Sol Katz Award

http://www.osgeo.org/solkatz

Presenter: Jeff McKenna

Biography:

In 2008 Jeff started his own consulting company based around FOSS4G, Gateway Geomatics, and is actively contributing to OSGeo.

• Founding and Charter member of OSGeo
• Maintainer for maptools:http://maptools.org
• Developer for MS4W
• Developer for OSGeo4W
• MapServer Project Steering Committee (PSC) member
• MapServer documentation lead
• OSGeo FOSS4G conference committee chair
• FOSS4G Workshop committee member
• Founding co-chair of OSGeo Ottawa Local Chapter

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CCIP Panel

http://2009.foss4g.org/ccip/

Presenter: Raj Singh and Bruce Bannerman

Biography:

Bruce has been working with spatial information for nearly thirty years. He has a broad spatial and IT background covering GIS, Remote Sensing, Photogrammetry, Cartography, Surveying, IT Architecture, software development, Management and a wide variety of other IT roles. He is an advocate for the use of Open Standards (e.g. OGC and ISO 19100 series) to avoid vendor lock-in and to ensure that data and services can be widely used with minimal effort. He has used open source software for over seven years and is an advocate for its use within corporate environments (and just about everywhere else for that matter). He is involved with establishing the OSGeo-AustNZ Chapter and is a member of the FOSS4G-2009 Organising Committee. Currently he is working with the Bureau of Meteorology in Victoria, Australia.

Raj Singh is Director of Interoperability Programs at the Open Geospatial Consortium. He works on multi-firm software prototyping projects, helps design information architectures, and manages ogcnetwork.net, a web site developed by and for geospatial developers. He is one of the designers of GeoRSS (georss.org) and helped develop the Geospatial Profile of the Federal Enterprise Architecture. Currently Dr. Singh is leading leading a major project to advance information sharing in building construction and design software. His passion is aligning geospatial standards with the general IT industry, and increasing the pervasiveness of geospatial services throughout society. Dr. Singh obtained a Masters in City Planning and a PhD in Urban Studies & Planning from MIT, and a BA in Economics from Brown University.

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An Open Architecture for RESTful Geospatial Web Services

One of critical challenges facing many organizations around the world is that of interoperability, integrating islands of technology that characterize most IT organizations. For example, organizations with an engineering focus typically have islands of technology such as CAD, mobile, GIS, and tabular financial and business systems, many of which are proprietary, often legacy, developed by different vendors, and which are incompatible in various ways with each other. Repeatable design architectures for addressing common problems have been developed through experience, but these remain proprietary or undocumented. We propose the concept of open design architectures that would be openly available and for which there would be an open source reference implementation. We outline an open architectures based on REST (Representational State Transfer) that provides geospatial data web services. As an example, we describe a RESTful implementation, developed by Haris Kurtagic, of the Feature Data Object Application Programming Interface (FDO API) project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation(OSGEO) ,which exposes a full geospatial web services data API for creating, editing and querying geospatial data.

Presenter: Geoff Zeiss

Biography:

Geoff Zeiss has more than 20 years experience in the geospatial software industry and 15 years experience developing enterprise geospatial solutions for utilities, communications, and government. His interests include streamlining infrastructure management workflow, Web 2.0 and open source geospatial, and converged BIM/CAD/GIS/3D simulation solutions. Geoff was Director of Product Development at MCI VISION* Solutions which pioneered RDBMS-based spatial data management, CAD/GIS integration, and data versioning. Geoff is a frequent speaker at geospatial events around the world including Where 2.0, OSCON, FOSS4G, GITA (US, Australia, Japan), GeoBrazil, World Map Forum, Location Intelligence, and MapAsia and received Speaker Excellence Awards at GITA in 2007 and 2008.

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Integration of Grid Service and Web Processing Service

Web Processing Service (WPS) provide a set of GIS functionality to clients via HTTP or SOAP request, including access to pre-programmed calculations for spatial analysis on vector or raster data.

On the other hand, grid computing provides a service for distributed computing and data storage capacity. Combination of processing service with grid computing will make an effective solution to large scale geospatial data storage and processing. Especially on geospatial data services such as data access, data consistency and integration.

This presentation will cover the concept of basic features of grid technology and OGC processing service, Grid processing architecture blueprint and case study of our prototype system. Method of upgrading traditional web processing service to grid service in Globus container will be given in this presentation.

Besides, brief introductions of OSGeo China and its activities will be given at the end of the presentation.

Presenter: Gao Ang

Biography:

Gao Ang is a Ph.D. candidate in Geography Institute, Chinese Academy of Science.

Gao Ang is also the coordinator of OSGeo China. As the assistant of Prof.Chen, he takes charge of the local activities of OSGeo China and also responsible for the maintaining of local chapter website: http://osgeo.org.cn/

His research interests focus on the geospatial database, high performance geo-computing and distributed storage.

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The Use of Free and Open Source Software for Spatial Data Catalog in Indonesia

The abundance of spatial data which has been acquired by Bakosurtanal, a survey and mapping agency in Indonesia, needs to be effectively managed. A spatial data catalog is essential for fast data searching and retrieval. A web-based system was already developed using open source packages such as Chameleon, MapServer and MySQL. This inexpensive configuration helps reducing the total budget to develop the system. In this catalog, the search of spatial data can be performed on the basis of map sheet, administrative area and theme. The metadata is also stored along with the spatial data. Users are allowed to view the data using a web GIS interface. The system has been adopted to manage spatial database in 15 provinces and a part of National Data Infrastructure. It is found that this system is a feasible approach to manage and display the spatial data to users in the internet.

Presenter: Dr Dewayani Sutrisno

Biography:

Dr. Sutrisno works at National Coordinating Agency for Surveys and Mapping (Bakosurtanal) in Indonesia. He is at the Center of Survey for Marine Resource. His interests are in the development of web based spatial data catalog using free and open source packages. Graduating from Bogor Agriculture University in Indonesia, he is the head of spatial database for marine and coastal areas.

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Portable Wiki Map Server and Real Time Enivornmental MySQL GIS Server

The Conrad Blucher Institute for Surveying and Science is responsible for collecting real-time weather data in the Gulf of Mexico for the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The data collection and distribution is conducted using open sources software that deposits the data into a MySQL and in ported over to multiple opensource platforms. NASA requested a portable server solution that can run a GIS server and have access to the historical data set at anytime for dynamic charting and mapping. OpenLayers, MapServer, KML, MySQL, PHP, Perl, Apache, and other models were utilized to build the system called GulfStorm. This research will share the open source software and solution developed for NASA and NOAA.

Presenter: Gary Jeffress

Biography:

Dr. Gary Jeffress is a Professor of Geographic Information Science and Director of the Conrad Blucher Institute for Surveying and Science at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. Dr. Jeffress is Principal Investigator for the Texas Coastal Ocean Observation Network and the Texas Height Modernization program. He holds a Ph.D. in Surveying Engineering from the University of Maine (National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis), Master of Surveying Science and Bachelor of Surveying degrees from the University of New South Wales. Dr. Jeffress is a Registered Professional Land Surveyor in the State of Texas and past-president of the Texas Society of Professional Surveyors and past-president of the Geographic and Land Information Society. Dr. Jeffress currently sits on the Hydrographic Services Review Panel, and the Data Archiving and Access Requirements Working Group for the Scientific Advisory Board of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.Dr. Jeffress was born in Australia and has been citizen of the United States since 2003. He has lived in Corpus Christi since 1990. He is married to Rhonda Bergey, MBA, CPA. He has two daughters, Laura 16, and Katie 14.

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MapTiler: map publishing a la Google Maps

MapTiler is a new easy to use open-source desktop application for online map publishing. It runs on Windows, Mac and Linux and is fully scriptable thanks to a command-line interface of GDAL2Tiles utility.

MapTiler can be used to convert your map into a tile overlay of online maps like Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Microsoft VirtualEarth or OpenStreetMap or a 3D overlay for Google Earth.
The only thing you have to do for publishing the maps is to upload the automatically generated directory with tiles onto your webserver.

MapTiler also generates simple JavaScript viewers based on OpenLayers and on Google Maps API.

Supported formats of input raster files for conversion are TIFF/GeoTIFF, MrSID, ECW, JPEG2000, Erdas HFA, NOAA BSB, JPEG and more.

Typical input raster data are aerial images, scanned paper maps, signal coverage maps, maps rendered with custom design from GIS or digital elevation model data.

The presentation contains practical use cases and shows examples of the maps rendered with MapTiler/GDAL2Tiles. Experiences from parallelized rendering on a cluster (Amazon EC2) and from tile hosting at CDNs like Amazon S3/CloudFront, or Google App Engine are discussed as well.

MapTiler is a graphical interface for GDAL2Tiles utility, which is part of GDAL (OSGeo project).
More info about MapTiler: http://www.maptiler.org/

Presenter: Klokan Petr Pridal

Biography:

Independent programmer and consultant specialized in web technology, map publishing and open-source software development (http://www.maptiler.com/). Technical manager of the OldMapsOnline.org project (Moravian Library in Brno) and PhD candidate (Geodesy & Cartography) at Czech Technical University in Prague. Membership in the International Cartographic Association (ICA) Working Group for Cartographic Heritage. Active contributer in Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGEO). Google Summer of Code participant in 2007 & 2008.

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Building Custom GIS Applications using Open-Source Toolkits – A Case Study

There are an increasing number of choices today when it comes to GIS platforms. Some are offered by mature companies such as ESRI while others, like Google Earth, are relative newcomers. Both proprietary and open-source solutions are available for standalone, web-based, and mobile applications. The motivation for developing a custom GIS from scratch comes from a consideration of project needs and constraints. Free, open-source software tools were used exclusively to implement the ORNL Geospatial Viewer (OGV) for three recent projects. This was a conscious decision to ensure longevity, cross-platform compatibility, and to simplify end-user license and cost considerations. The implementation language used was Python, a rapid application development language, which is similar to Java in that it uses (compiled) byte code and an interpreter or run-time engine. A graphical user interface toolkit called wxWidgets was used, which unlike Java, preserves the look and feel of the underlying native operating system. OGV has been tested under Windows XP and Vista, Mac OS X, and Linux. A GIS-centric database engine is provided by PostgreSQL. Data come from open sources as well, primarily NASA and the USGS. Data interchange with other GIS platforms is accomplished through various open file formats like KML. The following paper presents a case study using Python and wxWidgets to develop a custom geospatial viewer application with lessons learned and advice to others wishing to develop similar applications.

