Comparatively speaking, the Center of
Land and Engineering Surveying of the
Hong Kong Polytechnic possesses most
high-end equipment and resources. This
is no surprise, for all purchases there
represent the sole effort of the center
to promote geocomputing activities. Of
particular relevance to this discussion
are their Digital Cartography Lab and
Geo-informatics Lab. The former
consists of around 30 PCs and numerous
peripherals like digitizers, printers,
and plotters. The latter is even more
impressive. It is equipped with five
HP color graphics workstations, linked
up by a large server that has one
gigabytes of hard disk storage. They
are used for advanced teaching,
research, and consultancy purposes. The
two principal software for land or
geographic information systems analyses
are ARC/INFO and GENAMAP. A Calcomp
9500 digitizer is also available for
high precision digitizing of large
sheets.
The above is an overview on facilities.
A few words can be said on the specific
curricula being offered to help train
students in the field of geocomputing.
At the undergraduate level, the three
geography departments offer introductory
courses on remote sensing and geographic
information systems. Computer carto-
graphy is usually taught within other
methodological courses. In fact, these
course offerings are usually introduced
as electives in senior years. For
graduate work at the two university
departments, no related course is
offered in . the .'strictest . sense.
However, students may enrol at the
M.Phil (a research-oriented master
degree) or Ph.D. levels and work with a
faculty member who teaches and does
research in that area. In a nutshell,
the geocomputing education efforts at
geography departments are still
"sidelines" to major teaching focuses
with the exception of undertaking a
higher research degree.
Outside geography departments, there are
two channels for such training at a more
professional level. One is the adoption
of land information systems training in
one of the units in the M.Sc. in Urban
Planning at the University of Hong Kong,
primarily based on the use of pc
ARC/INFO. This represents a small
effort when compared to the Center of
Land and Engineering Surveying at the
Hong Kong Polytechnic. It concentrates
in offering specific degrees closely
assoicated with geocomputing. At the
time of writing, it offers a B.Sc.
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degree in Surveying and Geo-informatics
and a part-time modular M.Sc. degree in
Land Information Systems. The latter is
designed to be a re-orientation and
continuing professional development
program for land surveyors, planners,
engineers, landscape architects, and
other people who were past graduates in
the pre-G.I.S. curricula era (Brimi-
combe, 1990, p.643). Besides such
offerings, there are also a couple of
research M.Phil. degree students in
residence. In fact, the present
curriculum is positive step towards
establishing a spatial information
discipline being taught and integrated
alongside with traditional land
surveying.
Such an attempt is a timely complement
to the establishment of the Land Infor-
mation Center in the Hong Kong govern-
ment. According to Chan (1990) and
other subsequent information updates,
the Center is designed to fulfill three
objectives:
1. To provide a land database on a uni-
que geographical reference framework
for efficient decision-making and
land administration;
2. To speed up the updating and process-
ing of land data; and,
3. To establish a core system to inte-
grate other land-related systems to
facilitate exchange and sharing of
land data.
Its present task is to transform over
two thousand map sheets at 1:1000 scales
into digital form, via scanning and
subsequent vectorization procedures.
The expected date of completion is now
targeted at 1994 from which the public
will be able to purchase geographic data
in digital form. Surely, the overall
trend is now set to incorporate full
scale automation on spatial data
handling.
Surely, large capital input and cost-
effective system design considerations
are important to the success of the Land
Information Center. Equally significant
is the coordination from the education
sector. Full-scale training. of
qualified staff from management to
technician levels is urgently needed so
that Hong Kong's pace of advancement
along this line will not be hampered.
From this angle, the efforts now being
implemented are in the right direction
and deserve full support, both from
public and private sectors.
PROBLEMS FACING
Although Hong Kong is relatively