Geodetic Institute of Slovenia (acronym: GI, original name: Geodetski inštitut Slovenije) is a leading Slovenian public institution for geodetic, cartographic, geoinformatic, and hydrographic research and development, established in 1953. Many projects are elaborated for the Slovenian Surveying & Mapping Authority and for various ministries and agencies from as diverse fields as environment, spatial planning, infrastructure, science, defence, transport, agriculture, culture, education, and regional development. GI is authorized to technically operate several national spatial data infrastructure services such as distribution of real estate and spatial data, distribution of precise GPS/GNSS data processed by national reference stations network SIGNAL (SlovenIa-Geodesy-NAvigation-Location), and dissemination of maritime hydrographic data. The institute took part in the establishment of a new real estate register and a system of real estate assessment. GI also operates own Training Centre for Geomatics which educates and certifies various profiles of geo-practitioners. In cartography and mapping, GI holds three awards for “Excellence in Cartography” by International Cartographic Association, for the best city plan (Ottawa, 1999), for the best tactile map for blind (Durban, 2003) and for the best topographic map (Paris, 2011) on the world. Maps and spatial data are digitally produced for ordinary printing, satellite navigation on land, sea and air, for 3-dimensional visualization, terrain and city modelling, for web and multimedia products, and even for digital geolibraries. Themes vary from topographic to tourist maps, and from mountaineering maps to nautical charts produced in conformance with International Hydrographic Organization standards. Photogrammetric works include production and processing of all kind of imagery - from satellite, to aerial and extremely dense laser point clouds (lidar). Terrestrial imagery taken from ground points is also extensively used for documentation of cultural heritage sites. GI technically coordinates the transition of the whole country to a new European coordinate system which includes fundamental geodetic works. Thousands of points in land cadastre, topography and other spatial databases are transformed to more accurate and interoperable system. GI helped to promote and introduce GPS/GNSS measurements into everyday work procedures all over the country. Recently, GI is active in projects related to location based services and geovisualization for as diverse themes as e-health, open data, national statistics, space weather and geomagnetism, demography of Roma population, e-content and e-services for the blind, e-tourism, volunteered geographic information, small glacier mapping, augmented reality for real estate, and animal tracking.
