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

Screen Shot icaworkshop

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, the Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

Date: Thursday, 20 August and 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 motivatorsbenefits, 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 here. 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

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

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, Silvana Camboim silvanacamboim@gmail.com or Trevor Taylor ttaylor@opengeospatial.org.

“Geo for All” Open Education Award

Colleagues,

Open Education Week (9-13 March 2015) is an annual opportunity to raise awareness about open education and its impact on teaching and learning worldwide. Open education encompasses resources, tools and practices that employ a framework of open sharing to improve educational access and effectiveness. Participation in all events and use of all resources are free and open to everyone.Details at http://www.openeducationweek.org/

Geo for All http://www.geoforall.org , will be strongly supporting and participating in the Open Education Week 2015 and build synergies with the training events, workshops, webinars etc planned.

We are pleased to welcome nominations for “Geo for All – Open Education Award 2015”. This is an opportunity for us to thank our colleagues for the greatest contributions to Open Education principles in the Geo domain. We greatly welcome nominations for educators who have created GIS courses from different languages and regions in developing and developed world. The nominator can send the summary details in English along with the nomination which will help the committee members to understand its impact.

We aim to announce the winner of the award during the Open Education Week 2015 and the winner will be awarded at the FOSS4G 2015- Europe “Open Innovation for Europe” conference at Como, Italy . Details at http://europe.foss4g.org/2015/ The winner will also be receiving a crystal momento from NASA ( see at http://eurochallenge.como.polimi.it/ ) titled “Geo for All Educator of the year”. We are grateful to Patrick Hogan (NASA) for this and also the excellent idea of this competition.

We will welcome nominations from everyone. Students, Colleagues or wider public can nominate any educator who they believe has contributed to Open Education in Geo domain .Anyone except those in Award Committee listed at at http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Geoforall_educatoroftheyear
are eligible for the award. Award Committee members are welcome to nominate any others work they know that deserve nomination though all members of the Award Committee themselves are not eligible .

Especially this is a great opportunity for students to nominate their Teachers and Educators for their great service to Open Education Principles building upon open software, open data, open standards, open educational resources etc for the benefit of the wider humanity. It can be short (Summer Schools, Trainer programs etc ) or long (full semester) courses both online and class based. Please feel free to pass this call to your students and colleagues.

Anyone who wish to nominate should send the details by email to Professor Charlie Schweik – Committee Chair [email – [log in to unmask] ] with the subject header – “Nomination for Geo for All – Open Education Award 2015”.

This should include the Course leader details with the url to the course details (or attachment with the course details). Ideally if there is website for the program it will be helpful. Please follow this template for nomination. (Thanks to Antoni Pérez Navarro for this)

* Course Title in English
* Language
* Original title
* Credits/Hours
* Number of editions
* Type: Virtual, face-to-face, blended
* Target (professionals, technical students, primary school level, secondary school level, university level ,embedded in a wider program, etc.)
* Average number of students per edition
* Goal (maximum 150 words): what is the goal of this course in its socio-economical context and why the course was created?
* Contents
* Links to course, materials, contents, etc.
* License type

All applications should be received by 28th Feb 2015 before 12:00 GMT to be considered for this award.

So please send your nominations to honour and recognise the educators who made it possible and will be an inspiration to others to build upon for future years. It will also acknowledge their excellent contributions to open knowledge and being good global citizens by helping spread the benefits of education to all. Central to “Geo for All” mission is the belief that knowledge is a public good and Open Principles in Education will provide great opportunities for everyone.

Best wishes,

Suchith

Join our “Train the Trainer” opportunity

The MOOC program on “Introduction to Geospatial Technology Using QGIS” is starting in just 2 weeks (23rd Feb 2015), so if you have not registered yet (over 2000 students have already registered), please register asap at https://www.canvas.net/browse/delmarcollege/courses/cn-1681-intro-qgis

This is part of our “Train the Trainer” objectives and we especially encourage educators who wish to build upon Open Principles in GeoEducation to be part of the program and then build upon the course materials for their requirements at https://github.com/FOSS4GAcademy

We thank the whole MOOC team and the ICA-OSGeo Lab at Texas A&M University who have done a great contribution to our geoeducation efforts by giving away all the course materials under CC licence for the benefit of the wider community. This in one masterstroke has now changed geoeducation landscape forever. From lecturers in Brazil who now can translate this into Portuguese to educators in Africa and Asia who can customise this for their teaching requirements this opens a whole new dimension to our geoeducation efforts.

We are fully confident that with the dedication and efforts of you all in the future through our various instruments (OSGeo Live, MOOCs, various university programs, and more importantly a great network of best minds) , this will create educational opportunities for hundreds of thousands of students globally. We look forward to working with you all for making geospatial education, software and opportunities accessible to all. Thanks to all of your efforts which make this possible.

We encourage educators globally to make use of this opportunity.

