“Directly applying in-depth research. My work has evolved from digitalization, scanning and cartography to customized GIS analyses for a variety of customers.”
Vincent van Altena (1977) started UNIGIS in 2008 and graduated with high merit in January 2015 on the topic of automatic generalization of manmade water networks. He has been working at Kadaster since 1999, having completed his Theology. His intentions back then were to work at Kadaster briefly and enroll in a mastersprogramme as soon as possible.But life plans changed and Vincent developed a GIS career at Kadaster.
His work has evolved from digitalization, scanning and cartography to customized GIS analyses for a variety of customers. He currently works on automatic generalization of topographic data, such as the TOP50NL, European Location Framework and the Top10 the BbasemMap for the publicly available PDOK web map service.
His thesis allowed Vincent to dig deeper into the algorithms needed to generate good water network maps. These algorithms existed, but only for natural water networks and not for manmade networks as present in the Netherlands. His research resulted in a better method to identify the structure of a network and to tailor the thinning algorithm accordingly.
Vincent agrees with Viola that there are many opportunities for UNIGIS to engage more with their students. He thinks the upcoming webinars are a good start. Recommendation to UNIGIS? He missed facilitated interaction moments with his fellow students during his study years and he is happy to see that UNIGIS is taking up the challenge of modernizing the content of the study program.