Speakers Bio & Abstract

Biography
Μr. Moschos Vogiatzis has over 17+ years? professional experience in program and project management in the fields of natural environment, forestry, cadastre development and land administration working on earth observation and geospatial data. He majored in Forestry and Natural Environment at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece (1990) and obtained his M.Sc. degree in Forest Resources and Conservation at the University of Florida, USA (1995). In 1997, he was appointed as GIS Specialist at ARCTUROS (NGO) dealing with digital mapping of wildlife habitats across Greece. In 1998, he was appointed as Forestry Supervisor at Ktimatologio S.A. (now National Cadastre and Mapping Agency of Greece) the leading government company for cadastre development and operations as well as mapping services in Greece. In 2010, he took over the newly established Forest Mapping & Natural Environment Directorate and hereafter heads the efforts to complete cadastral forest mapping at the national level and other environmental projects regarding forests and nature protection (Natura2000), land use/land cover monitoring and the development of land services to the government and community as well, having an active portfolio of about ?70 millions. Mr. Vogiatzis has published diverse scientific papers and presentations regarding cadastre, land administration, forest mapping and management, wetlands and habitats assessment incorporating GIS and remote sensing techniques. He is currently National Representative to the European Environmental Agency for land use/land cover monitoring, member of IUFRO International Council and National Committee for Nature Protection.Abstract
Geospatial Data & Information in Support of Sustainable Development: The Role of National Mapping Agencies The 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development requires an integrated approach and collective action, at all levels, to promote economic growth, social development and environmental protection. The agenda is focused on the need to facilitate informed policy decision-making, enhancing national capabilities and addressing issues and science, technology, innovation, capacity-building, and data, as means of effective implementation to its goals and targets. Efficient, reliable and timely geospatial data and information is required to support their implementation and assist in better accountability, monitoring and reporting. In this context, national mapping agencies have to play a vital role in supporting spatially-enabled governments, public and private sector by producing and providing authoritative geospatial data and information as well as developing web-geospatial based services to community. Thus, public organizations will increase their technical capacities and accelerate their development plans and initiatives, state lands administration will be improved while private companies will benefit by sharing and building upon the existing geospatial infrastructure or developing new geo-applications for their clients. In this paper, we discuss the role of national mapping agencies, presenting by example current and future programs and services (national orthophoto programs, satellite-based positioning system (HEPOS), cadastre development, forest mapping, habitats assessment, land cover/land use monitoring and land zoning) of the National Cadastre & Mapping Agency (NCMA) of Greece. National orthophoto programs consist of very-high resolution orthoimages (0,20m. GSD for urban areas and 0,50m.GSD for the rest of country) used to a series of projects such as cadastral mapping, informal buildings positioning, forest mapping and nature protection. High-accuracy land use/land cover data has been developed at the scale of 1:5.000 regarding forestlands demarcation and land characterization (forest/non forest), Natura2000 protected sites and natural habitats. Multi-date Corine land use/land cover inventory data constitute another particular geospatial dataset aiming to environmental management developed by NCMA in cooperation with EEA and ESA. In the context of services provision, digital web-based GIS or else applications have been developed for cadastre property declarations and forestlands objections submission, orthoimagery navigation and positioning, aerial photography searching and retrieval. Their impact on sustainable development topics such as capacity-building, land development, forestry, and biodiversity is discussed. Furthermore, future challenges for national mapping agencies to support sustainable development are addressed.