Presenter: Dr. Daniel B. Koch

Biography:

Daniel B. Koch, Ph.D.
Senior R&D Staff
Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Dr. Koch joined ORNL in 2005 after spending 10 years in industry and 18 years in academia. His current efforts are focused on creating a software framework for combining discrete time simulation with geospatial data in a virtual environment for homeland security applications.

From 1987 to 2005, Dr. Koch was a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He was also Associate Director of the joint UT/ORNL Center for Homeland Security (2005). At UTK, he also founded and directed the Applied Visualization Center (1996-2004). Earlier, he founded and led the Electrical Engineering Communications, Information, and Signal Processing Group (1987–1999).

Prior to joining the University of Tennessee, Dr. Koch worked in the aerospace industry at STG Electrosystems, Inc., Emerson Electric Company, and McDonnell Aircraft Company.

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Building Human Sensor Webs with 52° North SWE Implementations

In the last years several applications based on the Sensor Web idea of integrating data collected by sensors have been successfully deployed. Typical use cases can be found in the domains of environmental monitoring or the supervision of technical parameters. At the same time, mobile communication technology has spread widely so that large parts of the population are connected to the internet or are at least able to send SMS messages. The widespread usage of mobile communication technology in combination with the Sensor Web concepts offers an interesting perspective to create even more powerful monitoring systems that integrate humans as sensors. This means that humans may report relevant observations which can be integrated into SWE based systems. In our presentation we will introduce a project for UN-Habitat which will make use of the “Human Sensor Web” idea for building a monitoring system to improve the water supply in Zanzibar.

Presenter: Jürrens, Bröring, Everding, Jirka, Stasch

Biography:

Presented by Simon Jirka. All authors are involved in the 52° North Sensor Web community. 52° North’s Sensor Web community focuses on the development of service and encoding implementations related to the OGC Sensor Web Enablement Architecture. This comprises mechanisms for accessing sensor data, controlling sensors and alerting based on sensor measurements. Besides the implementation of SWE components the 52° North Sensor Web community is involved in various research projects and in the Open Geospatial Consortium’s standardization process.

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Proj4js - Coordinate System Transformations in the Browser

Proj4js ¹ is a JavaScript API to transform point coordinates from one coordinate system to another, including datum transformations. Enabling these transformations in the browser allows geographic data stored in different projections to be combined in browser-based web mapping applications.

The library is a port of both the Proj.4 ² and GCTPC ³ C libraries to JavaScript. Proj4js is one of the member projects in the OSGeo MetaCRS working group to address coordinate reference systems issues.

The presentation will show an overview of the library, how to install and configure it and several live demonstrations of its use in applications.

¹ http://proj4js.org/
² http://proj.maptools.org/
³ http://edcftp.cr.usgs.gov/pub/software/gctpc/

Presenter: Michael Adair

Biography:

Mike Adair is has been working for DM Solutions Group since 2007 coming from Natural Resources Canada and the GeoConnections program. He is responsible for core technology design and development primarily for client-side technologies supporting DMSG commercial services.

He is a charter member of OSGeo Foundation and an active contributor to several OSGeo projects (MapBuilder, proj4js, OpenLayers, Fusion).

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Orfeo Toolbox: from satellite images to geographic information

Orfeo Toolbox (OTB) started in 2006 as an initiative by the French space agency (CNES) to provide satellite image users with the necessary tools to efficiently extract the information available. OTB was made available as a free software under a CeCILL license (GPL-compatible). The participation and usage has been growing steadily in the remote sensing community.

OTB combines several open source projects from the OSGeo community (GDAL/OGR, Ossim) with strong image processing capabilities of which many are inherited from ITK (medical image processing library). Recently, OTB has been moving closer to GIS capabilities with the support for vector data, and an advanced projection system which enables to project vector data on the fly on raw satellite images.

The talk will briefly present the capabilities of the Orfeo Toolbox and the underlying computing architecture (multi-threading and streaming) and will focus more on the combination of map information and satellite images to help with the image interpretation.

Presenter: Emmanuel Christophe

Biography:

Emmanuel Christophe is participating to the Orfeo Toolbox since its beginning, first at CNES (french space agency) as a research engineer and a manager of the Orfeo Toolbox project with Jordi Inglada.

Now in CRISP, National University of Singapore, as a research scientist, Emmanuel Christophe is still very active in the project and brings inputs concerning challenges in tropical areas.

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Engaging NGOs in geospatial initiatives using FOSS4G for improved development work at various scales

Non-government organizations (NGOs) in the Philippines are traditionally involved in development projects related to poverty alleviation, political reform and environmental conservation for more than three decades. In recent years, a growing number of NGOs have begun utilizing geospatial technologies to complement their activities. However, the lack of technical expertise and financial resources among these non-profit groups impede the widespread utilization of this useful technology. Using examples from existing projects in the Philippines, we discuss how the use of FOSS4G tools can promote the active engagement of NGOs in geospatial initiatives at various scales (community, institutional and national), specifically on water management, project targeting and poverty mapping. At each scale, we examine several issues that NGOs face when conducting geospatial projects. We conclude that engaging NGOs in using geospatial technologies for development work requires building FOSS4G skills, improving equity of access to (non-)spatial data, and obtaining sustained funding to support activities.

Presenter: Marc M. Delgado, Frank Canters, and Godofredo Villapando

Biography:

Marc is studying for a PhD in Geography at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB) in Belgium. He is working on applying participatory-GIS approaches in the development of a free and open-source land information system for an agricultural community in the Philippines. His research interests include the use of information technologies (FOSS4G, GIS, GPS, PCs) in enhancing local participation in community-based natural resource management. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Biology (major in Ecology) from the University of the Philippines Los Baños and his Master’s degree in Human Ecology from the VUB. He has been working in various projects related to the use of simulation models and geographic information systems for rural development.

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Zonae Cogito - A decision support system for the real world

Marxan is the worlds most widely used systematic conservation planning software. Zonae Cogito is a user friendly decision support system for the Marxan software that incorporates MapWinGIS open source software components to eliminates the need for planners to purchase commercial GIS software to use Marxan. It features simple and robust techniques for running Marxan analyses and viewing results, automating tasks in systematic conservation planning.

Example functions include:
- dissect the simulated annealing process to understand key concepts
- assist calibration of key parameters
- mask extraneous information to simplify complex parameter setting
- develop and evaluate alternative conservation planning options
- compatability with the C-Plan conservation planning system

Planners can accomplish tasks in reduced time compared with traditional techniques, allowing them to get on with the task of planning by simplifying data analysis.

Presenter: Matthew Watts

Biography:

Matthew is a computer programmer employed by Professor Hugh Possingham at the University of Queensland. He is engaged in developing computer software in the area of Systematic Conservation Planning (SCP) and applying this software to a wide range of natural resource management problems in collaboration with research scientists, students, and conservation planning practitioners from around the world. Recent projects include: The development of the Marxan with Zones software: a substantial extension of the widely used Marxan software designed to enhance the functionalities of its elder sibling, and the development of the Zonae Cogito software: a decision support system for the Marxan family of software that itegrates open source GIS software. He also develops teaching and learning material and has given many courses in SCP software. He was previously employed by Professor Robert Pressey with whom he developed the C-Plan Conservation Planning System, which is widely used for conservation planning applications around the world.

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GeoServer application schema support: complex features for the masses

Recent work for the AuScope Spatial Information Services Stack ¹ has integrated application schema support into GeoTools and GeoServer, enabling the delivery of complex feature application schemas such as GeoScience Markup Language (GeoSciML) via GeoServer’s Web Feature Service. Each complex feature type is configured using a mapping file that describes the relationship between a column in a database table or view and the corresponding value in the complex feature. A feature type can be configured to nest another feature type as a (possibly multivalued) property, by reference or by value. Separate configuration of nested feature types reduces duplication and simplifies mappings. GeoServer is simpler to configure than other open source application schema WFS implementations, and so promises complex features for the masses.

¹ AuScope Ltd is funded under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS), an Australian Commonwealth Government Programme.

Presenter: Ben Caradoc-Davies

Biography:

Ben Caradoc-Davies is a computational physicist by training. Since 2001, he has worked as a software developer in Perth, Western Australia. His experience includes developing software for: oceanographic and meteorological modelling, data processing, and analysis, in support of the offshore oil and gas industries; geophysical quantitative interpretation for resource exploration; and the exchange of geoscience information via interoperable web services. Ben currently works for CSIRO Earth Science and Resource Engineering on the AuScope Spatial Information Services Stack, and is co-maintainer of the application schema support modules of GeoTools and GeoServer. Ben recently joined the GeoTools Project Management Committee.

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The Time Series Toolbox

The Time Series Toolbox is a set of reusable software components designed for applications that have to handle time series data, with its roots in the area of sensor web applications. It includes components like a Java API for time series data, data providers for OGC Sensor Observation Services (SOS) and CSV data sources and data stores, an implementation of a time series processing language, and applications like a Cascading SOS service or data import/export tools. Parts of the toolbox are already available in the Cascading SOS project on Sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/cascadingsos/) and we are in the process of making more parts available under the GNU GPL. It is currently developed by AIT, the Austrian Instititute of Technology and includes other Open Source software like the 52° North SOS implementation.
The presentation will cover an introduction to the concepts of the toolbox, a description of the components and application examples.

