FIG recently took part in the South East Asian Surveying Congress (SEASC) held in Brunei. In this feature, the FIG president Prof Holger Magel outlines his and FIG's vision of the the future, critical, role of the surveying profession and the role of FIG as the global umbrella for all surveyors.

FIG’s role is to enhance all of these changing roles and especially to support the different approaches to new activities due to changing technologies and new chances for or threats to profession.

A main focus of FIG’s work lies on education and CPD as you can prove it by reading a lot of specific FIG publications. The reason is very clear and brings us back to the speech of Brunei minister to village heads: it is the knowledge and resulting competence.

Besides of the right values and commitment besides of technologies and of institutional framework, whose importance was recently underlined again by the World Bank in its report Doing Business in 2005: Removing obstacles to growth, besides of these three aspects, one of the most decisive or even the most important factor for shaping the change of our profession and for serving community and sustainable development is education and – as a twin brother/sister – CPD!

All UN reports and national governments show and know it: Education is the crucial key for and access to innovation, wealth, better environment, poverty reduction and finally to more peace and equity.

Once again, I have to say that there exist different university education models within FIG depending either on a more central European, Spanish-Latin-American or Anglo-Saxon philosophy. According to this situation one will meet different names (and contents) like Land Survey, agrimensura, Geomatics, Geo-informatics and/or Geodesy!

One common truth must prevail in all models: The education should be future oriented and comprehensive enough. It should not only be focussed on modern survey technologies and techniques or on data gathering and modelling, but also on the whole environment of neighbour disciplines and on networking and collaboration with them.

Survey / Geomatics / Geodesy education should comprise at least and in any case mathematics, physics, legal, socio-cultural, survey and some civil engineering aspects, planning and information science, some economics and skills in geo-basis data management, valuation, mapping and cartography.

At my Technical University of Munich we even have the ambitious goal to cover the range ‘from the single parcel to the planet Mars’.

As a second goal we aim at the education of ‘well-grounded specialized generalists’, who have got additionally a lot of social or soft skills thus being better able to later play in the first rows! Specialization is needed only for a few! A too-early specialization is, in my opinion, contra-productive to our goal of playing a more important role in society.

To avoid being a study (and profession) of ‘second choice’, we should address to and attract the best students.

We should more offensively convince them of a study (and profession) which is surely one of the most interesting studies because it provides chances for each talent: for the mathematical, analytically thinking, measuring and counting talent as well as for more legal – administratively or for more creatively and holistically planning, valuing, weighing and arguing people.

Let me very clearly say: Survey/Geodesy/Geomatics education should everywhere aim at excellence both at study including curricula and students! Otherwise I am afraid that other disciplines will abolish and force out us.

FIG Commission 2 provides a lot of information and conference proceedings on education and even e-learning models! Education must be followed by a life-long CPD (continuous professional development). FIG has spent much effort on this topic too!

In a more and more globalized world there will be, at the end, no closed markets anymore. More and more single markets will arise. We need technical standards like ISO etc. as well as frameworks and rules on mutual recognition of education and qualification.

Under the chair of our Malaysian representative Teo Hee Chai, FIG is working in this very important field thus trying to get more equality amongst professionals!

Universities must also be aware of changing technologies, of changing markets but especially also of changing society and global and national challenges!

This happens sometimes but still in too few universities! I appreciate it very much that more and more universities have joined FIG as an academic member. Thus they are members of the community of surveyors and get worldwide information about what is happening within and around our widespread and manifold profession.