Inviting ideas to expand “GeoStudents for GeoFuture”.

Our colleagues at the Open Source Geospatial Lab [1] at the University of Zagreb, Croatia have  an excellent international seminar series  called “GeoStudents for GeoFuture”.

As part of this initiative, two year’s back, i was invited to deliver a  lecture series for students of the University of Zagreb  entitled “Roles of geodesy and geoinformatic in sustainable development”, along with  Prof. Dr. Yerach Doytsher (Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering Technion, Israel, the President of the FIG Comission 3) and Prof. Dr. Vladimir Tikunov ( Faculty of Geography, University of M.V. Lomonosov, Moscow, Russia, the President of the ICA Commission “GIS and Sustainable Development” .Details at http://www.geof.unizg.hr/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=335

 

zagrebFig 1 – Me with Prof. Dr. Yerach Doytsher (Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering Technion, Israel) and Prof. Dr. Vladimir Tikunov and his wife (  University of M.V. Lomonosov, Moscow, Russia ) .

zagreb4Fig 2 – Group photo with colleagues at University of Zagreb, Croatia

I really liked the focus of thier international seminar series on “GeoStudents for GeoFuture” and i am welcoming ideas from the wider geocommunity of how we can extend this “GeoStudents for GeoFuture” ideas to support  the International Map Year (IMY) by bringing together key scientists and students globally to work for contributing thier knowledge and skills for the UN sustainable development goals . Openness is key for true empowerment and sustainability [2].

One of the important things i learnt during  my lectures to students in universities worldwide (from USA to India), is that the digital natives are very smart. They have a very global outlook and are keen to contribute to building a better world for everyone . I remember talking to a student and asking her what GIS software she uses and her reply was “We use all different platforms to learn GIS but noone can trick us to  pay to buy GIS software when there is lot of free and open software now available” . I really liked this reply. This empowerment of students is exactly what we want. It is now not possible for any properitery GIS vendor to put “Iron Curtains” on freedom on  education tools.

“Geo for All” aims 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

GeoAmbassador of the month – Prof. Silvana Philippi Camboim

Dear colleagues,

It is my great pleasure to introduce Prof. Silvana Philippi Camboim as our GeoAmbassador.

Dr Silvana Comboim is Faculty at the Department of Geomatics at the Federal University of Paraná – UFPR, Brazil. She serves currently as the Chair of the Commission of Open Source Geospatial Technologies of the International Cartographic Association. She is the co-chair of “Geo for All” South America. She established the first Open Source Geospatial Lab in South America in the Federal University of Parana in 2012.

Silvana has strong research background in Geospatial Science, SDI and GI standards. Previously she was working at the Brazilian National Mapping Agency before moving to Federal University of Paraná as a professor at the Geomatics Department. She also coordinate the Standards Workgroup of the Brazilian NSDI (INDE). She also have a strong team and action plan in place for building this initiative for Brazil and South America.

Screen Shot 2016-08-05 at 08.22.58Dr. Silvana Philippi Camboim (Universidade Federal de Paraná ,Brazil)

Silvana is a true global citizen who has travelled around the world working for expanding opportunities for geospatial education for all. Silvana has been a great colleague for me at the International Cartographic Association (ICA) and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). It is great pleasure that Silvana has succeeded me as the Chair of the ICA Commission on Geospatial Technologies. I had the pleasure to work closely with Silvana during my time as chair of the commission and I strongly believe that Silvana will build upon the work that we have done and take this to higher level.

Silvana is the leading force who took the initiative to establish the first OSGeo lab in South America at the Federal University of Parana, Brazil. The team of Open Geospatial Lab at UFPR comprise of Prof. Dr. Claudia Robbi Sluter ,Prof. Dr. Luciene S. Delazari ,Prof. Dr. Maria Cecilia B. Brandalize and Prof. Dr. Silvana Philippi Camboim . Details at http://www.labgeolivre.ufpr.br/?lang=en

I first met Silvana when she visited me at the University of Nottingham during her UK visit few years back. It was then we discussed initial ideas to establish the first OSGeo lab in South America and expand our collaborations. Her dedication and focus for expanding geoeducation opportunities in Brazil and globally has always inspired me.