Presenter: Thomas Bleier

Biography:

Thomas Bleier is a system architect at the Austrian Institute of Technology / Austrian Research Centers Gmbh, working at the Environmental Information Systems group on designing and developing data collection, processing and management systems and applications.

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OCEAN Toolkit: Incorporating Local Knowledge into Marine Spatial Planning

This session highlights Ecotrust’s OCEAN toolkit including the free and open source, award winning, Open OceanMap suite of tools for carrying out spatially explicit surveys of community members both over the web and in the field, aiding in marine planning efforts and helping reduce adverse social and economic effects on coastal communities.

The original PyQGIS-based OpenOceanMap software for field-use was presented in its early stages at FOSS4G Victoria by Aaron Racicot. This session will cover the significant progress made since then including its deployment in California, Oregon and Mexico, the many lessons learned, and the enhancements made over numerous development cycles.

Also covered is the expansion of the OpenOceanMap suite to support web-based spatial surveys using a GeoDjango/OpenLayers/Ext stack. Now in it’s first major revision, we have a number of lessons and enhancements to share after surveying hundreds of recreational fisherman over the web, drawing shapes without supervision.

We’re also interested in sharing how these two solutions integrate into our larger workflow which includes proprietary GIS software, what the overall data products are, and how they can be used in decision making.

http://www.ecotrust.org/ocean/
http://www.ecotrust.org/ocean/OpenOceanMap.html

Presenter: Tim Welch

Biography:

Tim Welch and Ken Vollmer are application developers at Ecotrust in Portland, OR focused on standalone tools and systems for data access, analysis and decision support. Ecotrust strives for transparency in their work whenever possible and using and releasing free and open source tools is a big part of that effort.

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Extension to Geoserver to read ESRI Mapcaches

Lantmäteriet, has developed an tilepyramid extension to Geoserver based on Geotools to read ESRI mapcache structure

We can now pre-render maps with pretty good carthography using ESRI Mapcache tool i ArcGIS server and then serve theese maps with Geoserver using this extension.

Presenter: Pär Jonsson

Biography:

More info is coming soon

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CityGML extension for Building Information Modelling (BIM) and IFC

CityGML’s concept of Application Domain Extensions (ADE) offers a well-defined extension mechanism to augment the CityGML data model with application specific data. These application specific extensions are formally specified in their own ADE XML schema file and can comprise additional property elements for existing CityGML objects as well as newly defined feature types. ADEs are associated with their own XML namespace which allows for integrating ADE data into CityGML instance documents.
In this presentation we introduce the latest ADE that integrates Building Information Model data (BIM) based on the open standard Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) into CityGML. We also describe some methods to translate IFC to CityGML and specifically the method that is used by the open source BIMserver (bimserver.org).
By extending CityGML with this BIM/IFC specific ADE we want to add the building specific details that are needed by planners in the Architectural, Engineering and Construction industry (AEC) to CityGML. This presentation describes some example use-cases where this is appreciated.
We finish our presentation by laying out some of the ideas and plans for the future use of CityGML (including the BIM/IFC specific ADE) in the AEC industry. This final part of the presentation focuses on the integration between surface information (build environment) and subsurface (geological) information.

Presenter: Léon van Berlo

Biography:

Léon is a researcher, business developer and projectleader for the Dutch organisation for applied scientific research TNO (www.tno.nl). His knowledge is focused on open standards and open source software in the AEC industry (including Geoinformation systems and Building Information Modelling).
Have a look at the linkedin profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/leonvanberlo

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Introducing FDO Toolbox

FDO Toolbox is a multi-purpose geospatial tool I developed to utilise the powerful capabilities offered by the FDO (Feature Data Objects) API

This presentation will introduce some of the major features of FDO Toolbox and how this tool can better help you work with geospatial data.

Presenter: Jackie Ng

Biography:

I am a software developer for AEC Systems, one of Australia’s major resellers of Autodesk CAD and Geospatial products.

I am also a member of the FDO (Feature Data Objects) Project Steering Committee.

I am also a regular contributor to the MapGuide Open Source project.

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A robust, low cost, GIS enabled data capture & management system for commercial/research vessels.

In order to complete a contract for a fisheries stock assessment and oceanographic survey undertaken on a commercial trawler,a robust, spatially enabled, standalone data capture/database system was designed and implemented. Data captured included near real time meteorological and oceanographic data, as well as automatically uploaded fisheries acousic, CTD and dissolved oxygen data. In addition, trawl survey data, icluding station, catch and individual fish length/sex/weight/gonad stage data from bottom and midwater trawls were also captured and uploaded. GIS capabilities for checking & mapping the data as desired during the survey were also provided. Computers running mostly Open Source & free applications were used to implement the system.

Presenter: Brent Wood

Biography:

I have been using exclusively FOSS GIS tools for over 10 years in an organisation working on fisheries, climate and oceanographic research. Applications FOSS GIS I use virtually every day include PostGIS, GMT, QGIS, GMT & Mapserver, along with Proj.4 & GDAL/OGR. I’ve also used OpenLayers, and am about to add GeoNetwork to this list.

I have run Postgres/PostGIS & GMT workshops for other staff, and for staff of some of our clients.

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Styling with SLD, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love XML

Geospatial data has no intrinsic visualization. This may seem counterintuitive to some, as we often convolve the content of the map with the look of the map. But while the content provides the backdrop, it is the visualization of the map that determines the storyline.

Some web mapping software use Styled Layer Descriptors (SLD) to style maps. SLD is an open standard that encodes map styles using XML. Often times, it is necessary/worthwhile to create SLDs from scratch using only a text editor. This talk will showcase some best practices for making beautiful maps, while bravely dipping a toe into the verbose markup ocean that is XML. Brief mention will also be given to different ways of generating SLDs automatically.

This talk is from the perspective of a map lover, not a programmer or web designer.

Presenter: Mike Pumphrey

Biography:

For over a decade, I have been helping people understand technology.

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PostGIS and Oracle Spatial

Oracle Spatial and PostGIS are two of the most mature implementations of a spatial type system for their relevant host databases.

With Postgres increasing in strength, and offshoot EnterpriseDB aiming to convert businesses running Oracle to EnterpriseDB/Postgres, the question of the relative merits of each of the spatial implementations arises.

This talk will attempt to provide the audience with an understanding of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two implementations so that they can feel they have some useful information which might aid decision making for new installations or conversions.

Presenter: Simon Greener

Biography:

Simon Greener has some 22 years IT experience, including 2 ½ years developing database mainframe applications and 3 years researching geospatial solutions at Telstra (research created Censis’s spatial division), 2 years conducting GIS research at University of Tasmania, 5 years as Director, Technical Solutions at Salamanca software (including designing first Whitepages web database and application for Telstra), 1 year as technical architect with Geographic Business Systems (GBS), 7 ½ years as GIS Manager at Forestry Tasmania and 3 ½ years as an independent geospatial consultant specialising in spatial databases, data quality, solutions architecture, executive dashboards.

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Validation of Satellite Image with Ground Sensor Network based on OGC Web Services Framework

The utilization of satellite remote sensing image has been widely applied and been recognized as a powerful and effective tool in monitoring state of the natural environments. However, it does not provide enough reliable data due to various physical constraints especially by the absorption and scattering of atmospheric molecules and aerosols. The MODerate resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) are designed with the ability to characterize the spatial and temporal characteristics of the global aerosol filed which are used for atmospheric correction algorithm at calibration process. However, the validation process is still necessary to improve uncertainly estimates for satellite image products. This study focus on the implementation of standard OGC Web services (OWS) framework such as WCS, WFS, WPS and SOS to develop satellite image validation system with in situ data collected over a distributed sensor network of ground validation sites. The Gridded Atmospheric product will be validated with long-term continuous observed data from Phonological Eyes Network (PEN). The success of this study will contribute to validate MODIS satellite products, and to improve the accuracy of higher level products.

Presenter: Sarawut Ninsawat

Biography:

Sarawut Ninsawat received the Master of Science from the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in 2002. He was a Project Researcher at Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand from 2003 to 2005. In 2009, He received the Doctoral degree at Osaka City University (OCU), Japan.Currently, he is a researcher scientist at National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, Japan. His research interests are application of Remote Sensing and GIS for natural resource management, developing Web Mapping Application especially focus on the implementation of standard OGC Web services (OWS) framework such as WCS, WFS, WPS and SOS using Open Source Software solutions.

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Partner Management with Geography and Open Source Software

Prospar is a web application currently being developped at Electricité
De France R&D, in partnership with Camptocamp SA.
It aims at providing a geographic UI to complex relationships between
our partners and their customers.

Simplicity & Reusability :

In order to improve robustness and reusability, we based our project on
standard blocks (PostGIS, GeoServer, OpenLayers) with limited and
well-defined connections between them.
Geoserver produces OGC geographic webservices which are being used by
OpenLayers. They can also be re-used by any OGC compliant application
such as desktop GIS for instance. This supports EDF R&D policy to
provide the company with geographic data by means of webservices.

Look and Feel :

Since the key to user acceptance for a new application is ergonomy, we
took a special care for the UI design.
Accordingly, we chose a well-known client library: MapFish client,
exploiting ExtJS and GeoExt Librairies.

Discussion :

The development of Prospar’s prototype brought into question the
technical choices we made at the very beginning of the project, namely:
the use of distinct applicative blocks loosely connected vs integrated
frameworks such as MapFish or GeoDjango.
These frameworks offer more versatility, but, as a drawback, are
stronger coupled with a spatial database (PostGIS being the most widely
used).
We would like this presentation to initiate a discussion about these
design options.

Presenter: Laurent Pierre

Biography:

I am a research engineer at Electricité De France R&D.
After having worked in artificial intelligence and expert systems fields I have work for a few years now in webmapping, mainly (but not only) for business and CRM applications.

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SoilNet SensorNetwork goes web

SoilNet SensorNetwork goes web
subtitle: collecting, processing and presenting real-time geodata

Authors: Till Adams and Marc Jansen

The project run by several Helmholtz Research Centers aims to develop a soil moisture sensor network for monitoring soil water content changes at high spatial and temporal scales.

terrestris has developed a web based application for processing and presenting the data collected via a wireless sensor network and several other datasources.