Best wishes,

Suchith Anand

Invitation to NASA Worldwind Europa challenge

On behalf of “Geo for All” http://www.geoforall.org , we would like to welcome strong global participation for the third edition of the NASA Worldwind 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/

This NASA challenge attracts the best minds to develop their ideas covering a broad range of domains from transportation to air quality to linked data. The previous competition winners work is available at
http://eurochallenge.como.polimi.it/projects2013
http://eurochallenge.como.polimi.it/projects2014

We thank Professor Maria Brovelli (Politecnico di Milano, Italy) and Patrick Hogan (NASA) for their efforts for this initiative which adds great momentum to our efforts to promote openness in education and research worldwide.

It is also our great pleasure to announce the inaugural ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS Awards for Open Geospatial Science for the winning student teams at this competition. We thank the ICA, OSGeo and ISPRS for the generous support for the student awards. The awards will be given at the FOSS4G-Europe 2015 in Como, Italy (July 2015).

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) http://www.osgeo.org 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. OSGeo software and technologies are the major contributor for the global geospatial economy and used by millions of users in academia, governments and business worldwide and rapidly increasing.

International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) http://www.isprs.org is a non-governmental organisation devoted to the development of international cooperation for the advancement of photogrammetry and remote sensing and their applications.

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

We look forward to your strong participation for the NASA Worldwind Europa Challenge 2015 and joining our mission to make geospatial education and opportunities available for all.

Joint session of IG Geospatial & IG Big Data Analytics

Research Data Alliance is pleased to announce that the United States will be hosting its Fifth Plenary Meeting in San Diego, California from March 9 -11, 2015. For those unfamiliar with RDA, the Plenaries are multi-day meetings held twice a year in various locations worldwide to provide the RDA community an opportunity to network and collaborate with peers in various disciplines, and hear from industry experts and world leaders on topics related to research data sharing and exchange.

Celebrating its second year as an international organization, RDA will highlight the accomplishments of its membership. With the theme, “Adopt-a-Deliverable”, focus will be on the outputs from the initial set of RDA Working Groups, and on ensuring lasting impact in the research data sharing community through adoption by other organizations.

We are pleased to confirm details of the Joint session of IG Geospatial & IG Big Data Analytics

Monday 9 March 2015 (Time – 11:30-13:00)

The joint meeting will be chaired and led by Prof. Chris Pettit (University of Melbourne, Australia) and draft agenda below

* Updates on Geospatial IG
* Updates on Big Data Analytics IG
* 2- 3 short presentations to be finalised on both Geo and Big Data
* Ideas for specific actions in Geospatial IG and Big Data Analytics IG

If any of you wish to make short (unto 10 minutes) presentations of your research on this theme please inform Suchith.Anand@nottingham.ac.uk by 28th Feb 2015. More details at https://rd-alliance.org/ig-geospatial-p5-joint-session.html

It will be also a good opportunity to plan ideas to put a joint proposal for the RDA Data Share Fellow program https://www.rd-alliance.org/project-call-engage-rda-data-share-fellow-your-group.html through our US research labs (the Fellow will be based in US university) for building upon Urban Science research.

New proposed chair of the commission – Dr Silvana Comboim

It gives me great pleasure  to inform you all the good news that aspart of the succession plan for the ICA Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies, Dr Silvana Comboim (Universidade Federal de Paraná ,Brazil) will be nominated as the proposed new chair of the commission for 2015-2019. As per the ICA statutes the nomination of chair should be done through National member states only and i expect Brazil to support this nomination  at the next General Assembly at ICC 2015 and take this forward with the new Terms of Reference for the commission for the period 2015-2019.

It is very important that we have a strong leadership in place for this commission to support and expand all of the initiatives that was started and i have full confidence in Dr Silvana Comboim's dedication and abilities to take us to higher levels. I had the pleasure to work closely with her over the last 4 years  and  she was the main person who took the initiative to establish the first OSGeo lab in South America at the Federal University of Parana, Brazil.  I believe that Silvana will be the right person to chair and lead this commission for the next term (2015-2019 ) and build upon the activities that we have done and take this to higher level.  I also had the opportunity to see the amazing work she and her colleagues are doing when i visited Brazil in May 2014 and i see the work she is doing in Brazil having a great momentum for our global activities of "Geo for All" mission.

Silvana will also be leading the ICC Pre-conference workshop on Spatial data infrastructures, standards, open source and open data for geospatial (SDI-Open 2015) in Rio, 2015 and the Conference itself http://www.icc2015.org  will be great opportunity to strengthen the "Geo for All" initiative and to reinforce the key projects and research links for the future.

It had been my great pleasure  to get the opportunity to chair this commission in the last 4 years and i thank each and everyone of you for the support and help that you all provided for the initiatives we that have undertaken. Also special thanks to Prof. Thierry Badard (Canada) who was the cochair of this commission during this period for all his help provided to me.  I also thank the ICA President (Professor Georg Gartner) and the Executive Committee of the ICA for the strong support they all provided for all our activities including "Geo for All" and i am sure they will continue their strong support to Silvana for the future to take this to higher levels.

I will  be working closely with Silvana from now  for the smooth transition  of the commission at ICC 2015.  I request all of you to support Silvana in her new role and provide her all help to expand our mission. Thanks again to you all for your help and support.

Best wishes,

Suchith Anand