As part of the International Map Year, Silvana and many colleagues in Brazil (Angelica Carvalho Di Maio, Luis Augusto Koenig Veiga, Juliana Magalhães Menezes, Marli Cigagna, Maria Cecília Bonato Bradalize, Raul Marques P. Friedman) have contributed to an Olympics of Cartography organised in Brazil, with almost 700 secondary schools distributed in the whole country. An Olympiad is a challenge, and challenges are incentives to improve the academic performance of students who can be awakened, in this case, to the study of spatial representation and the use of maps. The Ist Brazilian Cartographic Olympiad (OBRAC) has national coverage and was focused on high school students, aged between 14 and 18 years, from public and private schools. Among the objectives of the event stands out: stimulating school interest in science, especially in mapping science; provide teachers with the knowledge and tools for dynamic and participatory teaching areas covering the cartographic content; providing socialization of teachers and students through group activities and foster the training of human resources to work in the field of cartography and geotechnologies.

The project for the first Brazilian Cartographic Olympiad meets a worldwide celebration, the International Map year 2015/16, which aims to provide opportunities to engage people the in art, science and technology of maps’ construction and use. The map of participants can be accessed at http://www.olimpiadadecartografia.uff.br/index.php/mapa    and more information can be found in English at http://www.icc2015.org/brazilian-cartographic-olympiad.html

Silvana has already made a great start  for this new term of the commission with  the successful organization of ICC workshop on Spatial data infrastructures, standards, open source and open data for geospatial (SDI-Open 2015)  jointly organized by the ICA Commission on Geoinformation Infrastructures and Standards, the Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies , Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) on 20 and 21 August 2014 at Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) in Rio de and the Conference itself http://www.icc2015.org  was a great opportunity to strengthen the “Geo for All” initiative and to reinforce the key projects and research links for the future.

I had the opportunity of participating in the NSDI conference and meetings in Brasília, Brazil in May 2014 . I would like to thank the Ministry of Planning, Government of Brazil for organising this excellent event and also for their kind invitation for keynote presentation where i shared the developments in Open Geospatial Science and Applications and its importance for widening education opportunities, new jobs creation and innovation ecosystems in Geoservices. It was also a good opportunity for me to see the amazing work Silvana and her colleagues are doing during that visit . I see the work that Silvana is doing in Brazil having a great momentum for our global activities of “Geo for All” mission.

I would like to share some of the things i learned from our colleagues in Brazil which i think is relevant to the wider community

  1. There are fast paced developments happening in Geospatial domain and it is important the countries should keep updating their Geoinformation policies to reflect this and take advantage of the new opportunities. I am pleased to see countries like Brazil are well tuned to global developments.
  2. It is important to have inputs from the academic community and i was pleased to see this bringing together of key people from government and academia to discuss ideas and good practices.
  3. Education and Capacity building is key for expanding opportunities.

Recently Silvana and our other colleagues at the International Cartographic Association (ICA) and its commissions have been contributing 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].

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Special thanks to Silvana and cochair 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

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 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]

Geo for All is a worldwide movement that provides immediate benefit to the world.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.

 I am sure Silvana will expand these ideas for the future. Silvana and Mike Finn are leading the  Advancing GIScience with Open Source Technologies [4] at AutoCarto 2016, USA . Silvana will be delivering keynote on “Experiences on How Openness Can Help to Reduce Inequality” and also chair the Open Discussion on “Future Directions: Thinking About the Road Ahead”.

We are looking forward to building  strong research and teaching collaborations  worldwide in Open Geospatial Science. We are proud to honour Silvana as our GeoAmbassodor and we are extremely grateful for her contributions to Geo for All.

