We Visited for You

Washington, DC, USA, hosted the XXII FIG (International Federation of Surveyors) Congress during the week of 21 Ð 26 April 2002 as well as meetings of the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping (ACSM), American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) and the Appraisal Institute. This was one of the largest gatherings of survey professionals in 2002 with nearly 4,000 attendees from over 80 nations, including 125 exhibitors and 470 speakers.

All of the meetings, workshops and the exhibition took place in the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, the largest convention hotel in Washington with 95,000 square feet of dedicated exhibition space and 47 meeting rooms (78,000 square feet). The hotel’s location in a very nice downtown neighbourhood, just minutes from the National Zoo, the city cathedral and next to a stop on the Metro, the local high-speed mass transit subway system, added to everyone’s enjoyment.
The first meeting of the General Assembly, which makes decisions for FIG, took place on Sunday, 21 April in the Marriott Ballroom and included delegates from over 50 of FIG’s member associations. ACSM and ASPRS workshops and meetings were taking place concurrently, including the meeting of the ACSM Hydrographer Certification Board. The Board, which oversees the certification of hydrographers in the US, meets annually to discuss the activities of the past year, to review the certification process including the examination, and to make plans for improving the Board’s effectiveness. Sunday’s activities concluded with the Welcome Reception at the National Building Museum. Numerous comments were overheard about the excellent and abundant food at the reception and the beauty of the museum’s Great Hall which was built in 1887 and has served as the location of numerous presidential inaugural balls.
The meetings of the ten FIG Commissions, which lead the technical work of FIG, took place on Monday morning, 22 April. The meeting of Commission 4 (Hydrography) was led by the outgoing chairman, Dennis St. Jacques of Canada and was attended by 15 representatives from 10 nations. The meeting focused on the Commission’s 2002-2006 work plan which was drafted by the incoming chairman, Adam Greenland of the UK. Of primary interest was continued cooperation with the International Hydrographic Organisation, particularly regarding the advisory board relating to the Standards of Competence for Hydrographers. There were also discussions on the formation of a federation of national hydrographic societies and the development of a paper on the advantages of the use of a global vertical reference.
The opening ceremony of the Congress followed the Commission meetings and included comments by Dr. Anna K. Tibaijuka, Executive Director of UN-HABITAT United Nations Human Settlements Programme and the keynote address by Jack Dangermond, founder and president of ESRI (a GIS company). Both speakers emphasised the importance of surveyors in sustainable development of the world’s resources.
Following the ceremony, lunch was served in the exhibition hall which served as encouragement for all attendees to visit the various commercial booths. There were numerous surveying sports competitions including angle turning, guess the distance and others. In addition, there were numerous drawings for some superb prizes including a round trip air fare to Alaska and a new set of Callaway golf clubs, the latter won by a gentleman from The Netherlands who claims to have never played golf! Efforts to convince him to donate his new clubs to a needy US surveyor failed!
Although the fields of land surveying, GIS, GPS, photogrammetry, remote sensing and mapping services were well represented in the exhibition, there were very few booths related to hydrography. Most of this can be attributed to the relatively minor role which hydrography plays within the vast FIG organisation and the very large number of hydro-specific conferences occurring this year: the International Hydrographic Conference in Monaco the week before FIG, the Canadian Hydrographic Conference in late May, HYDRO 2002 in Kiel, Germany in October and of course the recent Oceanology event in London.
While the exhibition hall was somewhat lacking in the field of hydrography, the technical sessions were not. There were a total of six Commission 4 sessions with 16 papers related to hydrography (standards, data management, multibeam sonar, AUVs, lidar bathymetry and sea level changes) as well as one joint session with Commission 5 on the marine cadastre. There were numerous other sessions of interest in the technical programmes of ACSM and ASPRS including GPS-derived heights, geoid models, data visualisation, GIS and global reference systems.
In addition to the technical sessions, there was a workshop on hydrographic surveying and two field trips of interest to hydrographers at the Congress. The Tuesday workshop offered an overview of hydrographic surveys as conducted by NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey and the US Army Corps of Engineers and provided insight to the topics covered in the ACSM Hydrographer Certification Examination. MondayÕs technical field trip was to the Coast Guard Navigation Center which provides operational GPS status reports and supports a US-wide DGPS system. The second tour included presentations from NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey and Office of Coast Survey which focus on geodetic control/ aerial mapping and nautical charting respectively and a tour of the Maritime Institute of Technology and Graduate Studies full-mission bridge simulator. The simulator included a half hour cruise around the port of Hong Kong which prompted one of the tourists from that city to comment ‘I’m already home!’. The simulator is the most state-of-the-art system in the world and was the highlight of the tour.
The FIG Banquet was held on Thursday evening and most of the Commission IV delegates were seated together for a delicious dinner, prepared by the hotel’s German-born chef, and dancing to the music of a very talented big band orchestra of the Glenn Miller era. Following the closing ceremony on Friday, the hotel chef prepared authentic German food for the reception for the 2006 FIG Congress which will be held in Munich. After the long week of meetings and deliberations, these final social events were well received by all those who attended.
The Commission 4 Work Plan is expected to be approved within the next few months and there are indications of renewed interest and enthusiasm in the work of the Commission to further the profession of hydrography. It is hoped that even more hydrographers will be able to participate in Commission 4 meetings in the future.