ICA-OSGeo Labs update

I participated in the  “EU Science: Global Challenges, Global Collaboration” at the European Parliament in Brussels (March 4th-8th). The event brought together top scientists , ministers , MEPs, senior policymakers  and industry leaders with the aim to encourage worldwide collaboration in science, to explore how Horizon 2020 can enable an effective scientific response to global challenges, and to provide an environment to build new partnerships with a view to increasing international participation in Horizon 2020.

Máire Geoghegan-Quinn,  European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science summarized excellently the meeting aims in her keynote speech at  http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-13-186_en.htm

For me it was also an excellent opportunity to interact with top scientists from other disciplines and explore new opportunities for future research collaborations. It was also a good opportunity to further build up support and collaborations for  Open Geospatial Research. Over the last six months we have succeeded in establishing Open  Geospatial education and research labs across the planet in 6 continents .  We have now grown to  20 research labs across the world (6 in Europe, 3 in North America, 3 in South America, 4 in Asia, 3 in Africa and 1 in Australia).

Europe

•       University of Nottingham, UK
•       University of Girona, Spain
•       University of Southampton, UK
•       Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic
•       Newcastle University, UK
•       Politecnico di Milano, Italy

South America

•       Federal University of Paraná, Brazil
•       São Paulo State University (UNESP), Brazil [process of being established]
•       National Amazonian University of Madre de Dios (UNAMAD), Peru [process of being established]

North America

•       North Carolina State University, USA
•       University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
•       University of California, Davis, USA [in process of being established]

Asia

•       UNMC, Malaysia
•       Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Malaysia [process of being established]
•       National College of Public Administration and Governance (NCPAG), University of the Philippines [process of being established]
•       Environmental Science for Social Change (ESSC), Philippines [process of being established]

Africa

•       University of Pretoria ,South Africa
•       Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD), Kenya [process of being established]
•       University of Ghana, Ghana [process of being established]

Australia

•       University of Melbourne, Australia [process of being established]

The pace of growth has been much beyond our dreams and with more applications for establishing research labs from universities across the world, we are in target to establish over 100 research labs in the next three years globally. This is the biggest growth area in our Geospatial  Science discipline and will have direct benefit of thousands of students across the world. Each of these research labs will keep expanding over the years with more staff and students .

 

ICA-OSGeo Lab established at the University of Warwick

We are pleased to announce the establishment of Open Source Geospatial Laboratory at the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. The laboratory is one of the members of a worldwide network developed under the auspices of the ICA-OSGeo Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

In 2011, the International Cartographic Association (ICA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) with the aim to develop global collaboration opportunities for academia, industry and government organisations in the field of open source GIS software and data. The MoU aims to provide expertise and support for the establishment of Open Source Geospatial Laboratories and Research Centres across the world to support the development of open source geospatial software technologies, training and expertise.

Responding through research to global challenges, the University of Warwick introduced the Global Research Priorities strategy, which aims to focus Warwick’s world-class, multidisciplinary research on key areas of international significance, by bringing together scholarly expertise from across faculties and departments. Themes for the GRPs were approved by Research Committee in September 2011: Connecting Cultures, Energy, Food, Global Governance, Innovative Manufacturing, International Development, Materials, Science and Technology for Health and Sustainable Cities. These will seek to combine areas of research strength in the University, across departmental boundaries, in order to enhance the ability to respond to funding bodies’priorities.

The establishment of dedicated open geospatial lab within the School of Life Sciences will help to accelerate opportunities in research and teaching for stimulating knowledge and information exchange for creative thinking withing and across GRP groups. This integrated research strategy applies multiple technologies to the study of a wide range of connected systems to generate fundamental knowledge as well as a range of impacts of direct relevance to the wider community. Prof. Liz Dowler of Warwick University said “Hurrah for this:  everyone loves ‘maps’ and ‘visualisations’ – they speak volumes and are invaluable for making key points.”

The website of the new lab is at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/lifesci/research/facilities/geolab/

OSGeo   http://www.osgeo.org/    is a not-for-profit organization founded in 2006 whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open source geospatial technologies and data.

ICA  http://icaci.org/     is the world authoritative body for cartography, the discipline dealing with the conception, production, dissemination and study of maps.