The State of GeoForAll

The Slides from The State of GeoForAll presented by Helena Mitasova, Vaclav Petras, Anna Petrasova from North Carolina State University (NCSU) GeoForAll Lab  at FOSS4G 2017 Boston is at https://ncsu-geoforall-lab.github.io/geoforall/#/

State of GeoForAll

I also want to congratulate GeoForAll colleagues at the North Carolina State University, USA  for their excellent course “Tools for open geospatial science”.  Details at https://ncsu-geoforall-lab.github.io/open-science-course/

This is excellent course covering all key foundation topics of open geospatial science. This will be a really good structure for other universities to replicate ideas in their GIS courses.

ESA’s Earth Observation Open Science 2017

The European Space Agency (ESA) is organizing the 3rd consultation meeting of EO Open Science in ESRIN (Frascati, Italy) on  25–28 September 2017 to explore new challenges and opportunities for EO research created by the rapid advances in Information and Communications Technologies (ICT).

EOOpenScience

This includes open tools and software, data-intensive science, virtual research environment, citizen science and crowdsourcing, advanced visualization, e-learning and education of the new generation of EO and Data scientists. The conference will present activities in EO Open Science and Innovation and develop a Roadmap for future ESA  exploitation activities under the EO Science for society programme.

The schedule is at http://eoopenscience.esa.int

There is live streaming at https://livestream.com/ESA/OpenScience2017

 

btw we launched the OpenCitySmart ideas at EO Open Science in 2015 https://opensourcegeospatial.icaci.org/2015/07/launch-of-opencitysmart-the-open-platform-for-smart-cities/

Nunaliit

Members of the ICA Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies,

As some of us learned at the International Cartographic Conference 2017, there is an interesting open source application that could be more widely known to those of us in our domain. That application is Nunaliit. Please check it out at http://nunaliit.org. The developers at Carleton University, Canada, welcome your feedback. Please take a little bit of time to learn about it, use it, and, possibly, join their community. In addition, they always welcome pull requests to fix bugs or add features.

Again, information about Nunaliit can be found at http://nunaliit.org and the source is currently hosted at https://github.com/GCRC/nunaliit.

The primary point of contact for Nunaliit is Amos Hays, as follows:

Amos Hayes
Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre
Carleton University, Canada
http://gcrc.carleton.ca
ahayes@gcrc.carleton.ca
+1.613.520.2600×8179

If you would like more information, please contact him.
Thank you.

Michael P. Finn
Commission Co-Chair

The Future of Geo is Open

This is a request for help as I need inputs from the wider community to get more ideas for my presentation at FOSS4G-Europe 2017 later this month. FOSS4G-Europe 2017 will be held at the École Nationale des Sciences Géographiques (ENSG) in Paris, France, from July 18th to 22nd, 2017 . Details at http://europe.foss4g.org/2017/

geoforall

My keynote presentation will be on “The Future of Geo is Open” and I would like to invite ideas/inputs for this. It is also an good time to reflect on the developments in Open Geospatial Science [1],[2],[3] as it is over a decade now since we started working on the philosophy of Openness in Geospatial Science  and Education.

I am looking forward to discussing new ideas with you all at FOSS4G-Europe 2017.

Best wishes,

Suchith

 

[1] http://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijgi/special_issues/science-applications

[2] http://www.springer.com/earth+sciences+and+geography/geography/journal/40965

[3] http://www.geoconnexion.com/uploads/publication_pdfs/uk_v15i18-058-059-Op951AF3.pdf

Education for the City we need – how to integrate the UN-Habitat NEW URBAN AGENDA in higher education curricula?

Last week (7 – 9 June 2017) TU Delft organised  an Urban Thinkers’ Campus (UTC ) on Higher Education for the New Urban Agenda. The title of the UTC was “EDUCATION FOR THE CITY WE NEED”.  A concept sponsored by UN HABITAT in partnership with the World Urban Campaign.delft

The aim of the meetings was to explore how to integrate the UN-Habitat NEW URBAN AGENDA in higher education curricula. How do we prepare young professionals to understand and implement challenges related to the New Urban Agenda in diverse national and local developing environments? That’s the question the Urban Thinkers’ Campus aimed to answer.

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The New Urban Agenda is the outcome document agreed upon at the Habitat III cities conference in Quito, Ecuador, in October 2016 and signed by all the UN member states.This event brought together speakers and participants  to discuss strategies, methodologies, literature and practical exercises that can be implemented in higher education courses in Europe and elsewhere. Our attention is on social, economic and environmentally sustainable urban development everywhere, but the challenges of urbanisation in the Global South are truly urgent.

delft1

I would like to thank the organisors for the excellent initiative and for inviting me to share our ideas and the need for Open Principles in Education for  “EDUCATION FOR THE CITY WE NEED”. I hope Open Principles in Education is firmly included in the education ideas for the future.

I fully support TUDelft Global mission statement “Science for the benefit of people. All people. Worldwide.”

