Five decades of activities of the Polish Association for Spatial Information under Professor Jerzy Gaździcki’s leadership

Abstract

The paper describes the history of the Polish Association for Spatial Information (PASI). In particular, it focuses on the five decades of work by Professor Jerzy Gaździcki who is the father of the idea of PASI and the organisation itself. He was taking the chair of the Society until November 2018 when—advanced in years—he made the decision not to run for another term and was immediately and spontaneously granted the title of a Honorary Chairman.
The history of the Association splits into three stages of activity as: 1) the Club of the Users of Electronic Computing Technology in Surveying (ETO Club) established within the structures of the Chief Technical Organisation (NOT) and the Association of Polish Surveyors (SGP)—1970-1990, 2) the Polish Association for Spatial Information (PTIP), after being renamed —1991-2002, and 3) the Polish Association for Spatial Information becoming an independent organisation registered by the Registration Court in Warsaw—2003-2018.
In its early years, the Association focused on the issues of automation of the basic surveying calculations and measurement processes, adjustment of geodetic and photogrammetric networks, and on the production of maps. Then, it turned to the matters of the IT tools development, such as geographic information systems, spatial databases and, eventually, land information systems. Currently, the Association devotes itself to the issues of building information infrastructures supported by geoinformation modelling. Its research and publishing agenda has always reflected the key development directions of the discipline. Apart from that, the scientific and professional communities close to the Association used their expertise to support projects implemented by public authorities in the broad area of introducing geoinformation solutions, including the spatial information infrastructures.
The Association regularly held annual conferences which gave their participants an opportunity to share experience and present attainments. In the first stage, there were 19 nation-wide ETO Club meetings on Information technology in surveying and cartography, 12 (I-XII) were held in stage two, and 16 (XIII-XXVIII) nation-wide Polish Association for Spatial Information meetings worked on Geoinformation in Poland and were attended by many foreign participants. In the third stage (2003-2018) conferences held by the Association were also attended by university regular and post-graduate students, while the activities of this organisation were expanded by publication of a scientific magazine Annals of Geomatics (first printed and later available on-line) and an on-line Lexicon of Geomatics which was written by Professor Jerzy Gaździcki.
Throughout the Association’s stage 1 and 2, Professor Jerzy Gaździcki supervised the work of the research groups as follows: until end of 1973—as head of a Department in the Institute of Geodesy and Cartography in Warsaw, in the years 1974-1986—as scientific director of an independent R&D unit known as the IT Centre of Geodesy and Cartography in Warsaw which was established on his initiative. The prize-winning research work, implementation projects, and exports of surveying and cartographic services made by those units were very important at that time.
Jerzy Gaździcki has conferred the title of Associate Professor since early 1974 and he became a Professor in 1982. The Solidarity Trade Union community elected him as Director of the Department of Geodesy and Geodetic Astronomy of the Warsaw University of Technology. Several years after, a politically-motivated reshuffle at the Warsaw University of Technology made Professor Gaździcki spend more than a decade out of the country at which time he lectured at the Delft University of Technology and worked as an expert to the European Union and the World Bank. Having come back to Poland in what is the third stage in the Association’s life, Professor Gaździcki helped to design a number of new laws, especially, the Spatial Information Infrastructure Act and, later on in the years 2011-2016, he served as the first Chairman of the Spatial Data Infrastructure Board. In this capacity, he shaped and developed the Board’s nation-wide harmonisation role involving central and local government structures.

Received 12.02.2019 Accepted 19.03.2019 Published 30.03.2019