The application allows to
- interpolate data in GRASS in real-time
- visualize these results in an OpenLayers based webfrontend
- create movies of interpolated rasters
- create graphs of various types
- create various export formats
- visualize sensornetwork topology

Presenter: Till Adams

Biography:

Till Adams is technical project-coordinator and CEO of terrestris. He has been working with web based OpenSource GIS technology for the past 8 years.

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Comparing apples and oranges: Uncovering the mystery of component selection in WebGIS projects

For various parts of WebGIS applications more than one possible software exists. Shall I use Geoserver or UMN Mapserver? Should I recommend OpenLayers, MapFish or Mapbender as a client component? Will lighthttpd be sufficient or is there the need for Apache as Webserver?

Decisions have to be made and often you have to compare apples and oranges. The talk will try to uncover the various reasons in favour or against software packages and will highlight that there are usually more aspects than just hard facts. Hippness of a particular piece of software, the community around it and gut instincts of the project leader might be just as important as the license, the frequency of updates and constraints of the surrounding environment. And not every WebGIS application has the same demands.

This talk is an advocacy for a diverse discourse without a premeditated outcome when facing technology decisions like those mentioned above.

Presenter: Marc Jansen

Biography:

I am an application developer and project leader at the german company terrestris GmbH & Co. KG. where I usually develop WebGIS applications using different Open Source components. I studied Geography, Geology and Urban Development at the University of Bonn, Germany, where I obtained my diploma in geography with a thesis on the potential of information technology on specialized geomorpholgical maps in February 2007. I have been developing WebGIS software for roughly 5 years now.

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Using Open Source to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development - CHILE

The use of Open Source in the institution of the State of Chile, has been in constant development, for their strengths in internal architecture and opportunities for advancement in the use of geographic information and scalability for sustainable development. Gradually, the use of geographic and statistical information has become an effective tool to support decision making on investment and project planning in the medium term, allowing a full understanding of the territories where they are invested and the interaction with other public services in these areas.
To continue this work and encourage the use of geographic information in the State are expected this year with mapping and satellite imagery for about 70% of communes in the country, representing about 90% of the population
The installation software on servers, and application development has been implemented in Open Source, starting with a Linux server, PostgreSQL database with a GIS for spatial data management, Web server Apache, MapServer map server, and development of PHP pages.

Presenter: César Medina

Biography:

Engineer Software, my principal job at the Ministry is the coordinate and web pages development for the site http://www.ObservatorioUrbano.cl, development and use de Geographical Information System published in the site with Open Source Tools.
my principal objective is extend his use, development and GIS at the ministry and the government, giving and sharing the necesary knowledge to everybody who need for the development. as too give to know his potenciality and strengths

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SCENZ-Grid, The implementation of a Science Collaboration and Computation Environment

Landcare Research is moving from a traditional commercial based GIS Platform to a mixed envrionment with a complete Open Source stack, including PostGIS, Geoserver and OpenLayers.

Landcare Research is also moving from traditional desktop based spatial analysis to distributed and Grid enabled spatial modeling using Workflows.

This presentation will outline the requirements that Landcare Research has and the components used for implementation. This includes WPS, WMS and WFS services as well as a Grid computing back-end and geospatial grid middleware.

Presenter: Niels Hoffmann

Biography:

Niels is a Geospatial researcher and programmer at Landcare Research. He has a background in Physical Geography and worked as a technical consultant in the GIS industry. He is involved in the development of Landcare’s geospatial databases and applications. Current research interests are Land Use classification and sustainable environments as well as the implementation of distributed databases, distributed computing and workflow environments.

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There is no alternative to OpenLayers...?

The success story of openLayers in Germany at least extends from the FOSSGIS 2006 to FOSSGIS 2009. That leads to the questions of “What is great about openLayers and which things aren’t quite the way they should or could be?” Is there any competition in sight that might enhance business? Why do other projects like Mapbuilder and Chameleon die with people getting involved in OpenLayers? If you compare it with the success stories of Mapserver and Geoserver there are quite a number of open issues. With so many questions to be answered this talk focuses on the meta-level of success the different OSS projects enjoy and discusses the advantages and draw-backs of this.

Presenter: Till Adams

Biography:

Till Adams is technical project-coordinator and CEO of terrestris. He has been working with web based OpenSource GIS technology for the past 8 years.

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GeoShield: a server side user permissions management to OGC services

GeoShield is a project born to offer a centralized way to define security access-control to geo-services. It acts like a proxy, intercepting all the communications between clients and OGC compliant services (WMS, WFS, WPS, SOS).

GeoShield is able to manage users and groups, it handles authentication and privileges settings among groups and registered services. It is capable to analyse requests applying the filters setted to the user and manipulating the response.

For example handling WMS security, with GeoShield we can:
- define access privilege for each layer provided by the service,
- specify if a layer can be viewed or not,
- define geometrical extent of view permission.

All privileges on single layers are based on Common Query Language (CQL) filters, that allow interesting combination of permissions definition that operate in a hidden way to end-user.

Technical info

- The core of GeoShield is written in Java and rely on GeoTools.
- The database used for storing data is PostgreSQL.
- Authentication method is the “HTTP Authentication: Basic Access Authentication”, that guarantee compatibilities with most of the clients (like uDig, ArcGis, Google-Earth, etc.)
- Web interface build with ExtJS and OpenLayers

Presenter: Massimiliano Cannata

Biography:

Massimiliano Cannata received his PhD in Geodesy and Geomatic Engineering at the Polytechnic of Milano after a MSc degree in Georesource Environmental Engineering. He’s currently the head of the Geomatics Division at the Earth Science Institute (http://istgeo.ist.supsi.ch) where is responsible for a number of international research projects. He’s also an active member of the Open Source Software for Geography community, being contributors of new GIS developments and member of the GRASS GIS Project Steering Committee. At a local level, Massimiliano fostered the creation of the OSGeo Italian language Chapter. His main research fields are Geographical Information Systems, Geographical Web Services and GIS applications, particularly risk assessment and environmental modelling.

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goGPS: a navigation software to enhance the accuracy of low cost GPS receivers

The addition of geographic information to the virtual content of the Internet is becoming more and more popular, as it is being recognized as the first step towards the so-called Geo Web. In this framework there is an increasing interest in using low cost GPS receivers and in the possibility of enhancing their accuracy.
goGPS is a satellite navigation software exploiting networks of GPS permanent stations to apply real-time relative positioning. It is based on extended Kalman filtering techniques to model the kinematics of a roving GPS receiver and on the use of a digital terrain model to mitigate the GPS weakness in the vertical direction. The motion can be optionally constrained to a given network of paths (e.g. roads, railways). The main innovation introduced by goGPS is the application of the concept of kinematic relative positioning (RTK) to low cost single frequency GPS receivers, enhancing their accuracy from the usual 2-4 m up to some decimeters.
goGPS is developed in a MATLAB environment and it is published as open source software under the GPLv3 license.

Presenter: Eugenio Realini

Biography:

Ph.D. in Geodesy and Geomatics at Politecnico di Milano.

Since 1 September 2009 Post-doc fellow at Osaka City University.

Main research topics: GNSS navigation, Geographic Information Systems and Web Processing Services.

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Mapping interviews with open source technologies

Semi-structured and unstructured interviews generate large amounts of information. However, even when a session’s audio is transcribed into text, this information can be difficult and time-consuming to search and analyse. This presentation describes a set of techniques for recording, storing and searching geographical aspects of qualitative interviews.

This is achieved through a system consisting of an mp3 recorder, a homebrew interactive whiteboard and a custom web application built upon OpenLayers, PostGIS and the Django framework. The system provides an interactive map that remembers where and when participants touched the map during the interview. These annotations are automatically synchronized to the interview’s audio file and stored in a database. The database enables people to make maps of places mentioned in particular interviews or to make geographic queries when searching within and across interviews.

I demonstrate the system with reference to a New Zealand case study where Maori Kaumatua (tribal elders) were interviewed about the histories of various landscapes.

Presenter: Chris McDowall

Biography:

I am a geospatial informatics researcher working at Landcare Research, a New Zealand environmental research organisation.

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Spatial Data Infrastructure Components as Building Blocks for Early Warning Systems

Early warning systems should be based on a great variety of data and information sources, especially with a direct or indirect relation to space. Spatial data may include topological data sets, elevation models, satellite imagery and data collected through sensors. To provide accurate decision-supporting information, early warning systems should be capable of hiding the complexity of the underlying data sources and information models through well-known interfaces (component interfaces as well as user interfaces). Within the Earthquake Disaster Information System for the Marmara Region, Turkey (EDIM), the Open Source framework deegree provides an implementation of interfaces for data, services, and user interaction. Based on a web portal, the relevant services are demonstrated with a special emphasis on data and service interoperability.

Presenter: Hanko Rubach

Biography:

Hanko Rubach holds a university degree in environmental sciences (University of Lüneburg, Germany, http://www.uni-lueneburg.de/fb4/). Since 2006 he is working as consultant with lat/lon GmbH in Bonn, Germany. Hanko is deeply involved in SDI projects where deegree components play an important role. Within the deegree project he was involved with preparing the 2.x releases where he made significant contributions to the quality management within the whole project. More specifically, he has been managing the demo packages production.

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Implementation OGC Sensor Web Enablement supporting Local Participation in Water Resource Management

Geospatial web services based on OGC Web Services are well established and widely accepted at the national and international level. OGC Web Services enables organizations to interoperate geospatial systems. Nevertheless OGC Web Services harmonize with the conventional web service framework. Thai mapping community aims this technology to help tackling disaster management and climate changes. Furthermore we are applying to a research project supporting the project ‘Local Participation in Water Resource Management’. The challenge of the research is to handle real-time environment data logged from remote sensor network. The sensor system is capable of measuring, logging and transmitting the data timely over the network. The Crossbow eKo sensor system is used in the test area ‘Rayong province’. Because of the open source based product are used here and we could apply basic features of OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) on top of the proprietary system. The current applications for the project ‘Local Participation in Water Resource Management’ include discovery service and service binding.

