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. 
146 
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