Category Archives: Events

Registration open for SDI-Open 2015

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Registration for the  pre-conference 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 and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) on 20 and 21 August 2014 at Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) in Rio de Janeiro is now open at http://www.labgeolivre.ufpr.br/

Places are limited and available on a first come first served basis. Registration will be confirmed by e-mail

Any information please contact the local organisors:

Prof. Silvana Camboim ,  Head of ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS lab at Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR)  – silvanacamboim@gmail.com
Dr Julia Celia Mercedes Strauch – julia.strauch@ibge.gov.br

On behalf of the International Cartographic Association (ICA)  and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) , we look forward to welcome you to Rio.

 

Next steps for “Geo for All” expansion

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On behalf of “Geo for All” we are pleased to welcome you to FOSS4G India -2015 in Dehradun , India (June 9-10th, 2015). It is great pleasure that colleagues in our first OSGeo lab to be established in India at IIIT Hyderabad  have played key role for this. Details at http://lsi.iiit.ac.in/foss4g2015/

Keeping pace with our global geo education growth plans http://www.osgeo.org/node/1505 , it is important that in addition to the regional conferences , for example FOSS4G-Europe http://europe.foss4g.org/2015/  for our European labs; FOSS4G NA  https://2015.foss4g-na.org  for our North American labs, FOSS4G-Asia http://europe.foss4g.org/2015/  for our Asian labs etc., we need to have country specific FOSS4G conferences established as this helps us to arrange meetings of the national research labs coinciding with the FOSS4G national conferences  for accelerating research and teaching collaborations between our labs in each country. So i call upon all colleagues globally to start planning FOSS4G conferences in your country to meet local needs.

We will also arrange presentation for “Geo for All” at any conferences/events globally to share the Geo4All vision to all .Any one interested are welcome to download the presentation slides available at http://www.geoforall.org (link below the map) , translate etc and present it to spread the Open education message strongly to all universities. Combining the potential of  Free and Open Source software, Open Standards, Open Data, Open Education Resources, we are now offering education opportunities to nurture and develop Open Minds in students globally for a better planet and better future for all…

Best wishes,

Suchith

GeoForAll – Global Educator of the Year Award 2015

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On the occasion of Open Education Week 2015 http://www.openeducationweek.org/ , “Geo for All” community http://www.geoforall.org 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.

We are very happy to announce the nominees for the GeoForAll – Global Educator of the Year Award 2015. This is an opportunity for us to thank our colleagues for their excellent contributions to Openness in Education principles in the Geo domain.

Congratulations to the following individuals or teams who received one or more nominations for the 2015 GeoForAll Global Educator of the Year Award

In no particular order, the nominees are:

INDIVIDUALS

– Daniel Baldwin, Costa Rica International Academy, Costa Rica, for his course on “Mapping the Mangroves” [1]

– Phil Davis, DelMar College, Texas, USA for his ongoing leadership and tireless efforts leading the creation of the GeoAcademy [2]

– Genovevea Laurente, Consultora Calixto, Uruguay and gvSIG Batovi for the course “Sistemas de Información Geográfica con uso de datos abiertos orientado a la educación,” or in English, “Geographic Information Systems for Education using Open Data” [3]

– Kurt Menke, Bird’s Eye View GIS, Alburquerque, NM, USA, for his Introduction to Open Source and Web Mapping course he developed for Central New Mexico Community College [4]

– Sterling Quinn, Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania, USA, for his course on “Open Web Mapping” [5]

– Giorgio Zamboni, Politecnico di Milano, Como campus, Italy for his “PoliCrowd: A Social Network App with NASA World Wind. [6]

TEAMS

– Environmental Information Centre GRID-Warsaw; UNEP/GRID Warsaw for their EduGIS Academy [7]

– Open Source Geospatial Laboratory team at ETH Zurich, Switzerland for their Interactive Web Maps course [8]

– Shashi Shekhar and Brent Hecht, Computer Science, University of Minnesota, USA for their Massive Open Online Course “From GPS and Google Maps to Spatial Computing” [9]

– Lluis Vicens (SIGTE,Spain), Toni Hernandez (SIGTE, Spain), Jeremy Morley (University of Nottingham,UK), Alberto Romeu (Prodevelop) and Jorge Sanz (Prodevelop) for their GIS Open Source Summer School at the University of Girona in Spain [10]