“GeoForAll” Lab of the Month – WorldBridge

Dear GeoForAll Colleagues,

As I started on this “Lab of the month” series for the Geo for All newsletter, I myself started learning more and more about the excellent work that our amazing colleagues globally have been doing. This month, I am pleased to share the excellent work of WorldBridge who are involved in International Real-time, Real-world Collaborative Projects by Trillium Learning. WorldBridge is an international award-winning program for learning 21st Century Skills, using advanced teaching methods that incorporate real-world projects involving industry and government partners. A World Bridge continually advances educational models for international leadership, economic development and educational research. These dynamic projects involve the design and implementation of Real-world, Real-time Project-Based Learning into the curriculum. Students develop professional skills while working on locally-oriented projects that have relevance to the larger global community, such as urban management and sustainable resources. Details at http://aworldbridge.com

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I was particularly impressed by their work with students through NASA Europa Challenge . Alaska’s A World Bridge program in Kodiak won back-to-back NASA Europa – International Grand Challenges the past two years, competing against the world’s “Best and the Brightest” to generate solutions to societal issues that will benefit both the local and world communities. The competition includes top universities and commercial organizations – the 2015 Alaskan team represented the first high school to be involved in the competition. The Earthquake Signal Precursors (ESP) project (aka Global Earthquake Forecast System) is a revolutionary initiative that will advance the field of earthquake science using a dynamic monitoring system of earthquake precursor signals that have the potential to forecast imminent seismic activity. ESP can serve as a cornerstone to inform the community for the increasing risk of an earthquake. The current work monitors the Earth’s magnetic field for anomalies. These anomalies have been consistently shown to shortly precede actual seismic events by several hours to a few days.

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Members of the Kodiak Team working on their project (picture courtesy of Trillium Learning)

The students are also working on the NASA OpenCitySmart global initiative, which challenges “the world’s best and brightest” to find solutions for creating sustainable communities. They are looking for renewable energy solutions and the development of shared energy grids suitable for Arctic conditions. Students are also working on building new types of greenhouse systems that can withstand extremely cold temperatures, technology that could have enormous impact on agriculture in the Arctic. This is a great example of accelerating academic performance for students in STEM to greatly enhance the quality of our next generation of scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians. See more details at

http://www.gettingsmart.com/2017/03/building-world-bridge-college-career-life-readiness/

http://www.arctic.gci.com/blog/2017/1/31/kodiak-students-team-with-scientists-to-impact-arctic-the-world

We thank Ron Fortunato who is a pioneer and innovator in the development and implementation of educational technology. He is one of the original five Christa McAuliffe Educators in the USA selected by the National Foundation for the Improvement of Education, and a NASA Space Ambassador for the United States. His understanding of teaching and learning processes, real world project-based learning and program implementation enable him to design and produce effective learning environments.

Thank you Ron and WorldBridge Team for making possible. It is important that we can share these amazing ideas with all, so that it keeps building more synergies. We are a global community and it is this global perspective which gives us strength. It is important that we highlight and share ideas from colleagues in different parts of our home planet.

Best wishes,

Suchith

 

Recording of Webinar on “Publishing open data from an organisational point of view”

Currently, nearly 800 million people struggle with debilitating hunger and malnutrition and can be found in every corner of the globe. That’s one in every nine people, with the majority being women and children. The Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) supports the proactive sharing of open data to make information about agriculture and nutrition available, accessible and usable to deal with the urgent challenge of ensuring world food security. A core principle behind GODAN is that a solution to Zero Hunger lies within existing, but often unavailable, agriculture and nutrition data.

At the GODAN Summit [1] in September 2016, GODAN launched a new Working Group on Capacity Development [2]. We have started a webinar series to reach out to the wider community on the importance of open data.  The first webinar took place on  March 2017 where we gave an overview of the activities of the WG and how you all can get involved. The webinar recording is available at http://aims.fao.org/activity/blog/recording-past-webinar-godan-wg-capacity-development

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The second GODAN Capacity Building  webinar was on  “Publishing open data from an organisational point of view” and was lead by GODAN Action colleagues from the Open Data Institute [3] in London.

Webinar Speaker – Dr David Tarrant joined the Open Data Institute from the University of Southampton where he was a Lecturer in the Web and Internet Science Group. David has over 12 years of experience with the open agenda including a PhD on measuring the impact of open science. Before leaving the University, David created the first undergraduate course focussing on open data science.

The recording of the webinar is now available at https://youtu.be/WXUSBU6cRAo
This webinar focussed on  key aspects:

– Why publish open data
– What benefit can publishing open data bring
– Why licenses are the most important aspect of publishing open data
– How to start with publishing open data

This webinar will draw on content available in existing eLearning and in particular, will focus on the following eLearning modules available in the European Data Portal.

We shall also be drawing on the following module to outline the importance of staying focused in publication activities.