Best wishes,

Suchith

[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/

[4] http://www.unm.edu/~sfreunds/autocarto2016/Open_Source_Geospatial.html

“Geo4All” Lab of the Month – Open Source Geospatial Lab, Department of Geodesy and Surveying at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary

It is my great pleasure, to introduce our colleagues at the Open Source Geospatial Lab of Department of Geodesy and Surveying at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics , Hungary as our “Geo4All” lab of the month. The Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), is the most significant University of Technology in Hungary and is considered the world’s oldest Institute of Technology which has university rank and structure. It was the first institute in Europe to train engineers at university level [1]. It was founded in 1782. More than 110 departments and institutes operate within the structure of eight faculties. About 1100 lecturers, 400 researchers and other degree holders and numerous invited lecturers and expert specialists participate in education and research at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. The Budapest University of Technology and Economics issues about 70% of Hungary’s engineering degrees. 34 professors/researchers of the university are members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.[2][3].

The OSGeo lab is run by the Department of Geodesy and Surveying and lead by Dr. Zoltán Siki. The members of the lab are Dr. Szabolcs Rózsa, Dr. ZitaUltmann, Ottó Deák, Dr. Csaba Égető, Dr. Bence Takács and Dr. Tamás Tuchband but draws heavily on interactions with other research groups and partners within the University, nationally and internationally.

They offer a range of bespoke courses for OSGEO education . Hungarian trainings are offered in QGIS ,GRASS GIS ,MapServer ,OpenLayers SpatialLite and PostGIS .Their degree programs make use of OSGEO software and tools for data collection, storage and analysis.  Their graduates receive a solid grounding in Open Source tools and their applications. Further details on their education programs can be found in their website at http://www.agt.bme.hu/osgeolab/index.php?page=training&lang=en

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The Lab has also been active in presenting their research at other wider events. For example it was represented on the 13th Geospatial Information & Technology Association conference hosted by the Hungarian GITA organisation where visitors were able to receive additional information about our OSGeo Lab Budapest .

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The OSGEO Lab at Budapest is involved in a number of major international and national research projects.  Their team works on further developments of open source software, search/fix bugs and maintain the Hungarian localizations (especially QGIS). They also provide software and spatial expertise to the solution of engineering problems using Open Source tools, software and standards.   The Geo for All lab in Budapest University of Technology and Economics welcomes collaborations from all interested and for making contributions to the wider society.

On behalf of the Geo4All community, we thank Zoltán Siki and all colleagues at the Budapest lab for their contributions to the Geo4All initiative and look forward to working and building more collaborations with all interested on this education mission.

Best wishes,

Suchith Anand

http://www.geoforall.org

[1] http://www.moveonnet.eu/directory/institution?id=HUBUDAPES02

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_University_of_Technology_and_Economics

[3] http://www.bme.hu/?language=en

First Anniversary edition of our Geo4All Newsletter and invitation to be our GeoAmbassadors

We are pleased to announce the first year anniversary of our GeoforAll Newsletter (this is our twelfth issue). On behalf of the GeoforAll community, I would like to thank  Nikos Lambrinos (Chief Editor) and our wonderful team of co-editors Rizwan Bulbul, Pavel Kikin, Alexey Kolesnikov, Rania Elsayed, Elżbieta Wołoszyńska-Wiśniewska, Antoni Perez Navaro, Emma Strong, Sergio Acosta Y Lara and  production designer Nikos Voudrislis  for their selfless dedication and volunteer efforts  which made this possible. This newsletter has been an amazing instrument to share information and ideas with the wider geocommunity and also highlight and honour the contributions of our excellent colleagues from across the world. Details at http://www.geoforall.org/newsletters/

This newsletter is a community initiative run by the community for the community. We welcome all community members to contribute and share their updates to the newsletter for the benefit of the wider geo community.

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We have made ‘Open Principles’ as the key guideline for all articles. Relevant updates and information on free and open software, open data, open standards, open education resources are all welcome for future editions. It has been a learning curve for all of us, and we request you all to help us on this initiative.

We have great pleasure in introducing Professor Georg Gartner as our GeoAmbassador for this first Anniversary edition of our Geo4All Newsletter. More information at https://opensourcegeospatial.icaci.org/2016/07/geoambassodor-professor-georg-gartner/

So how can you contribute to enable geospatial education opportunities to all ? Everyone who is interested in enabling geospatial education opportunities to all are our GeoAmbassadors. It is not just the thousands of 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.

