Photo opportunity 11am, Friday 11 July, Basement, Ewing Building, Geddes Quadrangle, University of Dundee.
Vanessa Lawrence, Director of the Ordnance Survey will meet students of the course she studied over twenty years ago in their labs before she receives her honorary degree from the University of Dundee today.
This will mark Ms Lawrence's second degree on the stage of the Caird Hall as she is honoured for a major and groundbreaking achievement - converting OS maps into digital format, producing a new generation of digital maps covering Great Britain which precisely locate and map more than 400 million features in the landscape, every house, garden and pillar box.
Vanessa also helped create the ward structure for the South African election heading up the new Geographical Information Systems business sector for Autodesk, processing 24 gigabytes of data, 24 hours a day 7 days a week for six months - one of the largest GIS projects in the world.
Ms Lawrence will meet students from the Remote Sensing postgraduate course she was one of the first students to study for this postgraduate back in 1981.
The University of Dundee is about to relaunch the Remote Sensing postgraduate course and Vanessa Lawrence will be giving it her seal of approval on Friday.
Professor Alan Werritty, Head of the Geography Department explains: "The demand for remote sensing knowledge has shifted from the technical how-to-set-it-up requirements to an understanding for environmental geographers who need to be know how it can be used to further their research." The University is tailoring its expertise and providing post graduate skills to meet the demands of applied research.
Remote sensing, or earth observation as it is sometimes known, is the capturing and recording of information about the earth's surface from space using cameras and special sensors attached to satellites or aircraft. Given that much of the earth's surface will never be mapped in detail by conventional ground-based survey, remote sensing is a key tool for building up an inventory of the ever-changing surface of the earth on both land and sea.
By Jenny Marra, Head of Press 01382 344910 j.m.marra@dundee.ac.uk