From September 11-17, 2016, data professionals and researchers from all disciplines and from across the globe will convene in Denver, Colorado, USA for International Data Week (IDW). The theme of this landmark event is ‘From Big Data to Open Data: Mobilizing the Data Revolution’. As such, the International Data Week will bring together data scientists, researchers, industry leaders, entrepreneurs, policy makers  to explore how best to exploit the data revolution to improve our knowledge and benefit society through data-driven research and innovation. Details at http://www.internationaldataweek.org

I am pleased to inform that the next meeting of Geospatial IG of the Research Data Alliance will be held during RDA 8th Plenary in Denver 15th to 17th September 2016

Our meeting will be held on Friday, 16 Sept, 13:30 – 15:00.

The meeting objectives are to :

* Update on the Open Consultation on Open Geospatial Science – Vision 2030 [1]
* Ideas for educational programs for Geospatial Data Science (for example building synergies with CODATA-RDA School of Research Data Science [2])
* Discuss Ideas for starting new WGs (eg in Transport Data)

Draft meeting agenda at https://rd-alliance.org/ig-geospatial-rda-8th-plenary-meeting

Specifically to expand the discussions and ideas on Open Geospatial Science – Vision 2030 [1] and how we can build synergies towards the vision of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development for building a better world for all. 

Details at https://opensourcegeospatial.icaci.org/2016/07/how-can-we-contribute-our-efforts-for-united-nations-2030-agenda-for-sustainable-development-for-building-a-better-world-for-everyone-3/ 

We are also inviting ideas from the wider community for short presentation (max 5 min) from various research groups working in Geospatial Data Science for the Denver meeting to share your ideas and explore ideas for future research collaborations. There will be opportunity to join remotely for this session and present for interested participants . If you wish to contribute to this session or those interested to initiate new Working Groups for the Geospatial IG please email me or any of the cochairs by 20th Aug 2016.

Details at https://rd-alliance.org/groups/geospatial-ig.html

We welcome ideas and participation from those interested for contributing to this.

Best wishes,

Suchith

Dr. Suchith Anand
http://www.geoforall.org/

Geo for All – Building and expanding Open Geospatial Science

Just one month after the successful FOSS4G UK  conference, our colleagues in Austria have run an excellent  FOSSGIS Conference (4th to 6th July 2016) at the University of Salzburg.

http://www.fossgis-konferenz.de/2016/

The FOSSGIS Conference 2016 is organized by FOSSGIS e.V (german language local chapter of the OSGeo), the OpenStreetMap Community and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) in cooperation with the University of Salzburg. I want to thank our colleagues at the GeoforAll lab at Salzburg for their support and contributions.

The FOSSGIS-conference is the largest german-language conference for Free and Open Source Software for GIS and Free Geodata hosting about 400 participants. FOSSGIS offers lots of presentations and workshops concerning FOSSGIS, Open Data, OpenStreetMap and more.

Photos from the event at https://www.flickr.com/photos/uni-salzburg/albums/72157667838354303

It is just amazing to see the growth  and impact of our global community from Argentina http://www.foss4g-ar.org   to Japan https://sites.google.com/site/foss4ghokkaido/

Thank you to all the kind volunteers  in all  countries and regions for their selfless efforts that help make this possible .All these events are organised for the community, but also by the community. It is this global outlook that is key to our success. On behalf of Geo4All, i invite strong participation from everyone for our Global FOSS4G conference this year at Bonn [1]

We want to invite all of you to be our GeoAmbassodors [2] and contribute to Education, Research and Service for the betterment of humanity as the key guiding principle and work towards the vision of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development for building a better world for all. 

Details at  https://opensourcegeospatial.icaci.org/2016/07/how-can-we-contribute-our-efforts-for-united-nations-2030-agenda-for-sustainable-development-for-building-a-better-world-for-everyone-3/

Best wishes,

Suchith

Dr. Suchith Anand
http://www.geoforall.org/

Geo for All – Building and expanding Open Geospatial Science

[1] http://2016.foss4g.org/home.html

[2] http://www.osgeo.org/node/1714

Dear colleagues,

I would like to thank all our colleagues at the International Cartographic Association (ICA) and its commissions for their efforts as part of the International Map Year (IMY) by highlighting the value of cartography by “mapping” the UN sustainable development goals and providing map perspective on the sustainable development goals [1].