– Ricardo Olivira, Raphael Moreno – FOSS4G lab, University of Colorado, Denver USA for their PostgreSQL/PostGIS course materials [11]

– Raquel Sosa, Rosario Casanova and Jorge Franco, for their gvSIG Educa/Batovi effort in Uruguay [12]

– Kurt Menke – Brids Eye View, Nate Jennings Urbandale Spatial, Jon Van Hoesen Green Mtn College, Rick Smith Texas A&M, and Phil Davis, Delmar College (all in USA) for their GeoAcademy development efforts [13]

All of these individuals and teams should be celebrated for their efforts. Just being nominated is an honour.

The award committee now has the very difficult task of selecting the GeoForAll Educator of the Year out of this well deserving list of nominees. This year’s selections (possibly an individual and a team award) will be announced at the FOSS4G 2015- Europe “Open Innovation for Europe” conference at Como, Italy in July . Details at http://europe.foss4g.org/2015/

Congratulations again to all the nominees and we encourage you to list this nomination honour in your CVs.
Happy Open Education Week 2015 everyone…
Sincerely,

Prof. Charlie Schweik,

on behalf of the GeoForAll Educator Award Selection Committee:

Prof. Georg Gartner (President, ICA)

Jeff McKenna (President, OSGeo)

Chen Jun (President, ISPRS)

Prof. Maria Antonia Brovelli (Italy)

Dr. Xinyue Ye (USA)

Dr. Luciene Delazari (Brazil)

Dr. Tuong-Thuy Vu (Malaysia)

Prof. Venkatesh Raghavan (Japan/India)

Prof. Ivana Ivánová (Brazil)

Jeroen Ticheler (The Netherlands)

Dr. Serena Coetzee (South Africa)

Prof. Helena Mitasova (USA)

Anne Ghisla (Germany)

Patrick Hogan (USA)

Dr Suchith Anand (UK/India)

REFERENCES

[1] https://arabic.oercommons.org/EN/authoring/4247-mapping-the-mangroves-mwl/view

[2] https://foss4geo.wordpress.com/

[3] http://ipesvirtual.dfpd.edu.uy/course/category.php?id=81

[4] http://catalog.cnm.edu/

[5] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog585/

[6] http://geomobile.como.polimi.it/policrowd/

[7] http://edugis.pl/en/for-teachers/guide

[8] http://osgl.ethz.ch/osgl/Webmaps.html

[9] https://www.coursera.org/course/spatialcomputing

[10] http://www.sigte.udg.edu/summerschool2014/

[11] http://geospatial.ucdenver.edu/foss4g/training/tutorials

[12] https://www.fig.net/pub/monthly_articles/January_2013/gvsig_batovi_an_educational_gis.pdf

[13] https://foss4geo.wordpress.com

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

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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 motivators, benefits, 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.

Invitation to NASA Worldwind Europa challenge

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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.

Launch of ICA-OSGeo Lab in India at AGSE 2013 and Season’s Greetings from “Geo for All” Initiative

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We are pleased to inform that the ICA-OSGeo Lab  was launched  at CEPT University , Ahmedabad, India on the concluding day of the AGSE 2013 conference[0], on 19th December 2013.  This Laboratory is part of the international ICA-OSGeo Open Source Geospatial Labs Network [1]. The aim of this worldwide network is to provide on global basis collaboration opportunities for academia, industry and government organizations in open source GIS software and data based on the Memorandum of Understanding [2] of the International Cartographic Association (ICA) and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). The aim of ICA-OSGeo “Geo for All” initiative is to bring more opportunities for geospatial education worldwide.

Dr. Anjana Vyas, chair of AGSE 2013 conference and Professor CEPT University, gave an overview about the future plans of Open Source Geo Lab at CEPT University , India and launched the website [3]. Photos of the event are at  [4] [5]. Guest speakers contributed to the discussions at the launch event. Dr. D Schroeder (HFT Stuttgart) gave his views on the benefits of open source and explained about its success stories in the field of Information Technology. He also added that the philosophy behind open source development is the importance of freedom to use the software.  Dr. FJ Behr (HFT Stuttgart) gave a talk on open source in the context of GIS and the need to promote  it. He included in his presentation about the OSGeo foundation , its mission , goals and its activities on a global scale and local scale. As Head of the first ICA-OSGeo laboratory in Germany he outlined the work and importance of the OSGeo Foundation.  M. G Koenig (TU Berlin) presented the power of the open CityGML standard as an example to visualize 3D data to support management and development of cities. He provided city GML as an example of open consensus driven OGC standard.