4) Measuring success for open data – https://www.europeandataportal.eu/elearning/en/module6

 

We welcome all interested in joining the GODAN WG on Capacity Development and contributing to education and training on Open Data in food and agricultural sciences. This is open and free to all interested. Join at https://dgroups.org/fao/godan_cd

 

 

“GeoForAll” Lab of the Month – the Laboratory of socio-geographical research of the University of Siena, ITALY

Dear Colleagues,

It is my great pleasure, to introduce our colleagues at the Laboratory of socio-geographical research of the University of Siena, as our “GeoForAll” lab of the month. The University of Siena is one of the most ancient Italian Universities, founded in 1240. LADEST is the Laboratory of socio-geographical research of the University of Siena, based in the Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences. The laboratory specialises in data collection and spatial analysis, Geographical Information Science, and territorial data mapping. Since the area of geography is a cornerstone of the activities, the expertise of LADEST – which includes volunteered geographic information (VGI), user-generated content (UGC), semantic analysis, photo-sharing, social networks dynamics, data mining and GIS based data visualization – will benefit the endeavour impacting on different projects.

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Prof. Cristina and colleagues at LADEST, University of Siena

LADEST employ mainstream GIS tools as well as applications developed in house to retrieve photo from Flickr or Tweets from Kowalski which has been one of the first experiment (in 2013) to retrieve georeferenced Tweets. They also developed TEA, TouristExperienceApplication at http://tea.ladestlab.it/

LADEST benefits from international exchanges and recently had two visiting professors namely Georg Gartner (TU Wien) and Claire Ellul (UCL) who have enriched the work done at LADEST with their lectures and citizen science experimentation.

In 2011 the University of Siena founded a sustainability network, Nesso (Network Siena Sostenibile) to foster fruitful exchanges with interested parties in order to define sustainable policies and operating solutions and then became a regional centre of the UNSDSN network. So Ladest is also engaged in sustainable development, sustainability indicators, smart cities.

LADEST has been the leader of a 4 year COST Action: IC1203 ENERGIC (2012-2016) on the harnessing crowdsourced geographic information from sources to software and methodologies (www.vgibo.eu) ENERGIC developed the “VGI Knowledge Portal”. This Portal provides information about the domain of Volunteered Geo-Information (VGI) by presenting its relevant concepts, products and their relationships. As the portal is a Wiki, it is used both to browse and to edit its page content.

LADEST current research focus is on the following:

The effect of airBnB in urban disneyfication process ( see http://ladestlab.it/maps/70/airbnbscapes , http://ladestlab.it/maps/68/the-airification-of-cities) citizen science and, territorial marketing and environmental monitoring.

A permanent Observatory on the use of Twitter platform by the Italian municipalities in collaboration with Twitter and ANCI (Associazione Nazionale Comuni Italiani).

(see https://ladestlab.it/maps/66/i-comuni-italiani-su-twitter-l-evoluzione-2013-2016)

Regional and urban analysis integrating crowdsourced geographic information with other authoritative data (e.g. Census data) to be employed for example in political geography. Their latest experiment on Brexit’s results (see http://ladestlab.it/maps/54/urban-britain-and-the-brexit-vote )

Landscape as a material and immaterial resource. Cristina Capineri founded the Museum of Landscape in Castelnuovo Berardenga (Siena) almost twety years ago (see http://www.comune.castelnuovo.si.it/?q=museo-paesaggio )

http://ladestlab.it/maps/60/mapping-flickr-number-of-flickr-photographs-per-country

The GeoForAll lab in University of Seina welcomes collaborations from all interested and work for making contributions to the wider society. More details at http://ladestlab.it

On behalf of the GeoForAll community, we thank Prof. Cristina Capineri and all colleagues from the University of Siena for their contributions to the GeoForAll initiative and look forward to working and building more collaborations with all interested on this education mission.

Best wishes,

Suchith

Open Source Scientific Software for Open Science

The annual European Geoscience Union (EGU) General Assembly was held from April 24 in Vienna. As in the previous years, there will be a dedicated Townhall event organised by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) on Thursday, April 27, 2017

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The paradigm of Open Science is based on the tiers Open Access, Open Data and Free Open Source Software (FOSS). However, the interconnections between the tiers remain to be improved. This is a critical factor to enable Open Science. This Townhall meeting reaches out all across EGU, especially welcoming Early Career Scientists, to network and discuss the current challenges and opportunities of the FOSS tier

Recording of the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) webinar on capacity development

The Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) supports the proactive sharing of open data to make information about agriculture and nutrition available, accessible and usable to deal with the urgent challenge of ensuring world food security. At the GODAN Summit in September 2016, GODAN launched a new Working Group on Capacity Development. Background information at http://aims.fao.org/activity/blog/recording-past-webinar-godan-wg-capacity-development

The recording link of the first Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) webinar on capacity development is at https://youtu.be/ezOEhsm7hGI

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The webinar will help understand the current developments including overview on the GODAN Action project [1]  and how to be part of the capacity development activities.  Join the Capacity Development WG at https://dgroups.org/fao/godan_cd/join

[1] http://www.cta.int/en/article/2016-08-03/the-godan-action-project-an-innovative-approach.htm