Also it is our great pleasure to introduce our colleagues at SIGTE, University of Girona [1] , Spain, as our “Geo4All” lab of the month. One of the founder labs of the Geo for All initiative, SIGTE has been contributing immensely to our teaching, research, and service activities. SIGTE colleagues have been the pioneers of a very successful summer school program dedicated to free and open geographic information software and aimed at promoting the use and development of free geospatial solutions and empowering students. Details are available at https://opensourcegeospatial.icaci.org/2016/07/geo4all-lab-of-the-month-sigte-university-of-girona-spain/

We thank Gemma Boix, Lluís Vicens, Gemma Pons, Rosa Olivella, Ferran Orduña,Toni Hernandez, Alexandre Busquets, Josep Sitjar, Laura Olivas and all colleagues and students at SIGTE lab for their contributions to the Geo4All initiative and look forward to working and building more collaborations with all interested on this education mission.

Share the power of Geographic Information video that SIGTE developed  https://vimeo.com/22069904  This is a wonderful introductory video that can be used by all colleagues globally to promote GIS at all levels  .  “In the not so distant future, it is hoped that GIS will help us build a better and more efficient society for all” – This is exactly why we are all working on Geo4All…

The contributions of SIGTE colleagues is a good example of our philosophy and why we are working on Geo4All at https://opensourcegeospatial.icaci.org/2016/07/sharing-is-caring-why-openness-is-key-for-true-empowerment-and-sustainability/

Let us work together  to support open principles in education and enable Geo technologies in empowering communities and helping improving the Quality of Life and standards of living for everyone. Let us all work together to help create a world that is more accessible, equitable and full of innovation and opportunities for everyone.

Happy Anniversary to all.

Best wishes,

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

Invitation to Geo4All Webinar on Humanitarian Mapathons for Children

On behalf of Geo4All we would like to welcome you to the “Open Geospatial Science & Applications” webinar series. Thanks to Dr. Rafael Moreno and colleagues at University of Colorado Denver for organising the Geo4All webinar series. If you are interested to do a webinar for the Geo4All webinar series please contact Rafael (email- rafael.moreno@ucdenver.edu ) and he will be happy to discuss ideas.

Webinar details below:

  • Date and Time : May 5, 2016 (Thursday) at 1:00 PM Greenwich Mean Time (7:00 AM US/Canada Mountain Time)
  • Topic : Humanitarian Mapathons for Children
  • Presenters: Maria Antonia Brovelli, Marco Minghini, Aldo Torrebruno (Politecnico di Milano), and Tyler Radford (Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT)

Talk abstract:

This webinar will provide an introduction on humanitarian mapathons for children, which represent a remarkable educational experience as they combine geography and awareness about our world, technology and humanitarian aspects. Following the successful experiences of Politecnico di Milano (Italy), the most important educational and technical aspects of humanitarian mapathons with children will be outlined. The purpose is to provide the GeoForAll community, and specially the teachers involved (at all levels), with some practical instructions on how to set up and run their own mapathons. The webinar is organized in collaboration with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) under the umbrella of the United Nations Open Geospatial (UNOGeo) initiative of which GeoForAll and OSGeo are partners.

See webinar description in the Geo4All webinars page: http://www.geoforall.org/webinars/

Please join us here at https://ucdenver.zoom.us/j/350696659

Recording and slides will be posted in the Geo4All webinars page after presentation: http://www.geoforall.org/webinars/

For more details of the webinar series, contact University of Colorado Denver FOSS4G Lab at http://geospatial.ucdenver.edu/foss4g/

The background of this webinar is at https://hotosm.org/updates/2016-03-09_200_kids_map_swaziland_for_malaria_elimination

Thanks to Maria Brovelli, Marco Minghini and all Politecnico di Milano colleagues for thier excellent work. They have been leading all our humanitarian mapathons (Nepal, Japan, Equador) [1], [2] and it will be a great opportunity to hear and learn from thier experiences.

So please join this Geo4All webinar on 5th May 2016.

