[R-sig-Geo] iEMSs 2006 conference and workshop for free and open geospatial tools

[Ari Jolma]

Dear R-spatial users,

Maybe this is a good moment to advocate the iEMSs 2006 meeting in 
Burlington, Vermont. The URL of this conference is 
http://www.iemss.org/iemss2006/ I usually don't feel very confident 
about sending a bit OT messages like this to focused lists, so please 
forgive me.

This is the third conference of iEMSs (the first two were in Switzerland 
and Germany), which is an independent international scientific 
organisation for advancing environmental modelling and software and 
uniting people working in that domain. iEMSs has strong links to MODSIM, 
which has had several successful conferences in Australia and New Zealand.

What makes iEMSs 2006 particularly interesting, and why I'm advocting it 
for you, is the workshop nr 13 "Open geospatial tools and methods in 
environmental modeling and management", which I'm organizing with Ned 
Horning. The president of iEMSs has this to say about iEMSs 2006:

The Summit is incorporating a very innovative program of workshops (some 
15 at present), as well as the more standard sessions (another 15 or so) 
with presentations. The website has a list of themes currently and we 
would be pleased to consider other topics from you. But we refer you to 
the website and accompanying blog to examine which existing sessions you 
may wish to join - in which case you should contact the organisers of 
that session. For most of you, we expect that the current sessions on 
offer will cover your interests.

For workshop organisers we are requesting at least one rough draft 
INVITED POSITION PAPER (IPP) of the issues (opportunities, challenges 
etc.) by the end of November, with other contributed papers optional for 
workshop attendees. All serious participants would at least be required 
to have an abstract. Position papers, other full papers and abstracts 
would be peer-reviewed and pre-published in the Summit Proceedings 
before the Summit. We will reserve at least one book in the Elsevier 
IDEA Series that publishes a chapter on the findings of each workshop 
and their IPP  - these would be updated versions of the Position papers, 
revised based on the workshop outcomes. We also have special journal 
issues available.

For standard sessions there will be a more formal structure where there 
is a 20 minute or so slot for presentation, and pre-published papers for 
these are mandatory, albeit with a timeline of February 2006 for 
submission to reviewers. However standard sessions could easily be 
converted to a workshop format anytime, subject to the session 
organisers and authors agreeing.

I'd like to encourage you to participate in the conference and I'd 
especially like to see a contribution about R-spatial and its use in 
advancing environmental modeling  in the geospatial tools workshop.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you're interested in attending 
and contributing to the geospatial tools workshop.

Best regards,

Ari Jolma

-- 
Prof. Ari Jolma
Kartografia ja Geoinformatiikka / Cartography and Geoinformatics
Teknillinen Korkeakoulu / Helsinki University of Technology
POBox 1200, 02015 TKK, Finland
Email: ari.jolma at tkk.fi URL: http://www.tkk.fi/~jolma