2025 has been a particularly active year for AGI Scotland. A significant highlight was the launch in February of the first geospatial training course in the HE sector by Fife College, a development promoted, nurtured and supported by AGI Scotland. This has been recognised as a recognised qualification on the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework. Thanks to all at Fife College, Ashley Stewart at Location Data Scotland and Alan Corbett at the Scottish Government for their hard work in bringing this important initiative to fruition.
In the context of this work AGI Scotland Chair Bruce Gittings met the Scottish Business Minister Richard Lochhead MSP to explain the importance of geospatial and its potential as a growing sector of the economy.
Bruce Gittings and Ashley Stewart also spoke at the graduation of the Fife students in June.
In February, we hosted the UK GeoCom event together with our annual AGI Scotland Conference, a new approach which brought over 160 delegates from around the country to Edinburgh. AGI Scotland was also strongly represented at the PGSA conference in Edinburgh in November.
We have also hosted a range of seminars in our AGI-EEO series including: Caroline Nichol and Mareike Feldmann (University of Edinburgh) talking about new approaches for mapping and managing invasive plants, Genevieve Patenaude (Earth Blox) reflecting on their journey as an innovative EO start-up, Doug McNeil (EOLAS) gazing into the future and Colin Morrison on broadband roll-out in Scotland.
We also had a collaboration with Geomob in March and, as at writing, we have one further seminar on the 3 December from Will Cadell of Sparkgeo. Our thanks to Dr. Iain Cameron for organising these events.
It was a great pleasure to see AGI Scotland Committee member Alan Moore appear on the GEO100 list for 2025.
Looking ahead for 2026, planning is well advanced for our annual conference on 24th February in Glasgow on the theme of “Our Land Matters – Unlocking Landscape Potential through Geospatial Innovation.”.
We are also looking at evening events and a careers event in junction with the Early Careers Network (ECN). We also have a new ECN representative on our Committee – Anna Hill, Geospatial Technician at EDINA.
Lastly, the Committee would also like to record our thanks to the entire AGI Scotland team and to administrative support from AGI itself (with a special shout out to Cheryl for the support she gives us). We would also record our thanks to David Green who has stepped down from the AGI Scotland group on his retirement from the University of Aberdeen.