PSM Lecture

The second lecture of PSM was held today. This is the third week of lecture (no lecture last week due to public holiday) and students are supposed to submit PSM synopsis by today. Many of them managed to have it done.

The class

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Geoid School Closing Ceremony

Today is the last day of Geoid School 2016. There is no more lecture given by Prof Sjoberg in the morning session. The morning slot was occupied by Ramin and he continued with the lab on the use of KTH software. The lab was emphasised on fitting the gravimetric geoid to GPS on benchmarks.
In the evening a closing session of Geoid School was scheduled. It starts with participants giving feedback on Geoid School by answering questionnaires. The feedback showed that participants are satisfied with the Geoid School on overall and some suggestions are put forward for future improvement. Among the suggestions is to provide a longer slot for the lecture on basic Physical Geodesy.

The closing ceremony was ended with the presentation of certificate to all participants.

Certificate presentation

Wan Anom receiving her certificate

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Geoid School BBQ Dinner

One of the events set for the Geoid School is the BBQ Dinner. The Geoid School BBQ Dinner was held at Balai Cerap UTM. The dinner was attended by all participants, committee members and invited staff. The event began with the arrival of guest and all participants by UTM van at around 8.15 pm. Soon after arrival all were busy with the photo session with a beautiful night view of UTM as background. After that guest were taken for a short visit to the Galeria at ground level of Balai Cerap. The Galeria is filled with display of old survey instruments likes total station, tellurometer and Marconi Doppler receiver. Those were old instruments used by students in their survey projects in 1980s.

The BBQ dinner started soon after the Galeria's visit. The menu were prepared by Mak Jah Cafe and paid for by Jurukur Dr Majid, an established survey company belong to a former geodesy professor of FGHT.

The team from KTH

Dinner time

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Preparation of Balai Cerap for BBQ

The BBQ dinner of Geoid School was arranged to be held at Balai Cerap. The preparation for the event started as early as 3 pm with committee members busy with logistic arrangement of  canopy, dining table and also the PA system. Many thanks to hardworking committee crews - Nazirah and Amalina. Thanks also to Astina for making the necessary booking arrangement for the venue and also the necessary facilities.

The canopies

Crew of Mak Jah Cafe's in action

Preparing the PA system

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Geoid School - The Aim and Contents

The objectives of the Fourth International School on Least Squares Approach to Modelling the Geoid was aimed at providing a good opportunity for the students to familiarize themselves with the latest developments in geoid determination with special focus on the use of KTH Least Squares Modification of Stokes Approach software package (LSMSA). The school was also aimed as well for the participants to building up contacts with the professionals dealing with geoid determination particularly among those within the participant's countries.

The content of the lectures of the Fourth International School on Least Squares Approach to Modelling the Geoid include the following topics;

- Basic Physical Geodesy, Modification of Stokes' formula, Additive corrections in the KTH Method, LSMSA vs the R-C-R technique and some practical experiences geoid computation using KTH Method.
The lab sessions were focused with the following contents;
- Gravity data snooping and gridding, Gravity field determination by global geopotential models, Digital Elevation models (DEM) and geoid, and full project workshop of computing geoid using KTH GEOLAB Software.

Geoid School Participants

A total number of thirteen participants attended the Geoid School. Only two foreign participants managed to come. Both are from Bandung Institute of Technology. The rest are all from Malaysia. Four of them are surveyors working in the government sectors - three from Land and Survey Department Sarawak and one from National Surveying and Mapping Department Kuala Lumpur. Two geodesy academic staff from local universities also participated - one from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Skudai and one from Mara University of Technology Arau Perlis. One participants from surveying instrument company also attended. The rest of the participants are all postgraduate students of UTM Skudai Geomatic Innovation Research Group whom their research mainly involved on gravity and geoid determination.

Group photo after the official opening of the Geoid School

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Opening of Geoid School 2016

The Geoid School 2016 was finally began today. The Geoid School which is officially named as The Fourth International School on Least Squares Approach to Modelling the Geoid was organized by Geomatic Innovation Research Group (GnG), Dept of Geoinformation FGHT. The school was conducted in collaboration with Prof Lars Sjoberg and Dr Ramin Kiamehr. Both are from Geodesy Department, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) Stockholm, Sweden.

The official opening is held today at Seminar Room FGHT. It was officiated by Head of Geoinformation Department. The ceremony was began with opening remark by me as Chairman of the Organizing Committee. Then it was followed by speech by Prof Sjoberg as co-organizer and finally the official opening speech by Assoc Prof Dr Zulkepli Majid.

The official opening was followed by group photo and later breakfast was served at the banquet room nearby.

 The Organizing Committee Chairman giving his speech

A shot after the breakfast

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