Presenter: chaipat Nengcomma

Biography:

My name is chaipat nengcomma. Diploma Degree which Master of Spatial Information System in Engineering at Faculty of Engineering, Chulalongkorn University

My research interest about integrated sensor navigation and mobile mapping system (MMS), geo-spatial relational database management, Geo-spatial Information System and web services, Open-source software for Geoinformatics

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Using Open Source Technologies to Spatially Enable Aceh

The use of spatial information in Aceh post-tsunami was driven by local practitioners and NGOs working on recovery projects, supported by the Spatial Information & Mapping Centre (SIM-Centre) based at the Bureau of Reconstruction & Rehabilitation (BRR). Initially directed to supporting recovery activities, the focus later turned to building capacity within local government agencies to spatially enable whole-of-government planning and operational support. A strategy for effectively using spatial information and technology throughout the province was developed, fundamentally based on the establishment of a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI).

With the Provincial Government of Aceh mandating that Aceh should be, where possible, an Open Source province, this paper describes how Open Source technologies were used to implement a successful SDI solution in Aceh. It details the architecture and software used and some of the pilot applications developed. It also discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using Open Source technology and provides recommendations which are relevant to developing countries.

Presenter: Maurits van der Vlugt

Biography:

Maurits is one of Australia’s leading authorities in the design and implementation of (interoperable) spatial data architectures, and web delivery of spatial data. Maurits has hands-on experience developing web-mapping applications and the underlying architectures, focusing on usability, natural resource information and distributed systems.

Recent projects include the strategy development of the Common Spatial Information Initiative (CS2i) for the NSW Government, designing the SDI-architecture for the Aceh GeoSpatial Data Centre (AGDC) and the design of the National Water Commission’s “Australian Water Resources Information System”, leading the way for an Australia-wide water sensor network.

Maurits has authored several articles on these subjects, including recent articles on “Customising Google Earth” and “Dispelling the Myths around Web Services”, and taught “Customising GIS for the Web” at the University of Redlands (USA).

Co-authors: Fitzgerald, P. M. (Landgate: Geospatial Specialist), Y. Ishadamy (SIM-Centre: CEO), P. Harris (NGIS: CEO), N. Suwandy (NGIS: Project Manager), T. Mollison (NGIS: Business Analyst).

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Visualising animal movements in 'near' real time

Knowledge of animal movements is vital to the control of disease spread. Both the number of movements and the volume of animals can have important ramifications on the likelihood of disease being transferred as a result of these movements. In the case of disease control programmes, it is valuable to be able to visualise this information in a map context, so that the relationship between animal movements and other significant factors for disease (animal populations, human populations etc) can be assessed rapidly.

We set out to identify the animal movements occurring in Western Australia (WA) and the Greater Mekong Subregion of South East Asia (GMS) by capturing movements in a database and displaying the movements in a user queryable interface displaying the results in both map and tabular form.

We needed to develop a low entry-cost solution with limited ongoing costs to provide a sustainable system, so we are using entirely open source software for our computing power (PostgreSQL / PostGIS database with an FreeBSD / Apache / PHP Data entry system and using MapServer / OpenLayers and R for outputs.)

Presenter: Ben Madin

Biography:

Ben is a Veterinarian working in the field of Epidemiology and Public Health. He has a special interest in display of information and is currently undertaking a PhD researching risks associated with livestock movement in South East Asia.

Ben has almost no exposure to proprietary GIS systems, having by necessity used FOSS solutions for almost his entire (very short) GIS career.

He lives in Broome with his wife and kids.

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Geodata and CouchDB

Geodata is traditionally stored in a relational database management system. But there are different approaches available, one of them is CouchDB, a document-oriented database which uses JSON as its native storage format. CouchDB offers replication and high scalability. The RESTfull HTTP API and many available language bindings eases the development.
This presentation will be an introduction into CouchDB and the benefits/chances as a storage system and application server for geodata.

Presenter: Volker Mische

Biography:

- Student from Germany who studies computer science and geography.
- One year Intership at LISAsoft (Australia)

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Building community information systems with Drupal and OpenLayers

Coastal British Columbia indigenous communities seek solutions to their community information storage, sharing and processing challenges. They are looking for systems that provide basic GIS database, mapping and reporting functionality all in a web-based, open standards, secure, and multi-user environment. They are also keen to have these systems be very intuitive and embedded within their current web infrastructure. And, they would like these systems to serve many functions, from treaty and economic development support to language revitalization. We have developed community information systems (CIS) for several First Nations using Drupal and PostGIS. Key to these systems is the Drupal Open Layers module, which works with the Druapl Geo module to spatialize nodes (GIS features) stored in PostGIS. These nodes, such as archaeological and traditional occupancy/use sites, often have large amounts of attribute data and link to multimedia files.

In this presentation we will show some of the current OpenLayers capabilities, including its ties to Drupal Geo (to interface with PostGIS), and its integration with the Drupal Views module which enables the building of unlimited custom maps within the CIS. We will then demonstrate some of the challenges/solutions of creating large multi-user web-mapping sites that house a lot of sensitive multi-media material. And we will discuss some of the benefits of an open standards approach in terms of building links (“referrals interconnectivity”) between government and First Nations systems. We will finish with some glimpses into the future for the CIS application of Drupal/PostGIS/OpenLayers technologies, including a demonstration of fusion between our CISs and the Alfresco document management system.

Presenter: Charles Burnett

Biography:

A landscape ecologist by training, I do land use planning and geographic information systems (GIS) work for indigenous communities in Canada’s western provinces. My consulting and software development company is called Geomemes Research (www.geomemes.com). I also teach geography at the University of Victoria, in beautiful British Columbia, Canada.

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Shortest path search for real road networks with pgRouting

This presentation will show the inside and current state of pgRouting development. It will explain the shortest path search in real road networks and how the data structure is important for getting better routing results. We will show how you can improve the quality of the search with dynamic costs and make the result look closer to the reality. We will demonstrate the way of using pgRouting together with other Open Source tools and open data. Also you will learn about difficulties and limitations of implementing routing functionality in GIS applications, the difference between algorithms and their performance.

pgRouting is an extension of PostgreSQL and PostGIS. A predecessor of pgRouting – pgDijkstra, written by Sylvain Pasche from Camptocamp, was extended by Orkney (Japan) and renamed to pgRouting.

pgRouting can perform:

• shortest path search (3 different algorithms)
• Traveling Salesperson Problem solution (TSP)
• driving distance geometry calculation

Presenter: Anton

Biography:

Software engineer at Orkney, Inc.

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OpenLayers: Vector Mayhem

The OpenLayers library provides core functionality to browser based mapping applications. This talk will focus on vector data related functionality – demonstrating options for requesting, styling, editing, and persisting vector features.

OpenLayers includes a variety of layer types for requesting rendered map tiles. In addition, the library provides the capability to request remotely stored vector data for rendering in the browser. This presentation will cover the fundamentals for dealing with vector data – introducing participants to new vector related functionality in the library.

The talk will include a quick overview of the OpenLayers library for those new to the project. We’ll move on to the classes for managing vector data: Strategy, Protocol, and Format. Finally, through simple examples, we will demonstrate styling vector data – including coverage of the Filter, Rule, Style, and StyleMap classes.

Presenter: Tim Schaub

Biography:

Tim Schaub is a Tech Lead at OpenGeo – the geospatial division of The Open Planning Project. Tim is an active core developer of OpenLayers and serves as Chair of the Project Steering Committee. Prior to his work on OpenLayers, Tim worked in a remote sensing shop, did some time as an independent contractor, and provided GIS services to non-profits. Tim enjoys telecommuting to the OpenGeo headquarters in Manhattan from his remote office in Bozeman, Montana.

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The use of Open Source in Canada's National Forest Information System

Canada’s National Forest Information System (NFIS) was created in 2000 under the auspices of the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers. NFIS is a partnership of all provincial, territorial and federal governments in Canada. NFIS is designed to provide the capabilities to publish, analyze, synthesize and report on Canada’s sustainable forest management.

NFIS Canada has many applications and portals that are accessible to the public. These portals vary from forest inventory/land use, fire monitoring, climate change modeling to biodiversity/gene conservation decision support tools.

To achieve these tasks, NFIS uses many geospatial open source software technologies. The NFIS Project Office also has developed and assisted in the development of many FOSS4G. This presentation will outline the NFIS project and the significant role FOSS4G has played.

Presenter: Brian Low

Biography:

Manager of Canada’s National Forest Information System.
Previous committee member for FOSS4G2007 in Victoria.

Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science
Masters of Science degree in Geography with a specialty in distributed computing

Interested in spatial data handling and spatial data infrastructures, Web 2.0, and Web services.

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Building a SDI massively based on OWS

context :

Britany is a region localised in West of France. Britany gouvernment has developped for the last 7 years the culture of sharing data. The GeoBretagne project is the Spatial Data Infrastructure project for Britany. More over, the generic core developpement will be used for regional government SDI projects and put in a official forge for public administration applications , forge held by ADULLACT.org foundation.

Purpose of the presentation :

The presentation has different purposes :
1- present the project from a user point of view
2- present technical aspects of the project
3- show what and how it could be possible to implement new generic functionnalities inside existing OSGeo components in the context of a project.

Technical aspect :

GeoBretagne is based mostly on GeoNetwork, GeoServer and MapFish framework that include Open Layers, ExtJS, GeoExt, and other server side Java components.