Special thanks esp. to chair and cochair of the Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies, Prof. Silvana Philippi Camboim (Federal University of Paraná, Brazil) and Michael P. Finn (United States Geological Survey) as well as all members of the commission for their contributions to the goal to reduce inequalities within and among countries. Inequalities can have a strong geographic component and maps are a powerful tool to understand factors and plan measures to address such issues. Details at http://icaci.org/files/developmentgoals/goal_10.pdf

Geo for All is committed to work towards the vision of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development for building a better world for everyone. Open Education is the simple and powerful idea that the world’s knowledge is a public good and that technology in general and the internet in particular provide an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use, and reuse knowledge. Openness is key for true empowerment and sustainability. [2]

So how can you contribute to enable geospatial education opportunities to all ? Please be our GeoAmbassadors and share your expertise. Everyone who is interested in enabling geospatial education opportunities to all are our GeoAmbassadors. It is not just the thousands of Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) members but also thousands of colleagues in ICA, ISPRS, UCGIS, AGILE, GSDI, AGS who all work for Geoeducation opportunities for all who are our GeoAmbassadors. Geo for All is a world wide movement that provides immediate benefit to the world.

Share the free and open educational resources and software that are available from OSGeo Live to MapStory to Teacher Training resources (developed thanks to the contributions to thousands of volunteers) all available free and open to all at http://www.geoforall.org/training/ to colleagues globally and be our GeoAmbassadors.

All our GeoAmbassodors should contribute to Education, Research and Service for the betterment of humanity as the key guiding principle and work towards the vision of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development for building a better world for all. Details at https://opensourcegeospatial.icaci.org/2016/07/first-anniversary-edition-of-our-geo4all-newsletter-and-invitation-to-be-our-geoambassadors/

We will also link the ideas from Maps and Sustainable Development Goals to our Vision 2030 for Open Geospatial Science as there are also lot of synergies and will add momentum for our vision for Open Geospatial Science [3] . 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.

Best wishes,

Suchith

Dr. Suchith Anand

http://www.geoforall.org/

Geo for All – Building and expanding Open Geospatial Science

[1] http://icaci.org/maps-and-sustainable-development-goals/

[2] https://opensourcegeospatial.icaci.org/2016/07/sharing-is-caring-why-openness-is-key-for-true-empowerment-and-sustainability/

[3] https://opensourcegeospatial.icaci.org/2016/06/open-consultation-on-the-vision-2030-for-open-geospatial-science/

Dear colleagues,

It is my great pleasure to introduce Professor Georg Gartner as our GeoAmbassador. It is indeed a honour for us to have an eminent colleague and a visionary who helped us to create “Geo for All” as our first  GeoAmbassodor.

Georg Gartner is a Full Professor for Cartography at the Vienna University of Technology. He holds graduate qualifications in Geography and Cartography from the University of Vienna and received his Ph.D. and his Habilitation from the Vienna University of Technology. He was awarded a Fulbright grant to the USA and several research visiting fellowships. He was Dean for Academic Affairs for Geodesy and Geoinformation at Vienna University of Technology. He is Editor of the Book Series “Lecture Notes on Geoinformation and Cartography” by Springer and Editor of the “Journal on LBS” by Taylor & Francis. He serves currently as Past President of the International Cartographic Association.

Fig 1 – Prof. Georg Gartner (Georg is a true cartographer in every sense. He even has map background in his profile photo!)

Georg is a true global citizen who has travelled around the world working for expanding opportunities for geospatial education for all. Georg has been a mentor and great colleague for me at the International Cartographic Association (ICA). Sometimes random meetings help shape future events and my first meeting with Georg was by sheer coincidence as I sat next to him for lunch during AutoCarto conference around 8 years back in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, USA. At that time Georg was the Chair of the ICA Commission on Maps and the Internet and I introduced myself and within few minutes we were discussing ideas for expanding research collaborations and organise Location Based Services conference in Nottingham! Georg is the founder of LBS conference series which was key to help establish LBS research and journals. His vision for establishing LBS research has always inspired me. His humility and helpfulness are great qualities that I greatly admire.

It was thanks to the support and vision of Georg Gartner and Arnulf Christl (OSGeo President at that time) which was key in helping bringing together like minded communities on the bigger vision of joining efforts for enabling geospatial education and opportunities for all for helping create a better world. The International Cartographic Association and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation signed an MoU in 2011 (Fig 2) on the goal of developing global collaboration opportunities for academia, industry and government organizations in open source geospatial software and data . This MoU was updated and renewed in July 2015 . In 2015, International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) joined GeoforAll (Fig 3).

Fig 2- Prof. Georg Gartner and Arnulf Christl shake hands after signing the MoU at Intergeo 2011 in Germany

Fig 3 – Three presidents at AfricaGEO 2015 in Cape Town .Prof. Georg Gartner (International Cartographic Association), Jeff McKenna (Open Source Geospatial Foundation) and Prof. Chen Jun (International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing )

We are proud to honour Georg as our inaugural GeoAmbassodor and we are extremely grateful for his contributions to Geo for All. We wish Georg and his wonderful family all the very best for the future. We are truly grateful for Georg for his strong support and guidance over the years . Georg also serves on the advisory board of Geo for All and we look forward to his guidance for the future.

