It is our great pleasure to share the excellent development of the American Geographical Society’s endorsement of the “Geo for All Initiative”, developed by the International Cartographic Association (ICA) and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). “Geo for All” aims to provide expertise and support for the establishment of Open Source Geospatial Laboratories and Research Centers across the world for supporting development of open-source geospatial software technologies, training, and expertise.

Established in 1851, the American Geographical Society http://americangeo.org   is the oldest professional geographical organization in the United States.  It is recognized world-wide as a pioneer in geographical research and education in geography for over 163 years.  The mission of AGS is to advance geographic knowledge and the recognition of its importance in the contemporary world.  AGS promotes the use of geography in business, government, science, and education with a goal to enhance the nation’s geographic literacy so as to engender sound public policy, national security, and human well-being worldwide.  AGS is the only organization focused on bringing together academics, business people, those who influence public policy (including leaders in local, state and federal government, not-for-profit organizations and the media), and the general public for the express purpose of furthering the understanding of the role of geography in our lives.  AGS provides leadership to frame the national discussion of the growing importance of geography and geo-spatial tools.  The Society maintains its headquarters in Brooklyn Heights, New York.

More details at  http://americangeo.org/7142015-american-geographical-society-announces-endorsement-of-the-geo-for-all-initiative/

This endorsement from the American Geographical Society comes at an important phase in our development. We crossed our 100th lab milestone last week with  UCL as our 101st Open Source Geospatial Lab  bringing together staff and students from the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, the Department of Archaeology and the Department of Geography at UCL . Details at  https://www.ucl.ac.uk/gis/OSGeo

Last week at Como in Italy at FOSS4G-Europe  http://europe.foss4g.org/2015/ , our colleagues met to discuss our future expansion plans in particular for discussing GeoForAll expansion to thousands of schools globally and expand our teacher training initiatives with collaboration from governments , industry and universities globally.

This endorsement from the American Geographical Society is a great boost to all our “Geo for All” colleagues worldwide. “Geo for All” started from nothing and it is 100 percent the efforts of all our colleagues from OSGeo, ICA and ISPRS who joined together on a common education mission that made this all possible. I am grateful to each and every colleague for their hardwork and dedication for our mission for building a better world and better future for all our future generations.

This is just the start and we look forward to working with all for making  education and opportunities accessible to all.

Best wishes,

Suchith Anand
http://www.geoforall.org

PS: Thanks to GIS Professional for the “Geo for All” overview article in April 2015

gisprofessional1 gisprofessional2

On behalf of the “Geo for All” community , we would like to thank Patrick Hogan and Maria Brovelli for their hardwork and dedication in organising another successful year of  NASA World Wind Europa Challenge  http://eurochallenge.como.polimi.it/

We thank all the excellent teams for their contributions and participation. Details of 2015 projects at http://eurochallenge.como.polimi.it/projects2015

Also our thanks to the generosity of The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) , The International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS), and The International Cartographic Association (ICA) whose  contribution made it possible for us to provide the top three academic teams with  financial awards.

The top team this year was an exceptional group from a high school in Alaska that demonstrated leading edge scientific research along with the technology to collect, analyse and visualise that data in real time (USD 1000). Their amazing work on Global Earthquake Forecast System  (GEFS)  is a real inspiration for all and great example of how empowering our future generations is key for helping us find solutions for global societal challenges.
http://www.edlinesites.net/pages/America_Bridge_Project/Europa_Challenge

The second place team was led by Computer Science Professor Jim Miller of  Kansas University (€500).
http://people.eecs.ku.edu/~miller/WorldWindProjects/lidar/EuropaChallenge/EuropaChallengeNotes.html

The third place team was led by Computer Science Professor Jing Li at the University of Denver (€500).
http://geovizcloud.github.io/GeoVizCloud/

This global challenge has a singular purpose, provide the opportunity for the world’s *best and brightest* to deliver sustainable solutions to the world community. These teams have done this and done it well…

Our thanks to all the mentors and students for their efforts. We are especially pleased to see the synergies of bringing together three like minded organisations (OSGeo, ICA and ISPRS) on our joint education mission. Let us work for this inclusiveness and togetherness spirit to enable the world’s *best and brightest* to deliver sustainable solutions to the world community.