GeoBretagne uses a wide range of OGC Web Services :

• WFS-T (GeoServer, OpenLayers)
• WFS (GeoServer, OpenLayer, MapFish extractor)
• WMS (GeoServer, GeoWebCache, OpenLayer)
• SLD (GeoServer, MapFish styler)
• WCS (GeoServer, MapFish extractor)
• FE (GeoServer, styler, MapFish request engine)
• CSW (GeoNetwork, OpenLayers)
• WMC (GeoServer, OpenLayers)

The main contributions to the Open Source softwares are :

• Creation of a query client component on a similar approach to styler (MapFish, GeoExt)
• Recovery and development of styler client component (MapFish, GeoExt)
• catalog query module component from the Map client (OpenLayers / MpaFish and GeoExt))
• Increased integration GeoSource and GeoNetwork (GeoNetwork)
• Layer Tree with tools for setting layers (MapFish, GeoExt)
• Evolution of the print module to support SLD (MapFish)
• WFS integration in the MapFish editing protocol managed (MapFish)
• Support CAS protocol in GeoNetwork (GeoNetwork)
• Integration of a monitoring tool links in the metadata
  (GeoNetwork admin)
• Integration of a basket in GeoNetwork,used to list the
  selections for extractions, visualizations, deletion … (GeoNetwork)
• Support CAS protocol in GeoServer (GeoServer)

Presenter: Eric Lemoine and Claude Philipona

Biography:

Claude Philipona hodls a PhD degree in near-filed optical microscopy, which could be view as nanoscale mapping). He is co-founder of Camptocamp SA and professor at the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland (HES-SO). Eric’s Bio coming soon :-)

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ZOO project : an open WPS Platform

The ZOO Project was born to provide a technical solution to the online geoprocessing needs encountered by the GeoLabs and 3LIZ companies. The ZOO platefrom is made of two parts : ZOO server, a WPS compliant C++ engine, and ZOO client which is a JSON based javascript API built on top of OpenLayers.

The ZOO server is based on a « WPS Service Kernel » which constitutes the ZOO core system. It is able to dynamicaly load on demand various kind of services. A service could be view as a couple composed by a metadata file and the code for the corresponding implentation. The metadata file decribes all functions(s) which have to be callable using a WPS Exec Request. Services could be easily implemented in C++, Python or Perl and contains the functions of the service. Services developers should be able to implement services easily in their favorite langages without having to take care about formats of inputs and outputs for instance, storing results, this will be directly done by the WPS Service Kernel.

The ZOO client is a JSON based javascript API designed to communicate with ZOO server using a GeoJSON proxy to make use of ZOO Server input/ouptut only with Javascript and Mapserver.

Presenter: Gérald FENOY

Biography:

GeoLabs SARL owner.

Two authors for this presentation :
Gérald Fenoy, Geolabs SARL
Nicolas Bozon, 3LIZ SARL

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From Geodata to Geoinformation-52North Web Processing Service (WPS) and SEXTANTE

Today’s Spatial Data Infrastructures provides several means to find and consume data. However, the most important step is still performed with classical desktop GIS solutions: Processing Data to derive information. To fill this gap and to automate spatial related business processes-interoperable processing services have been standardized recently. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) developed the Web Processing Service standard. This internet based service allows the web based execution of geoprocessing functionality.

However, current WPS implementations provide only limited and simplistic geoprocessing functionality. The intrinsic complexity of geodata requires often more complex functions.

The open source SEXTANTE geoprocessing library provides over 220 geoprocessing algorithms. These algorithms allow the comprehensive processing of raster and vector data.

The presentation will give a brief introduction to web based geoprocessing and the SEXTANTE library. On this basis, it will be shown how SEXTANTE functionalities exposed as interoperable 52North WPS processes can be integration into existing SDIs and thereby bridge the gap from geodata to geoinformation.

Presenter: Bastian Schaeffer

Biography:

Bastian Schaeffer is the head of the Geoprocessing Community at 52North Open Source Initiative.

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Building a web mapping application with GeoExt

GeoExt (www.geoext.org) is a JavaScript library that provides a groundwork for creating web-mapping applications. As a practical introduction to GeoExt, this presentation will walk through how to build a simple data browsing application using the building blocks GeoExt provides.

GeoExt combines the web mapping library OpenLayers with Extjs, a cross-browser JavaScript library for building rich internet applications.

After a brief introduction to the range of applications that can be built with GeoExt, we will demonstrate how using basic JavaScript one can quickly build a simple web application that lets users view and manipulate the contents of a map.

Presenter: Andreas Hocevar and Cédric Moullet

Biography:

Andreas Hocevar is a core committer to MapBuilder, OpenLayers and GeoExt. Coming from an urban and regional planning background, he knows the requirements of maps and mapping applications for planners and governments. Improving the way users can apply design principles and good practices of cartography to open maps has been the driving force behind his efforts in FOSS4G, especially in building SLD support into OpenLayers and GeoExt. As a consultant for OpenGeo, he enjoys being part of an international team of experienced FOSS4G developers devoted to well established projects like GeoServer, PostGIS and OpenLayers.

Cédric Moullet is CTO Geospatial of Camptocamp SA and member of the GeoExt PSC.

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FLEX/Mapserver application for the Brazilian Industrial Fishing Vessels Monitoring Program

A web-based information system was implemented in 2007 for the Brazilian Industrial Fishing Vessels Monitoring Program (PREPS) using open source technologies, such as PostgreSQL (PostGIS, PL/PGSQL) and Symfony (PHP MVC Framework). In its fourth version it includes features such as intelligent agents that controls vessel operation in exclusion areas and distress requests; SOAP Web Services for tracking data reception and delivery; and a Adobe Flex WebGIS interface combined with MapServer for visualization of vessels that are operating on Brazilian jurisdictional waters, as well as on the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources – CCAMLR areas. In this presentation we explain the PREPS’ architecture, with emphasis about the rich interface (FLEX) for Web Mapping (i.e., usability, accessibility and high performance).

Presenter: Rafael Medeiros Sperb

Biography:

Oceanographer and head of the Applied Computing Lab (G10) at the Itajaí Valley University – UNIVALI. Active member in the Brazilian FOSSG iniciatives and member of the OSGeo Local Chapter. Since 2000 has been involved with MapServer development.

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Web Mapping Performance Shoot-out

This is the latest installment in an annual series of benchmarks and presentations that pit open source and other web mapping servers against one another in a suite of performance tests. The presentation seeks to find out the optimal software configurations and to compare the performance in different real world use cases, such as large data handling, OSM like rendering, large raster serving and WFS scalability. MapServer and Geoserver will be compared, as well as different back-end data sources, such as PostGIS and Shapefiles. [Other servers may also be added to the test – pending participation by community members.]

Presenter: Andrea Aime and Jeff McKenna

Biography:

Andrea Aime is a senior software engineer at OpenGeo and lead developer in the GeoServer and GeoTools communities. He has been focusing on Java GIS development, stability and performance over large data sets, rendering and spatial analysis for the last years.

In 2008 Jeff started his own consulting company based around FOSS4G, Gateway Geomatics, and is actively contributing to OSGeo.

• Founding and Charter member of OSGeo
• Maintainer for maptools:http://maptools.org
• Developer for MS4W
• Developer for OSGeo4W
• MapServer Project Steering Committee (PSC) member
• MapServer documentation lead
• OSGeo FOSS4G conference committee chair
• FOSS4G Workshop committee member
• Founding co-chair of OSGeo Ottawa Local Chapter

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The State of PostGIS

What can PostGIS do? What features does it have? What has changed in recent versions? What new features are upcoming in future releases? This talk will cover the history and development of the PostGIS spatial database server.

Presenter: Paul Ramsey

Biography:

Paul has been a developer and promoter of open source geospatial software for 10 years, as a founder of the PostGIS spatial database project, leader of an open source geospatial company, and currently as a Director of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. Paul has spoken regularly at geospatial conferences, taught workshops on open source databases, and recently chaired the international Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G2007) Conference in Victoria, Canada.

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Using open source geospatial technology in a national environmental regulatory program.

The US Army Corps of Engineers Wetland regulatory program utilizes open-source geospatial tools and mapping in the daily operation of the program.
The US Army Corps of Engineers regulatory program’s data collection and management traditionally was a decentralized operating system consisting of 38 different data collection systems ranging from hand ledgers to advanced desktop deployments of GIS. This decentralized method of operation required a large number of national data calls, inconsistent reporting, and inconsistent business practices.
In 2007 the US Army Corps of Engineers Wetland regulatory program deployed the second generation of a national consolidated data tracking and management system known ORM2.
ORM2 merged 38 different data collection systems, while providing the user with a web based unified data collection methods and a series of geospatial tools previously reserved for those with standalone client based GIS systems.
From a utilization standpoint, ORM2 is among the largest spatial databases within the Federal government. Over 600 users login each day creating millions of data elements that need to be tracked, managed and reported on spatially.
While focusing on the day-to-day users needs in conjunction with national data collection and reporting requirements, a user-friendly interface including basic mapping and geographical information consumption was developed on an Oracle platform using open source geospatial programming as the national mapping component. Use of the open source geospatial programming allows not only a simplified user interface but a consistent platform across many US Army Corps of Engineers business lines and has allowed for simple data interoperability.

Presenter: Jon Soderberg

Biography: Jon Soderberg is a program manager with the US Army Corps of Engineers in Washington DC USA. Jon has been with the Corps of Engineers since 2001 and the Corps of Engineers headquarters since 2006. Mr. Soderberg is lead for the Corps of Regulatory Program’s data management and geospatial systems with responsibilities in data collection, dissemination, and day-to-day interaction with other federal agencies.

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Maps and BI for large organizations

Borealis uses interactive maps, reporting tools and dashboards to provide through-the-web access to an organization’s strategic information. Originally developed for the mining industry, Borealis’ Information Management System (IMS) is based on free and open source software and features centralized, workflowed and access-controlled information management. The toolset provides managers and other user roles with timely information about key business indicators such as for example budget information, field activities progression, environmental as well as health and safety issues. Maps are generated using free software tools including OpenLayers, MapFish, GeoExt and MapServer/TileCache with the data stored in PostGIS or shapefiles. Maps can be either included directly in reports (using Jasper Reports) or accessed directly in the IMS. Geographic information is retrieved in standard GeoJSON format using FeatureServer and can be repurposed in the IMS for a customer’s particular use cases.

