the key to our success is that we listen to our customers and provide quality software that’s in demand,” said Jon Skiffington, director of product management. “At the end of the day it’s all about what our customers want and need, and developing a file format that’s been accepted by the majority of the geospatial community is the greatest achievement of all.”
At the Esri Federal GIS Conference Skiffington will be on hand to answer any questions pertaining to the history of the company. He will also be conducting demonstrations of GeoExpress^® software, which enables geospatial professionals to compress and manipulate satellite and aerial imagery,Express Server^® software for high-performance delivery and publication, and LiDAR Compressor^™software, which turns giant point cloud datasets into efficient MrSID files.
For more information about LizardTech’s geospatial software products, visit www.lizardtech.com
About LizardTech
Since 1992, LizardTech has delivered state-of-the-art software products for managing and distributing massive, high-resolution geospatial data such as aerial and satellite imagery and LiDAR data. LizardTech pioneered the MrSID technology, a powerful wavelet-based image encoder, viewer, and file format. LizardTech has offices in Seattle, Denver, London and Tokyo. For more information about LizardTech, visit www.lizardtech.com.
About Celartem
Celartem Technology Inc. http://www.celartem.com/ develops and sells innovative technologies for storage, access and distribution of rich media content. Celartem has developed technology in the areas of digital image compression, scalable image viewing and secure content distribution and management. Celartem is listed on the Osaka Securities Exchange, JASDAQ: 4330. Established in 1996, Celartem is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan and has a wholly owned subsidiary, Celartem Inc. d.b.a. LizardTech with headquarters in Portland, Oregon