We are pleased to announce that Kent State University will be home to Ohio’s first Open Source Geospatial Laboratory. The laboratory will support computational social science research and educational excellence through the development, implementation, and application of open source geo-computation and geo-visualization.

The laboratory is expected to attract considerable interest from spatial scientists, economic/urban geographers, regional scientists, and policy-makers who are keen to contribute to and learn about the evaluation, extension, and implementation of multi-scale and multi-mechanism framework for comparative space-time analysis of regional and urban dynamics. The laboratory will be active in dissemination of new comparative metrics for the broader research community. The software used to support most activities of the laboratory is open source, meaning the source code can be modified and re-distributed royalty and fee free. This open source geospatial laboratory is a joint initiative of the International Cartographic Association (ICA) and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo).

Professor Xinyue Ye, GIS Faculty at Kent State University and founding director of computational social science research lab will lead the initiative.

The facility will open in September 2013.

OSGeo is a not-for-profit organisation founded in 2006 whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open source geospatial technologies and data.

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

Details at http://www.osgeo.org/node/1376