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fig- 1: Model of the key functions in a production organization for map and
geo-information, including the major groupings of operations.
As far as the GIS/LIS Courses and especially the Cadastre Course is concerned,
the changes that have been incorporated since the first courses were run and
which can be verified from the new course programme (enclosed as an annex to
this paper) concern mainly the re-orientation of the emphasis of the course from
LiS technology to LIS applications. This reduction in the emphasis on technology
arises not only from the increased user-friendliness of the integrated systems
available nowadays whereby less time is needed in learning how to use them but
also from the perception that more attention has to be paid to the methodology of
system design, and especially the optimisation of data structures to facilitate the
extraction and manipulation of data by different user groups.
Prerequisites for this are that more attention is paid to other GIS/LIS application
fields, including urban planning, rural development, etc, and to the identification of
users and the analysis of their information requirements.
5 Future prospects
The most important prospect is undoubtedly the introduction of an M.Sc.Course in
LIS Cadastre next year, this in cooperation with the Delft University of Technology.
A further important prospect is that of extending the present programmes towards
decision support systems in multi-disciplinary environments. This will obviously
also lead to a further integration of the three seperate courses, but also requires
that considerable effort will have to be spent in developing geo-information theory
such that the systems developed can tackle the problems faced in satisfying users
information requirements.