Best wishes,

Suchith

Colleagues,

Last week , i send an open request to Dr. Michael Solem (AAG Director of Educational Research and Programs) to humbly request AAG to specifically include Open Education principles and FOSS4G tools firmly in the ConnnectED concept to support the new Advanced Placement course in Geographic Information Science and Technology (GIS&T).

I am pleased to inform that Michael, has replied positively [1] and i have thanked him for this and  “Geo for All” who will be pleased to provide any specific inputs needed by the AP GIS&T proposal committees for this. We will keep closely following these developments and will contribute as and when needed.

I am requesting help from all of you as if we dont act now it will be a big loss for the empowerment of thousands of schools across USA and missed empowerment and geospatial innovation opportunities for a generation. Students instead of being developed as creative innovative minds and future innovators and job creators in geospatial will turn to be just mere users of a particular properitory GIS software. I think this is big moral question for educators and policy makers. The missed economic and innovation opportunities are too big to be quantified.Access to high quality education is everyone’s birth right . It is not right  to just put properitory vendor interests in education.

May i request all of you who are able to contribute to please apply to AAG in response to thier proposals for Authors, Reviewers for thier new AP Course in GIS&T so we can make sure Open Source, Open Standards, Open Data in Geospatial Education is clearly inputted into this course and i request all colleagues to contribute for .

To apply for consideration as a proposal author and/or reviewer, please submit a short (250-word maximum) statement of interest and a current resume/CV to Dr. Michael Solem, AAG Director of Educational Research and Programs, at msolem [at] aag [dot] org by June 15, 2015. Proposal authors and reviewers will receive a stipend to support their work.

More details at http://news.aag.org/2015/05/aag-seeks-proposal-authors-reviewers-for-new-ap-course-in-gist/

When i read Randal Hale’s email’s on the difficulties faced by that high school in the US for properitory software updates [2], it was clear wake up call on the consequences if we let  properitory GIS agenda for schools and education go ahead. Also the point made by Margarita [3] on “The hidden cost, however, is the missed empowerment of a generation, that will most likely depend upon the software that they have learned to use at school.  ”  is very important.

If the properitory vendor decides to withdraw or change the conditions of thier offer to schools now or at any stage in the future what will happen to the poor schools. This is my biggest worry. Basically schools will be at the mercy of the properitory vendor. The vendor can change thier mind any time.   The example Randal Hale gave  from one of the high schools in USA [2] is a real eye opener of the long term costs/sustainability issues of depending on properitory GIS software in education. Though his example was the issues and difficulties faced by that high school in the US for properitory GIS software updates , i think it is NOT a local problem. It is a wider education problem that as educators we need to be aware of. Luckily in Randal’s example [2] this had a happy ending because he was kind enough to volunteer his time to install FOSS4G but more importantly imagine if there were no free and open source geo software from OSGeo Foundation for him to help the school.

Focus on just  properitory vendor GIS tools only in education  has long term consequences. Empowerment of academics and teachers  is important  to enable empowerment of students. This will make sure academics and teachers  will always have the advantage and they will not be at the mercy and dictates of any properitory GIS vendor. Education and empowerment of academics and students are key  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.

Thank you for your kind attention and support on this important matter.

Best wishes,

Suchith

[1] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/ica-osgeo-labs/2015-June/001742.html [AAG Reply]
[2] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2015-June/014310.html
[3] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/ica-osgeo-labs/2015-June/001724.html

Colleagues,

As many of you are aware in April 2015, i send out an email informing colleagues in Academia, Government and Industry who have interest in maintaining Open Standards in LiDAR to respond to the developments [1] and provide inputs.

Thank you for all of you who responded and supported our Open Letter [2] and as the next step of the process on 6th May 2015, i have emailed responsible contacts in the three organisations ASPRS (Stewart Walker), Esri (Jack Dangermond) ,  OGC (Mark Reichardt)  inviting all of them to respond and participate constructively for helping find a solution for this.

Dr. A. Stewart Walker (President of ASPRS) has  confirmed that he has received the e-mail and that ASPRS will discuss this  and will  respond formally in due course. They were holding their annual conference, IGTF 2015, in Tampa, Florida, earlier this month so i understand all key ASPRS people were there face to face to discuss this in detail and find a best way forward.

