Plädoyer für eine bessere Verschränkung von Geodäsie und GIS

The traditional professional profile of surveyors has changed. The international role German surveyors have taken over through the leadership of FIG leads more than ever before to question the own professional profile and the work of surveyors in Germany with all its strengths and weaknesses in an international context. To be prepared for global and continental tasks German surveyors and universities have to turn in particular to the great themes of our world such as »land management and land markets, regional and local planning in urban and rural areas, land administration and land registration, access to land and secure tenure, environment monitoring or disaster management«. Furthermore, the sorrow will be articulated that in Germany there will be less and less surveyors in the long run if it is not possible to develop new fields of activities both at home and abroad. To be able to manage the new and complex challenges, more inter- and intradisciplinary collaboration is necessary in the future. For this purpose the essay addresses the special relationship between survey/geodesy and geoinformation. To be able to compete in the booming GIS-market surveyors need - apart from GIS abilities - a core competence in one of the aforementioned scope of duties or within other core competencies. This requires a sound mixture of broad knowledge and specialized expertise (»well grounded specialized generalist«).