SIS Seminars

"Integrating GIS and Business Information Systems:
Marriage of Convenience or Partnership of Blossoming"

Speaker:

Dr. KAM Tin Seong
Former Country Manager
Application and Educational Services
ESRI South Asia Pte. Ltd.

Date:

07 June 2006 (Wednesday)

Time:

3:00 pm to 5:00 pm

Venue:

Meeting Room 4.4, Level 4
School of Information Systems

Abstract

The value of location as a business measure is fast becoming an important consideration for business organization. GIS with its capability to manage, analyse, and display business information spatially is emerging as a location intelligence tool. Traditionally, GIS are used mainly by public sector users for managing land resources, protecting the environment, monitoring urban growth, planning for infrastructure and military applications. Recently, GIS are increasing being used in business organisations for a variety of applications such as banking, healthcare, retailing, marketing, logistics and real estate. Major software vendors such as Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM have included spatial data management functions in their respective RDBMS software.

This presentation looks at the concepts and theories underlying the application of GIS in business. It opens with an overview of GIS, the constituent components of a GIS, and the special features of geospatial information. Using real-world examples, the presentation then demonstrates the role of GIS in business generally and how spatially-enabled business information coupled with geospatial analysis can be used to enhance business intelligence. The presentation also highlights some problems that hinder the smooth integration of GIS and Business Information Systems, and suggests future research directions.

About the Speaker

Dr. Kam Tin Seong is a professional geographer specialized in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and geospatial technology. He holds a PhD from University College London, London University. His teaching experience, research interest and professional practice lies in the areas of GIS Science, implementing enterprise GIS, spatial data modeling, managing geospatial database, integration of GIS and spatial data analysis, Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis, and spatial modeling.

He has more than nineteen years of geospatial technology experience. Up until April 2006, he was the country manager of ESRI South Asia Pte. Ltd., one of the leading GIS companies in the world. Between 1990-1995, he served as a GIS expert at the United Nations Centre for Regional Development (UNCRD), Nagoya, Japan, advising developing countries on how to implement GIS for regional planning and sustainable environmental management.

He has also more than ten years of lecturing experience at the university level. In 1987-1992, he was lecturing in the Department of Geography, University of Brunei Darussalam (UBD) and in 1995-2001 he was lecturing in the Humanities and Social Studies Academic Group, National Institute of Education/Nanyang Technological University (NIE/NTU), Singapore.

He is the author of more than forty scientific papers and a book in the field of applied GIS and remote sensing. He has previously been actively involved in large GIS-based initiatives in the Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Singapore, Namibia, Laos, and Philippines. He had also implemented more than twenty operational GIS world wide and in diverse areas such as urban and local planning, transport management, environment planning, healthcare, banking, tourism development, parks management, defense and homeland security, and utility.

We look forward to welcome you at this Research Talk.