Mark E. Reichardt (President & CEO of the Open Geospatial Consortium)  has also replied positively and we welcome OGC’s support for geospatial interoperability and standards. Details at http://www.opengeospatial.org/blog/2224

Jack Dangermond (founder and President of Esri) has emailed me assuring thier commitment for interoperability and open standards and to support OGC to organize an open process leading to an open standard for storing LiDAR data [4]. I have replied thanking Jack for responding positively and  inviting thier participation for this. I also recieved email from Esri staff (Keith Ryden) that i replied suggesting that from now he be in direct contact with  Martin Isenburg (author of LASzip and LAStools) and Scott Simmons (OGC) to get thier feedbacks and inputs in  this discussions so that everyone can work together in the common objective of Open Standards in our discipline for the benifit of the wider geo community.

I thank Carl Reed for this sharing his years of experience ( i was not even born when he started his career!)  and wisdom on collaboration and building consensus and i take inspiration from his words. We all have to be patient, listen to all different viewpoints/perspectives and work together, step by step and always keep doors of communication  open so we can bring everyone together for building consensus.

We have achieved two important objectives so far:

1. We were able to educate the wider geo community on this issue and the importance of Open Standards and get strong support from all cross sections. It is a strong message to all that we are watching closely all developments and will take action as and when needed.

2. All key stakeholders are now committed to work together to find a solution for this.

It is important that discussions with all stakeholders start with open mind (OGC, OSGeo, ASPRS, Esri, other properitory GIS vendors, government organisations, LiDAR companies/users etc..) and i request that everyone put forward all the options for discussions and ideas for consensus. If you or your organisation wishes to contribute ideas/viewpoints for this discussion (even if you are not able to participate in the Boulder meeting, your views will help in finding the best solution) please email Scott Simmons (Executive Director, Standards, E-mail – ssimmons at opengeospatial.org ) your ideas/proposals on this before 25th May 2015, so that all proposals/ideas can be looked into and discussed  at the OGC Point Cloud ad-hoc meeting planned at next TC meetings in Boulder, USA (June 1st, 2015).

I now leave this in the safe hands of our OGC colleagues to guide the process forward and i request  everyone to work together step by step for this. It is important to be patient , listen to all viewpoints and slowly build consensus. I hope all stakeholders will work together in the common objective of Open Standards in LiDAR for the benifit of the wider geo community.

I thank all colleagues in GeoforAll, OSGeo, OGC, ASPRS, ISPRS, ICA and wider geocommunity  esp. Martin Isenburg, Cameron Shorter, Patrick Hogan whose efforts made this possible.I once again thank the wider geospatial community for thier attention and support on this important matter.

Best wishes,

Suchith

[1] http://www.osgeo.org/node/1518
[2] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/LIDAR_Format_Letter
[3] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/board/2015-May/012814.html
[4] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2015-May/014222.html

The MOOC program on “Introduction to Geospatial Technology Using QGIS” is starting in just 2 weeks (23rd Feb 2015), so if you have not registered yet (over 2000 students have already registered), please register asap at https://www.canvas.net/browse/delmarcollege/courses/cn-1681-intro-qgis

This is part of our “Train the Trainer” objectives and we especially encourage educators who wish to build upon Open Principles in GeoEducation to be part of the program and then build upon the course materials for their requirements at https://github.com/FOSS4GAcademy

We thank the whole MOOC team and the ICA-OSGeo Lab at Texas A&M University who have done a great contribution to our geoeducation efforts by giving away all the course materials under CC licence for the benefit of the wider community. This in one masterstroke has now changed geoeducation landscape forever. From lecturers in Brazil who now can translate this into Portuguese to educators in Africa and Asia who can customise this for their teaching requirements this opens a whole new dimension to our geoeducation efforts.

We are fully confident that with the dedication and efforts of you all in the future through our various instruments (OSGeo Live, MOOCs, various university programs, and more importantly a great network of best minds) , this will create educational opportunities for hundreds of thousands of students globally. We look forward to working with you all for making geospatial education, software and opportunities accessible to all. Thanks to all of your efforts which make this possible.

We encourage educators globally to make use of this opportunity.

Best wishes,

Suchith Anand

Research Data Alliance is pleased to announce that the United States will be hosting its Fifth Plenary Meeting in San Diego, California from March 9 -11, 2015. For those unfamiliar with RDA, the Plenaries are multi-day meetings held twice a year in various locations worldwide to provide the RDA community an opportunity to network and collaborate with peers in various disciplines, and hear from industry experts and world leaders on topics related to research data sharing and exchange.