We congratulate Prof. Anjana Vyas and her team at  CEPT University for leading the establishment of  Open Source Geospatial Lab in India and working to provide opportunities for staff and students to learn the latest geospatial technologies. We are sure more universities in India will establish OSGeo labs and create geospatial education programs  to help to provide the supply of skilled labour that is needed to meet the requirements of Geo industry and drive the digital economy.

Google Oxera’s  report on the economic impact of Geo Services report [6] published in January 2013  estimates the revenues from global Geo services at $150 billion to $270 billion per year. This study is one of the first to consider Geo services as an industry in itself, encompassing all digital mapping and location-based services. It clearly shows the potential for thousands of skilled jobs being created by GIS. But unfortunately, the number of universities offering GIS programs in developing countries is very low and hence developing countries have been lagging behind in benefiting from the opportunities created by the global geo services. This is very disappointing that so many staff and students in the developing and poor countries and regions in our planet not having access to this rapidly growing area and we needed to take action so that everyone can study and benefit from geospatial opportunities. High cost proprietary GIS software packages are unaffordable for majority of users in developing and poor countries and has been a big stumbling block for developing and poor countries to take advantage of the immense opportunities provided by GIS technologies. Hence our “Geo for All” initiative is very timely as by using free and open source based GIS will help in the spreading geospatial education among the economically disadvantaged people and countries (removing the need for high cost proprietary GI  vendor softwares)  . Free and Open source GIS provides accessibility, low cost solutions and lowers the entry barriers for the use of geospatial technologies for all.Our key aim is to make it possible for students in developing and poor countries to be also able to get geospatial education.

On the same day (19th Dec) we also welcomed our 64th ICA-OSGeo lab at the University of Geneva. Big welcome to Dr. Gregory Giuliani, Prof.Anthony Lehmann , Dr.Nicolas Ray and colleagues at Institute for Environmental Sciences [7] at the University of Geneva, Switzerland.

As 2013 is nearly over, we take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you for your support and contributions which helped to build up the “Geo for All”    initiative. It has been amazing to see our humble initiative grow rapidly and this has been due to the dedication of all of you and we would like to thank you for your continued contribution. We have now put strong foundations for our “Geo for All” initiative from Australia to Uruguay and we are  looking forward to working with you all in 2014 to rapidly build upon this.

On behalf of everyone at “Geo for All” initiative, we wish you and your families very happy holidays and Happy New Year.

Best wishes,

Suchith

[0] http://agse2013-cept.in
[1]  http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/MOU_ICA
[2]  http://www.geoforall.org
[3] http://www.geomaticsindia-cept.org
[4]  https://docs.google.com/a/cept.ac.in/file/d/0Bw-0H_COGuskMm0wbHF1RDYtRVE/edit?pli=1
[5]  https://docs.google.com/a/cept.ac.in/file/d/0Bw-0H_COGuskNEpvZEc5SDBXVWc/edit?pli=1
[6]  http://www.oxera.com/Oxera/media/Oxera/downloads/reports/What-is-the-economic-impact-of-Geo-services_1.pdf
[7]  http://www.unige.ch/envirospace

 

Season’s greetings

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As 2013 is nearly over, let me take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you for your support and contributions which helped to build up the “Geo for All” http://www.geoforall.org/   initiative. It has been amazing to see our humble initiative grow rapidly and this has been due to the dedication of all of you and I would like to thank you for your continued contribution.

