Dr Janice Formosa Pace, Prof. Saviour Formosa and Prof. Charles Galdies (editors) presented the Rector Prof. Alfred J. Vella with a set of 3 books on GeoSpatial Technologies and their practical real-life implementation in real and virtual worlds. In absentia were the other editors, Dr Elaine Sciberras and Prof. Marc Bonazountas.
These books are the result of a collaboration between 108 Maltese and international authors who collaborated to author 93 chapters covering how we use information on location (which are displayed through maps) in our everyday life and enhancing the lives of Maltese citizens and their wellbeing. This specialised field on location information and technologies covered the natural, physical and social environments with such topics and how studies in GIS led to improvements in society, infrastructure, environment protection with proposals for policy making and decision taking for Government Service and Sectors, academia, industry and the general public.
The editors stated that following years of research and project implementation, these books were the result of collaboration between experts in the field and critical Planning-Authority led ERDF (SIntegraM project) and ESF (SpatialTRAIN project) funding which resulted in courses at various levels for practitioners and specialists to acquire new skills and knowledge as well as practical implementation of this information and technology. The impact of their scientific content on the different Ministries, departments and also training institutions is massive such that now all entities can use the same information and integrate their systems using maps as a base for the improvement of society.
Malta is the forerunner in many areas in GIS and these books are the result of both research and operations as driven by society’s need for rapid advancement and progress. Everything builds on a map and together these chapters deliver a holistic approach to make the Maltese Islands future-resilient.
Prof. Vella commended the extensive work presented and augured for more research and implementation inroads into the spatial domain.