Celebrating its second year as an international organization, RDA will highlight the accomplishments of its membership. With the theme, “Adopt-a-Deliverable”, focus will be on the outputs from the initial set of RDA Working Groups, and on ensuring lasting impact in the research data sharing community through adoption by other organizations.

We are pleased to confirm details of the Joint session of IG Geospatial & IG Big Data Analytics

Monday 9 March 2015 (Time – 11:30-13:00)

The joint meeting will be chaired and led by Prof. Chris Pettit (University of Melbourne, Australia) and draft agenda below

* Updates on Geospatial IG
* Updates on Big Data Analytics IG
* 2- 3 short presentations to be finalised on both Geo and Big Data
* Ideas for specific actions in Geospatial IG and Big Data Analytics IG

If any of you wish to make short (unto 10 minutes) presentations of your research on this theme please inform Suchith.Anand@nottingham.ac.uk by 28th Feb 2015. More details at https://rd-alliance.org/ig-geospatial-p5-joint-session.html

It will be also a good opportunity to plan ideas to put a joint proposal for the RDA Data Share Fellow program https://www.rd-alliance.org/project-call-engage-rda-data-share-fellow-your-group.html through our US research labs (the Fellow will be based in US university) for building upon Urban Science research.

The recordings of presentations for OSGIS 2014 “Building up Open Access, Open Education and Open Data for Open Science”  are now available at http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/osgis/home.aspx  for the benefit of the wider community.

or go directly to http://uilapech01.nottingham.ac.uk:8080/ess/portal/section/02fba582-968a-4437-b279-f9e76072e544

I would like to invite you to watch Professor Stuart Marsh’s (Nottingham Geospatial Institute) presentation to get an overview of the research in this theme at Nottingham

https://lecturecapture.nottingham.ac.uk:8443/ess/echo/presentation/80abcb78-9997-4bf6-b2e8-cf9a99c99810

and also Professor John Wood’s (Secretary General, Association of Commonwealth Universities) keynote presentation on “Research Data revolution and the Open Science phenomenon” to get an overview of future research directions in this theme.

https://lecturecapture.nottingham.ac.uk:8443/ess/echo/presentation/b17563f3-97f3-4807-a824-308b6d08a4a2

I would like to thank all our colleagues and students at the University of Nottingham for their help and support over the years  for building up Open Geospatial Science.

Through the Research Data Alliance (RDA) we are now building Geospatial Data Science as a key research focus for expanding our research for the future and will have this as a key focus for our next meeting  (Sep 22nd) . Details and agenda at https://www.rd-alliance.org/geospatial-ig.html

The program of RDA Plenary 4 is at https://www.rd-alliance.org/plenary4-programme.html

I am also pleased to inform that we will be having FOSS4G – Europe 2015 in Como, Italy in July 2015 (Thanks to Professor Maria Brovelli for organising this ) to further accelerate Open Geospatial Science across Europe. Como is also near JRC and it will be also a good opportunity for planning  meeting of all our European labs to build future research collaborations. We will inform more details later.

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 and the

Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies

Date: 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 at https://opensourcegeospatial.icaci.org/. 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

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

27^th ICC 2015 Conference                                                 23-28 August 2015

SDI-Open2015_AuthorGuidelines_20140828

Contact

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, Luciene Delazari luciene@ufpr.br or Silvana Camboim   silvanacamboim@gmail.com

Congratulations to Dr Serena Coetzee and her team for the successful official launch of ICA-OSGeo Lab in South Africa (5th Oct, 2012)

Details at http://eepublishers.co.za/article/university-of-pretoria-436.html

http://web.up.ac.za/default.asp?ipkCategoryID=20212

This will rapidly grow and provide opportunities for many students across Africa to learn geospatial science in the future.

The GIS and Remote Sensing Centre (University of Girona, Spain), Nottingham Geospatial Institute (University of Nottingham, UK) and OpenGeo  are organising the Third Open Source GIS Summer School in July 9-13th 2012 at Girona, Spain. Building on the success of previous editions , this year’s program which will be focused on the development and creation of Open Web Mapping Services and Web applications.

We will be strongly supporting  this excellent initiative. The course has been designed and will be conducted on a GNU/Linux operating system based on the use of the OSGeo-Live DVD.

All course materials produced for the Summer School will be made available through the ELOGeo platform http://elogeo.nottingham.ac.uk/  for the benefit of the wider community. More details at http://www.sigte.udg.edu/summerschool2012/

We welcome participation from all for the Open Source GIS Summer School.