[1] https://opensourcegeospatial.icaci.org/2016/04/humanitarian-mapathons-for-japan-and-ecuador/
[2] https://opensourcegeospatial.icaci.org/2015/04/mapping-response-contributions-for-nepal/

Happy Open Education Week greetings to all

On behalf of Geo4All, i would like to wish Happy Open Education Week to everyone.

This is an 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/

We would to like to thank all educators worldwide who have made contributions to open education efforts and being good global citizens by helping spread the benefits of education to all. This is also an opportunity for us to thank all our colleagues in Geo for All for their excellent contributions to Open Education principles in the Geo domain.

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. Though the members of our community hail from many different backgrounds, we all seek to eliminate the digital divide and empower all as full citizens and contribute to building up Open Knowledge for the benefit of the whole society and for our future generations. Education and empowerment are key for getting rid of extreme poverty and help create digital economy opportunities also for billions of our economically poor brothers and sisters across our home planet .

So let us all work together to enable open principles in education to help create a world that is more accessible, equitable and full of innovation and opportunities for everyone.

Happy Open Education Week  everyone  http://www.openeducationweek.org/

Best wishes,

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

Invitation to NASA CitySmart Challenge – Solutions For Sustainable Cities

On behalf of “Geo for All”   , we would like to welcome strong global participation for the fourth edition of the NASA 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.

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
http://eurochallenge.como.polimi.it/projects2015

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. The Europa Challenge has always had Europe’s INSPIRE Directive to guide project development. This year we continue to have INSPIRE guide us and more specifically, we are looking for solutions specific to urban management. The CitySmart Europa Challenge is challenging the world’s *best and brightest* to deliver sustainable solutions serving city needs.

Almost every city needs the same data management tools as every other city. How can we help cities work together to be more sustainable, more livable and more resilient? If cities were able to share their solutions with each other, this would multiply their investment by the number of cities participating. Each city could develop different functionalities and then ‘share’ these with each other, massively increasing our planet’s collective productivity.

Simply build a great application that serves some aspect of the OpenCitySmart [1] [2] [3] design and uses NASA’s open source virtual globe technology, WebWorldWind. Whether you win or not, you will advance a platform that allows every city to win! This challenge is open to all on our home planet. See the 2015 Projects, 2014 Projects and 2013 Projects. China had top teams these past two years, India had an excellent team last year and Italy every year! A USA High School team from Alaska won First Place in 2015!  So students and SMEs are welcome to join the competition this year.

This year’s Europa Challenge is an excellent opportunity for the global community to begin working in collaboration and prepare for the increasing climate change scenarios in cities context.   Students are our future and looking at previous year’s contributions from Global Earthquake forecasts systems ( developed by some high school students from Alaska who went on to win the first prize in 2015!) http://www.edlinesites.net/pages/America_Bridge_Project/Europa_Challenge  to Urban Traffic Visual Analytics Simulator , it just shows the amazing contributions of these students and SMEs made for the global good and for the benefit of all.

Details at http://eurochallenge.como.polimi.it/

Those interested in being part of this global enterprise, please subscribe here http://lists.osgeo.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/opencitysmart . Your participation is very welcome.

We look forward to your strong participation for the NASA CitySmart Challenge 2016 and joining our mission to make geospatial education and opportunities available for all.

Best wishes,

Suchith Anand
http://www.geoforall.org

[1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Opencitysmart
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWuMfMMPfPw
[3] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/ica-osgeo-labs/2016-January/005027.html

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation turns 10

The Board of Directors of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation have send their greetings to everyone on the happy occassion of 10th Anniversary of when our  Foundation was founded (4th Feb 2006) at http://www.osgeo.org/node/1672 

Also i take this opportunity to welcome our  new OSGeo President Professor Venkatesh Raghavan and our new  Vice Presidents Professor Helena Mitasova and Dirk Frigne.

Details at http://www.osgeo.org/node/1667

By coincidence, i was reading  the  United Nations report on  Future trends in geospatial information management: the five to ten year vision report that some  colleagues send me this week . It is very interesting and relevant.

