Geomatics

Geomatics is defined in the ISO/TC 211 series of standards as the "discipline concerned with the collection, distribution, storage, analysis, processing, presentation of geographic data or geographic information". Under another definition, it consists of products, services and tools involved in the collection, integration and management of geographic (geospatial) data. It is also known as geomatic(s) engineering (geodesy and geoinformatics engineering or geospatial engineering). Surveying engineering was the widely used name for geomatic(s) engineering in the past. The term was proposed in French ("géomatique") at the end of the 1960s by scientist Bernard Dubuisson to reflect at the time recent changes in the jobs of surveyor and photogrammetrist. The term was first employed in a French Ministry of Public Works memorandum dated 1 June 1971 instituting a "standing committee of geomatics" in the government. The term was popularised in English by French-Canadian surveyor Michel Paradis in his The little Geodesist that could article, in 1981 and in a keynote address at the centennial congress of the Canadian Institute of Surveying (now known as the Canadian Institute of Geomatics) in April 1982. He claimed that at the end of the 20th century the needs for geographical information would reach a scope without precedent in history and that, in order to address these needs, it was necessary to integrate in a new discipline both the traditional disciplines of land surveying and the new tools and techniques of data capture, manipulation, storage and diffusion. Geomatics includes the tools and techniques used in land surveying, remote sensing, cartography, geographic information systems (GIS), global navigation satellite systems (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou), photogrammetry, geophysics, geography, and related forms of earth mapping.