Ian Masser

Ian Masser has been fascinated by the notion of spatial data infrastructures in recent years and followed their implementation in different parts of the world with great interest. His research has been the subject of several books. The most recent of these, 'Building European SDIs' describing the ground breaking INSPIRE initiative, was published by ESRI Press in June 2007. A second edition of this book was published in September 2010 and a third edition coauthored with Joep Crompvoets was published in 2015.

Ian was Professor of Urban Planning at the International Institute for Geoinformation Science and Earth Observation (ITC) in the Netherlands from 1998 to 2002. He was also Founder Chairman of the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe (AGILE) from 1998 to 2000, President of the European Umbrella Organisation for Geographic Information (EUROGI) from 1999 to 2003 and President of the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association (GSDI) from 2002 to 2004. He received the Global Citizen Award in 2016 from the GSDI Association for his exemplary service to the geospatial community