Dear colleagues,

It is my great pleasure to introduce our excellent colleague Dr Tuong-Thuy Vu as our GeoAmbassador. Dr Tuong-Thuy Vu is an Associate Professor of the School of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, University of Nottingham, Malaysia campus (UNMC). He is also the Asia chair of GeoForAll.

A geospatial scientist by training and research, Dr Vu has over 15-years research and teaching experiences across Eurasia. He obtained his Master and PhD from Asian Institute of Technology in 2000 and 2003,  respectively, and started exploring open-source tools at the early stage. After his PhD,  he worked as a research scientist at Earthquake Disaster Mitigation Research Center, Kobe, Japan (2003-2006) before joined Chiba University as a postdoctoral researcher in 2006-2007. In both places, he focused on the employment of geospatial technologies in disaster mitigation and management. He then joined GEO Grid team of National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan to further expand the research onto high-performance computing platform. In 2008, he went back to university to develop his academic career at Geoinformatics division, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. In early 2011, he took the position at University of Nottingham, Malaysia campus and assisted the establishment of the School of Geography and new MSc programmes at Malaysia campus.

Late 2011, he established his OSGeo research lab (OSGeo.UNMC) [1], the first-of-its-kind in Southeast Asia and soon became among the first members of GeoForAll. OSGeo.UNMC aims at promoting open-source philosophy in education and research on geospatial science. The team developed the material to fully deploy OSGeo tools in teaching at postgraduate level, and introducing as an alternative tool for undergraduate students doing their final year project. In teaching and learning, OSGeo.UNMC team promote not only using open-source tools but also instructing a new way of open learning including open-mind, freedom, sharing and collaboration. There is a certain improvement of geospatial knowledge and skills for students when moving to open-source way, especially the confidence to try any available tools to address a specific issue.

OSGeo.UNMC has been working very closely with Nottingham Geospatial Institute (NGI) team from the beginning. Together, we organised the AgriGIS 2012 (Figure 1), bringing together researchers and practitioners in agriculture and geospatial science. It was the very first public event to broadcast the name of OSGeo.UNMC to the region. In addition to presenting at many public events, convention and conferences to introduce OSGeo and open geospatial science, Dr Vu coordinated the establishment of OSGeo Malaysia chapter (Figure 2). Thuy also leads the team organising a series of training to the public (Figure 3) [2] [3]. In 2017, he is planning to assist the establishment of two new OSGeo labs in Vietnam universities.

OSGeo.UNMC is developing its strong research activities on geobig data analytics. The team was awarded good national and international funding to work on remote sensing data fusion, change detection, remote sensing image analysis services, crowd-sourced data quality.

In collaboration with its partners, OSGeo.UNMC promotes open geospatial science via collaborative research projects like urban construction management, urban green space, megafauna index mapping, and agricultural management.

Geo for All is a worldwide movement that provides immediate benefit to the world. We aim to create openness in Geo Education for developing creative and open minds in students which is critical for building open innovation and contributes to building up Open Knowledge for the benefit of the whole society and for our future generations. We are proud to honour Thuy as our GeoAmbassodor and we are extremely grateful for his contributions to Geo for All. Thuy is a great ambassador for Open Geospatial Science globally.

I am very grateful for getting this opportunity of introducing some of our amazing colleagues from different parts of our world each month as our GeoAmbassadors and get inspired by their amazing work and contributions for the wider community.

Best wishes,

Suchith Anand

[1] http://www.nottingham.edu.my/EGS/Research/GeospatialScience/OSGEO-lab.aspx

[2] https://blogs.nottingham.edu.my/geography/2016/03/01/gis-information-workshop/

[3] https://blogs.nottingham.edu.my/geography/2016/02/28/ensearch-gis-training-by-osgeo-lab/

We are welcoming participation from all interested for the NASA-GODAN Local Farming challenge. Background of the challenge at http://aims.fao.org/es/activity/blog/godan-local-farming-challenge-2017

We want to bring together researchers and students to find solutions for local farming in growing cities, using open agriculture and nutrition data. Participants must use some aspect of the OpenCitySmart Design and use NASA’s open source virtual globe technology, WebWorldWind as a source of open data. Ideas may include ways for optimally linking local farming communities directly with potential customers, tools for visualising spatio-temporal aspects of local farming, tools for helping reducing wastage (for example linking with local food banks), and any number of solutions for helping our goal of Zero Hunger.

More information at http://eurochallenge.como.polimi.it/

Challenge due date: August 8, 2017

Prize: 1000 Euros for the winning team and certificates from GODAN and NASA.

Contact: suchith.anand@godan.info

More details at http://www.godan.info/news/godan-nasa-europa-student-challenge-announcement