I remember reading the Google Oxera report in the start of this year (Jan 2013) that estimated the revenues from global Geo services at $150 billion to $270 billion per year. This study is one of the first to consider Geo services as an industry in itself, encompassing all digital mapping and location-based services. Details at

http://www.oxera.com/Oxera/media/Oxera/downloads/reports/What-is-the-economic-impact-of-Geo-services_1.pdf

It clearly showed the excellent progress made by GIS and its significant contribution to jobs creation and digital economy. There was also a table listing the use of GIS in higher education (Table 5.2 ; Page 23) which clearly showed that very few universities in developing countries were currently running courses in GIS.  This is very disappointing that so many staff and students in the developing and poor countries and regions in our planet not having access to this rapidly growing area and we needed to take action so that everyone can study and benefit from geospatial opportunities. High cost proprietary GIS software packages are unaffordable for majority of users in developing and poor countries. Hence our Geo for All initiative is very timely as by using free and open source based GIS will help in the spreading geospatial education among the economically disadvantaged people and countries (without having to pay proprietary GIS vendors). In order to achieve UN Millennium Development Goals (in particular Goal 7) on themes like environmental sustainability, it is essential to provide free and open source geospatial tools to universities, government organisations etc in developing countries for helping them achieve these targets. Free and Open source GIS provides accessibility, low cost solutions and lowers the entry barriers for the use of geospatial technologies for all.

Today morning we welcomed our 64th ICA-OSGeo lab at the University of Geneva. Big welcome to Dr. Gregory Giuliani, Prof.Anthony Lehmann , Dr.Nicolas Ray and colleagues at Institute for Environmental Sciences http://www.unige.ch/envirospace  at the University of Geneva. I understand that they are also part of UNEP/DEWA/GRID-Geneva http://www.grid.unep.ch   (we already have UNEP Warsaw http://www.gridw.pl/  in our network , so it is good to see more collaborations developing at UN organisations).

Thank you to all of you, we have now put strong foundations for our “Geo for All” initiative from Australia to Uruguay and i am looking forward to working with you all in 2014 to rapidly build upon this. I also request all established labs to also help other universities in your region to establish Open Source Geospatial Labs as a new year resolution and be the ambassador of the initiative in your regions/country.

I wish you and your families very happy holidays and Happy New Year.

Best wishes,

Suchith

Open Initiatives in Agriculture

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At the 10th Anniversary of Berlin declaration last month, staff of the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation met me to discuss ideas and i shared some thoughts with them on the current developments in open access in Geospatial at http://aims.fao.org/zh-hans/community/interviews/enhancing-use-geospatial-technologies-agriculture-interview-drsuchith-anand-geo

AgriGIS research including the BBSRC funded GRASP http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/ngi/research/geospatial-science/projects/grasp-gfs.aspx that we are doing at NGI will have open and free technologies at its heart.

10th Anniversary of Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities

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The 10th Anniversary of the Berlin Open Access Declaration http://openaccess.mpg.de/286432/Berlin-Declaration was held in Berlin . The two day deliberations http://www.berlin11.org/ was a good opportunity to bring together all key players to reflect, share ideas and discuss future plans at a global level. There was also strong representation from UK by RCUK, senior academics from major universities, government and policy makers. David Willetts (Minister for science and universities) gave talk on UK’s policy on Open Access.

It was very inspiring event for me and it was really happy to see the momentum building up globally and to learn more about the latest developments and discuss ideas for future collaborations. It gives us more inspiration to further build up our Open Access initiative ELOGeo http://elogeo.nottingham.ac.uk/ for the benefit of the geospatial community worldwide. Thanks to Amir, Adam, Jeremy and to all the contributors and users of ELOGeo and also JISC for funding and supporting the ELOGeo initiative.
Thanks again to the initiators of the Berlin Declaration for their farsighted vision and noble aspiration to make knowledge and information resources available to everyone.

Building EU-Australia Research synergies

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The 3rd EU – Australia Research Infrastructure meetings and workshop in Canberra in November was an excellent success. Professor Octavi Quintana (Director for the European Research Area, Directorate General for Research & Innovation, European Commission) led the EU delegation. For the Sustainable Cities research theme, i am pleased to see more research collaborations building esp. the aim to establish open source sustainability cities research labs in key universities in Australia. I believe this will be an excellent way to build up the education and research collaborations between EU and Australia in Geospatial Science.

I would like to thank Prof. Chris Pettit and Australian Academy of Sciences for inviting me and Open Source Geospatial Lab http://www.abp.unimelb.edu.au/osgeolab at the University of Melbourne and the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN) http://aurin.org.au/ for funding my visit and meetings.