Google – OSGeo Summer of Code program 2014

Thanks to all the mentors, students and especially to OSGeo GSoC Administrators 2014(Anne Ghisla, Hamish Bowman and Dustan Adkins) for another successful organisation of OSGeo Google Summer of Code 2014  http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_2014_Ideas

All the projects done are excellent but i would to highlight one project which we did this year with the aim to build ideas for collaborative research for ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS labs for the future .

We have strong automated map generalization/schematization research in some of our research labs and thanks to Dr Luciene Delazari (Federal University of Parana, Brazil),  Piotr Pociask (GIS Support Sp, Warsaw) and Dr Mark Ware (University of South Wales) for supervising this excellent work on building the Schematization Plugin for QGIS and student Nishith Maheshwari (IIIT Hyderabad, India) for building this. This will now  enable more collaborative research ideas for the map generalization research community for extending this as an open schematization platform which other students in future can use to build upon. It is an excellent example of how we can build ideas for collaborative research for ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS labs for the future.

This will also help us build ideas for next year’s GSoC by having members of ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS labs network collaborate on other interesting ideas.

http://hub.qgis.org/wiki/quantum-gis/Nishithm

Great work all  and thanks for your contributions which help build the momentum for sharing knowledge for the benefit of all.

ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS Award for Open Geospatial Science

The Big 3 of the Geospatial World (the International Cartographic Association, Open Source Geospatial Foundation  and  International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing)  have joined forces in our common aim to make geospatial education and opportunities available for all.

From 2015, we have decided to award ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS Award for Open Geospatial Science at key conferences to students doing excellent research in this area. We have also set up a committee for this.

  •         Prof. Georg Gartner (President, ICA)
  •         Mr. Jeff McKenna (President, OSGeo)
  •         Prof. Chen Jun (President, ISPRS)
  •         Prof. Charlie Schweik (University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA)
  •         Prof. Maria Antonia Brovelli (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)
  •         Dr. Xinyue Ye (Kent State University, USA)
  •         Dr. Luciene Delazari (Federal University of Paraná, Brazil)
  •         Dr. Tuong-Thuy Vu (UNMC, Malaysia)
  •         Prof. Venkatesh Raghavan (Osaka City University, Japan)
  •         Prof. Ivana Ivánová (FCT/UNESP, Brazil)
  •         Mr. Jeroen Ticheler (GeoCat)
  •         Dr. Serena Coetzee (University of Pretoria, South Africa)
  •         Prof. Helena Mitasova (North Carolina State University, USA )
  •         Dr. Suchith Anand (University of Nottingham, UK)

Professor Maria Brovelli is organising FOSS4G-Europe 2015 in Como, Italy (July 2015) and will be running the third edition of the very successful NASA World Wind Europa Challenge. The aim of this challenge is to inspire ideas for building great applications that serves the INSPIRE Directive and uses NASA’s open source virtual globe technology World Wind. Details at http://eurochallenge.como.polimi.it/

So the inaugural ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS Award for Open Geospatial Science will be for the best student winning team at this competition.

“Building up Open Access, Open Education and Open Data for Open Science” – Presentations now online

The recordings of presentations for OSGIS 2014 “Building up Open Access, Open Education and Open Data for Open Science”  are now available at http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/osgis/home.aspx  for the benefit of the wider community.

or go directly to http://uilapech01.nottingham.ac.uk:8080/ess/portal/section/02fba582-968a-4437-b279-f9e76072e544

I would like to invite you to watch Professor Stuart Marsh’s (Nottingham Geospatial Institute) presentation to get an overview of the research in this theme at Nottingham

https://lecturecapture.nottingham.ac.uk:8443/ess/echo/presentation/80abcb78-9997-4bf6-b2e8-cf9a99c99810

and also Professor John Wood’s (Secretary General, Association of Commonwealth Universities) keynote presentation on “Research Data revolution and the Open Science phenomenon” to get an overview of future research directions in this theme.

https://lecturecapture.nottingham.ac.uk:8443/ess/echo/presentation/b17563f3-97f3-4807-a824-308b6d08a4a2

I would like to thank all our colleagues and students at the University of Nottingham for their help and support over the years  for building up Open Geospatial Science.