Executive Summary
. . .the most significant changes in the geospatial industry will come not through a single technology, but rather from linking multiple technologies and policies. [ this is exactly what OSGeo & Geo4All are doing :)]

and
Due to increased global urbanisation, it is expected that more focus will be placed on urban environments. The integration of smart technologies and efficient governance models will increase and the mantra of ‘doing more for less’ is more relevant than ever before. The emerging trends of Smart Cities and the Internet of Things, coupled with of smart resource management and interoperable services, will lead to a focus on citizen services, better land management, and the sustainability of resources. [ This is exactly our OpenCitySmart – – The Open platform for Smart Cities ideas in action [1], [2]  🙂 ]

Details at http://ggim.un.org/docs/UN-GGIM-Future-trends_Second%20edition.pdf

Happy birthday to OSGeo Foundation and may God’s grace and blessings be with all of us and OSGeo for our efforts to empower everyone with open geo principles  to help create a world that is more accessible, equitable and full of innovation and opportunities for everyone.

Best wishes,

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

[1]  http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2016-January/015555.html
[2]  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWuMfMMPfPw

Mapping response contributions for Nepal

Our thoughts and prayers to all those affected by the terrible earthquake in Nepal. Hope our colleagues and families at Kathmandu University are fine.
Shashish and colleagues in Nepal – if you are reading this, please update and if you need to coordinate relief activities with the wider geocommunity  etc , please let us know
On behalf of Geo for All  http://www.geoforall.org/  ,i request you all to inform your colleagues and students to contribute in the crisis mapping action launched by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. This will also help teach the students also the real essence of education and humanity and “sharing knowledge and expertise” to help each other in times of need.We thank our colleagues (esp. Maria Brovelli, Marco Minghini and Giovanna Venuti) and students at GEO Lab in Como (which is one of the GeoForAll Labs) for also organising a mapping  initiative to support the relief efforts.

Details at http://www.polo-como.polimi.it/news/dettaglio-della-news/article/165/helping-nepal-with-a-mapping-action-at-como-campus-967/

This is a request for all  those who would like to contribute to the mapping response, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team has many  tasks set up at
http://tasks.hotosm.org
The scale of the efforts needed is huge, so more volunteers esp. with FOSS experience in automatic image classification and feature extraction and wish to contribute to the mapping response for the Nepal earthquake are needed .
There are many tasks that need to be accomplished at http://tasks.hotosm.org/http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/2015_Nepal_earthquake

If you already have OSM experience , it is better. If not you go through tutorial at http://mapgive.state.gov/learn-to-map/
Then, click on one of the HOT priority areas on their site and follow the on-screen instructions.
Anyone with FOSS experience in automatic image classification and feature extraction and wish to contribute to the mapping response for the Nepal earthquake, please contact Cristiano Giovando (Technical Project Manager ,Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team http://hot.openstreetmap.org ) Email- cristiano.giovando@hotosm.org  .

Thanks again for all of you for your support and help with this.

Suchith Anand

Invitation to NASA Europa Challenge 2015 – Solutions For a Sustainable World

On behalf of “Geo for All”  http://www.geoforall.org    , i 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  http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/java/. Details of the challenge 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.

We encourage you to inform this initiative to your students and have project teams for this. Already some excellent project ideas and teams have been formed for this year’s challenge and the deadline for project submissions is 1 July 2015. We will be awarding the winners at FOSS4G 2015- Europe “Open Innovation for Europe” conference at Como, Italy in July . Details at http://europe.foss4g.org/2015/

Also this year at FOSS4G-Europe , we will be also be announcing the winners of the “GeoForAll – Global Educator of the Year Award 2015” from the excellent list of nominations that we received at http://www.osgeo.org/node/1506

This is a great opportunity for us to thank all colleagues for their excellent contributions to Openness in Education principles in the Geo domain and to thank all educators worldwide who have made contributions to open education efforts and being good global citizens by helping spread the benefits of education to all.

By combining the potential of  Free and Open Source software, Open Standards, Open Data, Open Education Resources,  you all have made “Geo for All”   the PLATFORM for offering education opportunities to nurture and develop Open Minds in students globally for a better planet and better future for all…

Best wishes,

Suchith Anand
Founder, Geo for All
http://www.geoforall.org