ScanGIS is a relatively long Scandinavian tradition having this year the 9th Conference; actually the second Conference organized in Finland, the first was organized in 1992. The other Conferences have taken place in Sweden (1985), Norway (1988), Denmark (1990), Norway (1995), Sweden (1997), Denmark (1999) and Norway (2001). In the beginning ScanGIS participants and speakers all came from the Scandinavian countries but since a long time ScanGIS was opened also to other Europe and even more widely. The original goal of ScanGIS activities - to offer a forum for young Scandinavian scientists to present their research work for an international audience - is still relevant.
ScanGIS'2003 Conference is hosted by the Lifelong Learning Institute of Helsinki University of Technology. However the Conference takes place, not in Otaniemi Campus area, but in Meripuisto - in the same place as the Conference in 1992.
In the ScanGIS'2003 Conference program we have 24 presentations given by 19 speakers coming from all Scandinavian countries as well as from Germany, Iran and USA. The papers were selected by the reviewers of the Programme Committee. This Proceedings follow the sequence of the sessions that are: Mobile GIS, Uncertainty, quality, fuzziness, Metadata, quality management, Distributed GIS, Visual queries and visual data mining, Networks, Spatial modelling and GIS and future. We have a special pleasure of welcoming professor Michael Goodchild, from the University of California, Santa Barbara, to be the keynote speaker in our Conference.
We want to thank all co-workers during the last year who have given their valuable contribution in the organizing work of Scan GIS'2003. The Lifelong Learning Institute of HUT has carried the main responsibility on all practical and financial things in the organization. The members of the Organizing Committee have made a valuable work in sharing their expertise and experience in GI field. The Programme Committee is the heart of ScanGIS and finally guarantees the scientific quality of the Conference. We want to thank especially the reviewers who have once again worked a lot and selected as well as ranked the papers. We also want to thank our sponsors who have given a valuable support for us and enabled some additional things like social activities and for example Proceedings on CD. Special thanks go to the Agricultural University of Norway for managing the ConfMan conference management software that has been a very helpful tool throughout the organization period. ESRI has also kindly recognized our Scandinavian Conference by giving the Best Paper Prize to be awarded at ScanGIS'2003.
We want to welcome all speakers as well as the audience to join ScanGIS'2003. We hope that this Conference will connect us as researchers, promote our scientific work and also give us good experiences and memories to be saved for the future.
May 2003
Kirsi Virrantaus and Håvard Tveite
Editors of ScanGIS'2003