Through the Research Data Alliance (RDA) we are now building Geospatial Data Science as a key research focus for expanding our research for the future and will have this as a key focus for our next meeting  (Sep 22nd) . Details and agenda at https://www.rd-alliance.org/geospatial-ig.html

The program of RDA Plenary 4 is at https://www.rd-alliance.org/plenary4-programme.html

I am also pleased to inform that we will be having FOSS4G – Europe 2015 in Como, Italy in July 2015 (Thanks to Professor Maria Brovelli for organising this ) to further accelerate Open Geospatial Science across Europe. Como is also near JRC and it will be also a good opportunity for planning  meeting of all our European labs to build future research collaborations. We will inform more details later.

Pre-conference workshop on Spatial data infrastructures, standards, open source and open data for geospatial (SDI-Open 2015)

Call for extended abstracts

27th International Cartographic Conference

Pre-conference workshop on

Spatial data infrastructures, standards, open source and open data for geospatial

(SDI-Open 2015)

jointly organized by the

Commission on Geoinformation Infrastructures and Standards and the

Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies

Date: Friday, 21 August 2015

Venue: Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), Rio de Jaineiro, Brazil

The discovery, access, exchange and sharing of geographic information and services among stakeholders from different levels in the spatial data community is facilitated through a spatial data infrastructure (SDI). Standards are key for the quality and development of interoperable geographic information and geospatial software. The drive for access to geographic information has led to its publication as open data, i.e. freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. According to a report by the United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM), the use of opensource solutions is likely to increase significantly in the future as a viable alternative to proprietary suppliers. Open source software for geospatial, geographic information standards and open data policies are therefore significant for SDI development and implementation. This workshop aims to record examples of current SDI practice with an aim to identify benefits and challenges to implementing free and open source software for geospatial, geographic information standards and open (spatial) data in an SDI.

SDI resarchers and practitioners are invited to submit extended abstracts of 1,000-1,500 words that describe SDI case studies where

  • open source software for geospatial is used in the technical implementation; and/or
  • geospatial standards are implemented; and/or
  • geographic information is accessible as open data.

The case studies shall include the following:

  • Background information about the SDI, including the relevant policies.
  • A description of how open source, standards and/or open data are implemented in the SDI.
  • An evaluation of the motivators, benefits, barriers and challenges concerning implementation of open source software, standards and/or open data.
  • Based on the evaluation, provide recommendations for improvements and/or further work.
  • Conclusions.

Extended abstracts have to be written in English. Contributions must be original and previously unpublished. Author guidelines are available at https://opensourcegeospatial.icaci.org/. Abstracts have to be submitted through the online submission system, available at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sdiopen2015. Abstracts will be reviewed by members of the organizing ICA Commissions. Upon acceptance, a revised abstract has to be submitted for inclusion in the workshop proceedings. At least one of the authors of an accepted abstract must register for the workshop and make an oral presentation at the workshop.

Accepted abstracts will be published in the online workshop proceedings with an ISBN number and will be openly archived on the ICA website under a Creative Commons Attribution License, which allows others to freely access, use, and share the work, with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and its initial publication in the online workshop proceedings. Authors of a selected number of high quality abstracts may be invited to submit an extended paper to a peer-reviewed journal.

Important dates

Call for abstracts opens:                                                     1 September 2014

Abstract submission:                                                          2 March 2015

Notification of acceptance:                                                1 June 2015

Submission of revised abstracts:                                      6 July 2015

Full workshop registration payment for presenters:          6 July 2015

27th ICC 2015 Conference                                                 23-28 August 2015

 

SDI-Open2015_AuthorGuidelines_20140828

Contact

If you have any questions, please contact Antony Cooper acooper@csir.co.za, Serena Coetzee serena.coetzee@up.ac.za, Suchith Anand Suchith.Anand@nottingham.ac.uk, Luciene Delazari luciene@ufpr.br or Silvana Camboim   silvanacamboim@gmail.com