Best wishes,

Suchith

Dear colleagues,

“Geo for All” was started from nothing but the synergies of  joining brilliant minds and communities worldwide on a common mission makes the seemingly “impossible” possible. As we did not have any initial funding  , we had gone through lot of difficulties in our initial stages but it is thanks to the support of our amazing colleagues globally who are all our GeoAmbassadors that we were able to achieve our amazing growth.

Scalability is key for cost/sustainability issues esp. if we are thinking of national and global scale of expansion for providing high quality education opportunities for all . The cost of hardware is getting lower (and will keep decreasing), internet access is increasing (even in developing countries, it will keep increasing) , so if we can also provide free and open technologies , open data, open educational resources etc it will be a big enabler for bridging the digital divide. We  have amazing academic colleagues in Geo4All globally who are contributing their knowledge for Open Education efforts. We can get a flavor from last year’s GeoForAll – Global Educator of the Year Award 2015. Details are at http://www.geoforall.org/news/?action=story&id=20

It is my great pleasure to introduce our Geo4All colleagues at the National Bureau of Surveying (Dirección Nacional de Topografía – MTOP), Montevideo ,Uruguay. The amazing work that Sergio Acosta Y Lara and colleagues in Uruguay have done through gvSIG Batovi initiative has been an inspiration for all of us.

gvSIG Batovi is an excellent example of a successful initiative in Open Principles in Education and helps us to understand why scalability and costs for scaling is fundamental . This is a good example of scalability of education opportunities with very little resources using Open Principles. Imagine if all these hundreds of schools and thousands of students had to depend on buying software and data for their teaching and learning. This simple idea can be scaled to millions of schools globally .This empowerment of educators and students is the true essence and gift of Open Principles.

Through their focus on Open Principles in Education they have now provided high quality spatial technologies education to students in all schools across Uruguay . Thanks to the Plan Ceibal they also have free laptops for all Primary and Secondary students in the country so they truly have the opportunity to reach every student no matter they are rich or poor with high quality teaching and learning tools.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orwN9K07XPo   (Video with English translation)

gvSIG Batoví is a GIS (Geographic Information System) software tool applied to educational environments driven by the National Bureau of Surveying (Dirección Nacional de Topografía – MTOP) for the Plan Ceibal (OLPC initiative for Uruguay), through which Primary and Secondary students can acquire knowledge of geography using laptops through informative and interactive information.

Figure 1 – Shows examples of gvSIG Batoví in action
The tool, after its launch, became the first Uruguayan distribution that gives rise to gvSIG Educa (Fig 2), which aims to be a tool for educators to provide students a better analysis and understanding of the region, as well as collaborate with the assimilation of spatial concepts using visual tools.

It also provides the possibility to both teachers and students to develop their own thematic maps from different layers of spatial information available turning the learning process in a much more attractive, motivating and interactive one (Fig 3).

Based on Free/Libre Open Source GIS software, the initiative was the result of collective work that included the coordinated participation of four institutions: the National Bureau of Surveying, the gvSIG Association (Spain), the Geospatial Information Technologies Working Group (GTIG) of the College of Engineering (UDELAR ) and the Ceibal Center (Centgro Ceibal)

After it’s launch it has been spread intensly through various presentations in congresses, workshops, courses and webinars. Workshops and Train the trainer programs for teachers in Geography and students are organised to build the future leaders in geography education (see Fig 5, 6, 7 , 8)

We are now working with MapStory Foundation http://mapstory.org/     to expand our spatial literacy in school level program globally. For example, “mapping the neighbourhood” exercises to help teach spatial literacy in schools globally. I think having MapStory examples of deforestation in different places might also be a good example to help teach students on effects of climate change as well as need for protecting the environment. Teaching Spatial literacy in schools is key for also helping build good global citizens.

Through our new initiative of Geo4All Schools we aim to use geotechnologies as a usecase to advance STEM interest in Schools through Open Principles so that students develop creative minds and develop to be future thought leaders and creative thinkers to help solve global challenges (not just to be just users).

We are already making huge impact from thousands of schools in countries like Uruguay to Spain and thousands of universities worldwide  are now benefiting from Open Principles in GeoEducation . Ideas that  starts from nothing are very powerful and keeps expanding exponentially . The bigger aim is to also to advance STEM education across the world and bring together schools, teachers and students across the world in joint projects and help building international understanding and global peace.

Best wishes,

Dr. Suchith Anand

http://www.geoforall.org/