Presenter: Michèle Laflamme and Philippe Grégoire

Biography:

Michelle Laflamme is a geomatics analyst. She has worked mainly in mining exploration and the management of social impacts for projects in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and in the United States (Arizona). She has developed a system of monthly reporting at the corporate level for which Boreal Information Strategies was awarded an Octas in the “Business Intelligence” category. She specializes in facilitating access to strategic information and in adding a spatial dimension to information.

Before joining Boreal Information Strategies in 2008, Michelle worked 12 years for Domtar Inc. where managed several projects in geospatial information for forestry and environmental management. She also participated in land management of large private properties, and in the implantation of environmental regulation (FSC).

Michèle is a land surveyor and holds a Bachelor degree in geomatic sciences and has a master’s in geography.

Philippe Grégoire currently works as Information Manager Boreal

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Cloud database to store map data

The cloud computing and WEB 2.0 concepts are the basement of solutions that we developed. Our challenge was represent a lot of information through maps dynamically constructed. The data should be collected in internet and saved in internet too (web database). As delicious web site where users can store their own bookmarks, in our solution the users can store any time the own data whenever and wherever they need and want.
With this datum users can manipulate then, as spreadsheet, making some combinations in columns, constructing graphics and indicators. All data can be representing in maps, using a one or more columns as polygon or point. The color of each polygon and the shape and color of each point can be defined online by the user.
The restriction of the solution is limited by the shape files stored in cloud database, because the uploaded data must reference one of the stored file. When I was writing this paper, our database stored Brazilian municipalities and state shape. So, all data must have these shape geocode reference. For more detailed information, we use the Google Maps facilities to store the GIS coordinate of the objects.

Presenter: caio nakashima

Biography:

I developed solution using PHP and PHPMapscript in Ministry of Social Development and the Fight against Hunger since 2004. The goal of my job is help the monitoring social actions, programs and projects.
The staff that works together develops many software code lines, but it is not the end of the job, but just it is beginning. We have to aggregate datum from different sources in order to generate information, or knowledge if possible.

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Flood mapping and monitoring service build entirely with FLOSS software

Flooding remains the most widely distributed natural hazard in Europe, leading to significant economic and social impact. The remote sensing of the Earth is presently capable of making fundamental contributions towards reducing the detrimental effects of extreme floods. Various processing techniques are used to combine the optical and radar images and map the flooded areas. The results are aggregated using an on-line geospatial aware system. The interested users are able to access the system in order to display, query, analyze and retrieve flood related information’s.
The system is build entirely with standard compliant free and open source software applications like GDAL, GRASS, OSSIM, Geoserver, Geonetwork, PostgreSQL + Post GIS, OpenLayers.

Presenter: Vasile Crăciunescu

Biography:

Vasile is a researcher at Romanian National Meteorological Administration, working in the Remote Sensing & GIS Laboratory since 2001. He received his diploma in cartography and physical geography in 2001. Currently is in charge of the scientific and operational activities in Meteo Romania related to rapid mapping, air quality data integration, spatial data infrastructure and web mapping. Vasile is a FOSS4G promoter and use his free time to further develop geo-spatial.org (http://earth.unibuc.ro/), a collaborative effort by and for the Romanian community to facilitate the sharing of geospatial knowledge and the discovery and publishing of free geographic datasets and maps.

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Live Demonstration of DEWS

The DEWS (Distant Early Warning System) project, funded under the 6th Framework Programme of the European Union, has the objective to create a new generation of interoperable early warning systems based on an open sensor platform. This platform integrates OGC SWE compliant sensor systems for the rapid detection of earthquakes, for the monitoring of sea level, ocean floor events, and ground displacements. Based on the upstream information flow DEWS focuses on the improvement of downstream capacities of warning centres especially by improving information logistics for effective and targeted warning message aggregation for a multilingual environment. Multiple telecommunication channels will be used for the dissemination of warning messages.
Wherever possible, existing standards have been integrated. The Command and Control User Interface, a rich client application based on Eclipse RCP and the open source GIS uDig, integrates various OGC services. Using WMS and WFS spatial data are utilized to depict the situation picture and to integrate a simulation system via WPS to identify affected areas. Warning messages are compiled and transmitted in the CAP (Common Alerting Protocol) standard together with addressing information defined via EDXL-DE (Emergency Data Exchange Language – Distribution Element). Internal interfaces are realized with SOAP web services.

Presenter: Matthias Lendholt and Martin Hammitzsch

Biography:

The live demonstration will be held by

Martin Hammizsch
MSc Software Systems Engineering
Junior Scientist Early Warning Systems
working at
GFZ German Research Centre For GeoSciences
martin.hammitzsch@gfz-potsdam.de

Matthias Lendholt
MSc Software Systems Engineering
Junior Scientist Early Warning Systems
working at
GFZ German Research Centre For GeoSciences
matthias.lendholt@gfz-potsdam.de

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gvSIG Mini. OSM for almost every phone.

gvSIG Mini is the latest GIS for mobile phones. It’s able to display OSM, Microsoft and Yahoo maps, to cache this information on the storage card, calculate routes and search and display addresses and points of interest using OpenStreetMap services.
gvSIG Mini is able to run on almost every phone and its license is GPL.

Presenter: Javi Carrasco, Alberto Romeu, Miguel Montesinos

Biography:

Computer Scientist, analyst and software developer at Prodevelop (Spain).
Technical manager of gvSIG Mobile project and gvSIG Technical Direction Comitee member.

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Sensor services in gvSIG

A first prototype has been developed on top of gvSIG and gvSIG Mobile for handling Sensor services. An OGC-SOS (Sensor Observation Service) client has been implemented. gvSIG desktop and Mobile are able to acces sensor observation data, rendering sensor location on screen with the ability to use thematic representation and displaying sensor data in tabular format. gvSIG desktop is also able to show custom graphics with sensor data. This is a first step towards a more powerful sensor data integration on gvSIG.

Presenter: C. Sánchez, M. Montesinos, F. Peñarrubia,A. Tamayo

Biography:

Prodevelop and Software Colaborativo are two of the companies actively developing gvSIG.
Universitat Jaume I is the public university of Castellon, in Spain.
The three organizations collaborate in this project to achieve the best results.

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Improving Community Safety Though Wildfire Mitigation - an Open Source Case Study

In his presentation, Alistair will present a case study reviewing the success of the Northern Queensland Wildfire Mitigation Project (NQWMP), which delivered a collaborative online data warehouse and mapping tools for all wildfire mitigation stakeholders in the region, including all three levels of government.

NQWMP exploited free and open source technology and has been embraced by the project stakeholders and provides an outstanding example of successful deployment of open source technology.

Alistair believes that NQWMP is the first Australian open source mapping application developed for emergency management to make it into production.

The presentation will cover:

• Mapping website functionality and architecture
• Why was Open Source selected?
• What were the alternatives?
• What issues did we ran into and how did we solved them?

The NQWMP project was recently highly commended by the Excellence in e-Government Awards (e-Awards) and was the only Local Government project in the finalists.

Presenter: Alistair Hart

Biography:

Alistair’s interest in spatial information began as a child, as former surveyor and family friend Len Beadell regaled his adventures surveying and constructing highways (including the renowned Gunbarrel Highway) and weapons test sites through Outback Australia. The map of Australia on the kitchen wall was soon full of highways, atomic weapons test sites and rocket ranges, much to Alistair’s fascination.

Alistair’s first job outside school was as a surveyor’s assistant, helping to survey a fibre-optic cable route from Adelaide to Perth in 1994 assisted by the relatively new Omnistar differential GPS signal. He has since immersed himself in the spatial industry, using spatial information to inform decision making for dengue outbreaks within Queensland Health and now as GIS Coordinator for Atherton Tablelands GIS.

Atherton Tablelands GIS is an innovative unit of Tablelands Regional Council, serving the spatial needs of government, industry and community.

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BioSIRT - A national system using Open GIS components

BioSIRT is a new agricultural emergency and routine incident management system developed for a consortium of all state and Commonwealth primary industry departments. BioSIRT includes a substantial and tightly integrated mapping component which must integrate with Jurisdictional GIS infrastrutures. Given the range of largely vendor-based GIS platforms used by the various departments, the open standard approach was the only way to go.
This presentation will cover the BioSIRT architecture and how it is being integrated by various government departments, including issues such as toolsets used, standards to be met and skills development. BioSIRT is put forward as a good example of the mainstreaming of open source and open standards GIS software.

Presenter: Ian Miller

Biography:

I am the manager of Spatial Vision’s Application Services division and have many years expereince in the design, development and implementation of web-based information systems, especially where they include integrated spatial information and capabilities.

Spatial Vision started using various open source and open standards GIS components as part of our application solutions some 5 years ago and now have significant experience in integrating these components into JEE architectures and corporate environments.

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How to create a web 2.0 mapping with MapFish development framework ?

MapFish is an open-source development framework for building web-mapping applications.

MapFish is based on the GeoExt library which is a combination of ExtJS and OpenLayers, and extends the Pylons general-purpose web development framework with geo-specific functionnalities.

We will present the necessary steps for the creation a web mapping application based on the MapFish development framework:
- Creation of client UI with MapFish javascript library framework.
- Creation of server controlers with Python, Shapely and SQLAlchemy. MapFish server combines several technologies in order to facilitate the data access and the data manipulation on the server side. The data are accessed through REST services.

Presenter: Cédric Moullet

Biography:

CTO Geospatial of Camptocamp SA and member of the GeoExt PSC.

