1. Status of Spatial Quality Activities in Uruguay, South America Carlos López Vázquez carlos@fing.edu.uy Centro de Cálculo, Faculty of Engineering http://www.fing.edu.uy/cecal July 1999

2. Where are we from... n 3M inhabitants n 187.000 Km 2

3. Why to worry about this in Uruguay? n National Spatial Data Infrastructure under (fast) construction including: Full National Coverage, Digital Cartography 1:50.000 by November 1999Full National Coverage, Digital Cartography 1:50.000 by November 1999 Also DEM for the same coverageAlso DEM for the same coverage Rural Cadastral already digitalRural Cadastral already digital Urban Cadastral ongoing (>80% ready)Urban Cadastral ongoing (>80% ready) A FGDC-compatible Clearinghouse node available on Internet since april’99A FGDC-compatible Clearinghouse node available on Internet since april’99

4. Overall Status at the national level  Clearinghouse up and running  Few datasets available online  Major data providers expected to be associated prior July 2000  Quality? Lineage??...  De Facto Technology transfer from the University

5. Research at University (1) n Main interest is in improving accuracy of available datasets n Concentrated in meteorological data (U), DEM (U), census (P) and now cartography (P) n Research mostly motivated by engineering applications / demands n Few (if any!) basic research in this topic

6. Research at University (2)  Statisticians & geographers hardly interested.  Surveyors more involved  Applied computer science application, closely related with Data Mining  High variety of tools available and in use, including Neural Networks, HPC, etc.

7. Next steps at the national level n Expected growing demands coming from government and large publicly owned companies for the next 5 years n New Clearinghouse nodes under development n Projects on DEM (U), oceanographic data (U), fraud detection for utility companies (U)

8. Next Steps at the University level n Research focused on some specific applications, like DEM and time-varying datasets n Reinforce connections with government and industry n Strengthen connections with other research groups abroad (this meeting!)

9. Place commercials here! http:// www.clearinghouse.gub.uy http://www.fing.edu.uy/cecal