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GeoServer, GeoTools and GeoBatch: supporting operational Meteorology and Oceanography

Supporting operational Meteorology and Oceanography is a challenging task due to complexity and heterogeneicity of the data to manage, which must be available on time, at the right place, and which is usually obtained from a wide number of sensors (satellites, autonomous veichles, in-situ sensors, etc) and prevision models. Moreover, very often, new data is produced on the fly for statistical purposes (e.g. ensemble modeling) or to be used as input for refined processing (e.g. multiple cascaded model runs). To complicate things further such data is usually multidimensional (x,y,z,t,band).
We will present and discuss the solutions developed and employed at the NURC (NATO Undersea Research Centre in Italy) as well at the LaMMa (Laboratory of Monitoring and Environmental Modeling ) the operational weather service of Tuscany Region in Italy, based on an open source GIS software, to store, convert, fuse and deliver the above mentioned datasets.

Presenter: Simone Giannecchini

Biography:

Simone Giannecchini obtained is Master Degree cum laude in Computer Engineering from the University of Pisa in December 2003 after having spent one year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) developing his master thesis on collaborative resource allocation in wireless sensor networks.
In early 2004 he started working as a consultant at NURC (NATO Undersea research center) in Italy where he was responsible for the maintenance and improvement of the GIS system. At that time he fell in love with open source GIS software and started pushing its use inside NATO, fighting against misconceptions and sterile oppositions.
In late 2006, together with colleague Alessio Fabiani founded GeoSolutions S.A.S, which is actually working for a wide range of clients ranging form private companies like ITT-VIS to organizations like NATO and FAO departments.

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An hybrid GIS solution to manage the French gas utility network

This work aims to present an open source hybrid GIS solution developed by the 3LIZ company, to provide a mapping solution to GRTGaz company which is the first French gaz supplier. The main need was to best manage the gaz pipes network with an easy to use GIS software. The latter is based on the coupling of the Mozilla platform (i.e XulRunner) and some of the Osgeo components (namely OGR, Proj and OpenLayers). This provides a light and multiplatform GIS desktop environment, which is able to call for any webservice (i.e REST API, WMS, Google maps API..), but also to render and to query local geodatasets on top of webmaps. Editing functionnalities are also available and JSON geometries are stored on a PostGIS geodatabase. A REST API has been developed in order to sent and call for the recorded geometries from the OpenLayers API client. The solution GUI is built using both XUL, XHTML/CSS and ExtJS API. This project was first designed as a prototype, and is now used by several hundred people.

Presenter: Nicolas BOZON

Biography:

Communication manager at 3LIZ company

Web Developer/Web Designer/Web Mapper

This abstract and the related up-comming full paper is written by 3 people from 3LIZ:

Nicolas BOZON – 3LIZ (Communication manager),
René-Luc D’Hont- 3LIZ (CTO) and
Michaël DOUCHIN – 3LIZ (Project manager)

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Web GIS: from Javascript to GWT

This presentation will address the specific problems one encounters when programming thin client GIS applications. To be more precise, we will talk about browser compatibility issues, thin client vector technologies such as SVG and VML and then discuss a possible solution.

My experience of working in a Javascript environment comes from working on the Geomajas open source project for 2 years. Geomajas is a client-server GIS framework built on top of the Dojo Ajax library, specialized in advanced editing and object-relation modeling.

Working in a Javascript environment presents a difficult choice of technologies. What widget framework to use? What’s the performance trade-off between vectors and rasters? Why can’t we simply use Flex?

This presentation will show all the choices we have made while creating the Geomajas framework, and why we’ve made them. Issues ranging from performance to development time, have contributed in the final choice to leave Javascript behind and make the switch to GWT.

Presenter: Pieter De Graef

Biography:

My career started at a Belgium company, called DFC, where I participated in GIS software engineering project.

One such project led to the creation of an open source GIS stack, called geGIS. geGIS was a client-server solution written in Java and Javascript, using the Adobe SVG plugin.

From that point on myself and a few colleagues started to rewrite geGIS from scratch, calling it Geomajas. Recently we started a new company, called Geosparc, in which we sell services around the Geomajas open source product. In this company I have taken upon myself the role of developer and community manager.

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GeoPrisma : An Access Controlled Map Generator

GeoPrisma provides controlled access to cartographic resources and allows custom (role-dependent) dynamic UI generation. An XML configuration file stores access control levels to any web service (WMS, TileCache, FeatureServer, etc.) at the layer level. Instead of implementing custom access control in every service available, communication with services is tunelled through a proxy so that they are effectively secured from direct access.

GeoPrisma also provides a mechanism for adaptive UI generation. Each map element (widget, layer, etc.) is selectively included in the UI or not depending on the permissions associated with its corresponding role/resource/action triplet defined in an ACL, thereby allowing for the use of a single configuration file for all users in a project. The GeoPrisma client wraps the functionnality of the major FOSS JS libraries for mapping (OpenLayers, MapFish, GeoExt) and the proxy can be easily
made to interact with any geodata server.

Presenter: Julien-Samuel Lacroix and Stéphane Guillemette

Biography:

Julien-Samuel Lacroix is a software developper and co-founder of Mapgears. He works with Open Source Geospatial software since 2002 and is a commiter in many projects like MapServer, Chameleon, ka-Map!, GDAL/OGR and Fusion. He’s also involved in many others such as OpenLayers, MapFish and GeoExt.

Stéphane Guillemette has been a web developer for the last 10 years. He participated in a number of projects including the development of a CMS in an XML/SOAP environment. He has been the lead developer at Boreal – Information Strategies for the last three years.

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Using cloud computing for high-availability large scale webmapping applications

Webmapping users expect now days modern Web-GIS applications with the latest Web 2.0 technology such as tiling, AJAX and they want to experience very fast applications, even during high load period.

Cloud computing offers new opportunities to implement high-availability large scale applications. It is very use-full to address performance issues for high-demand period without having to invest on specific hardware.

This presentation will first explain what is the new “Cloud computing” paradigm in the web technology and how it will change the way Webmapping will be implemented. We will then give an overview of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) and especially services related to cloud computing such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon CloudFront. We will show not only how to run a web-mapping application in a cloud computing environment, but also how this kind of technology can be used for high-demanding tasks, such as tiles production.

The second part of the presentation will show real-world case-study how to use cloud computing with web-mapping applications. Specific mapping issues will be addressed, such as tilecache management, ways to implement read-only and read/write applications.

The presentation will also show how the use of amazon services can be implemented in a fully automated way, using Open Source software. It will show the implementation of a large scale Web-GIS application using MapFish, Opelayers, TileCache in a AWS environment (http://map.veloland.ch/?lang=en&p&route=all). It will also show how to manage a very high number of cluster instances using Puppet, an Open source automated deployment tool.

Presenter: Claude Philipona

Biography:

Claude Philipona hodls a PhD degree in near-filed optical microscopy, which could be view as nanoscale mapping). He is co-founder of Camptocamp SA and professor at the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland (HES-SO).

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MarineMap: Participatory Marine Protected Area Design Using a Web-Based Open Source Tool

The California Marine Life Protection Act Initiative (MLPAI) is currently working toward establishing a network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) for the entire state. Since 2005, we have developed several web-based decision support tools for stakeholders to visualize and analyze geospatial information within California state waters. In 2008, we released a new web-based decision support tool , called MarineMap, for stakeholders to (a) visualize geospatial data layers, (b) draw prospective MPA boundaries with attributed information, © assemble prospective MPA boundaries into arrays, (d) share MPA boundaries and arrays with other users, (e) generate graphs and statistics to evaluate MPAs based on science-based guidelines, and (f) share results with users in a place-based discussion forum. Based on Open Source technologies (OpenLayers, GeoDjango, PostGIS, and others) the MarineMap decision support tool is freely distributed and modifiable under the BSD license for any area-based planning effort. We will demonstrate the major features of the tool and illustrate how it was used in the MLPAI.

http://marinemap.org/marinemap/

Presenter: Chad Burt

Biography:

I’m a web developer for the University of California Santa Barbara and lead developer of the MarineMap decision support tool. I have a bachelors degree from the same university in Biology. My interests include data visualization and using web applications to solve problems rather than obscure them.

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Enviro: a WebGIS interface to evaluate and manage the impact of climate change at regional scale

ional scale.

This work introduces an open source software infrastructure (the Enviro Platform) for research and decision-making aimed at evaluating the potential impact of climate change on the agricultural system of the region of Trentino. In particular, we focus on data, models and technologies facilitating the evaluation of potential vulnerability of the region to climate change, in order to find useful solutions. The Enviro Platform is developed within the Envirochange Project, an international multidisciplinary project funded by the Province of Trento (Italy), to investigate reproducible methodological approaches developed to evaluate the effects of climate change on food quality, pests and diseases in agriculture and their impact on farm revenue.
The challenge for the Enviro Platform is to interface research models to geographical resources, experimental data, and climate scenarios. The aim is to provide a user-friendly and versatile WebGIS system for geodata processing and visualization. Moreover, the Enviro Platform is made available to different classes of users, for both research and decision making purposes. The backbone of the system is based on a spatial-temporal Geodatabase (PostgreSQL and PostGIS). We adopted international standards and metadata profiles for geodata (Geography Markup Language, World Meteorological Organization and International Panel Climate Change) and Open Geospatial Consortium standards for data transmission and data processing (Web Map Service, Web Coverage Service, Web Processing Service). The platform gives access to regional time series of weather data, climate change scenarios and territorial geodata together with general statistical data using GeoServer as application engine. We have designed the Enviro Platform in order to ensure reproducibility of the evaluation process and to share the models used for testing, together with all the resources useful to track the life cycle of data and possible alternative models. Users can access, import, reproduce and document their numeric methods as defined by their respective mathematical formulations and incorporate them into the Environmental Models Catalog. The implementation of the catalog is based on standard markup languages, a common processing engine (Grass, R, PyWPS) and its purpose is to facilitate the comparison of different models and their usage on different spatial-temporal scales.
In this presentation we will describe the design and the prototype implementation of the Enviro Platform, discussing the issues encountered in creating a framework where researchers and stakeholders can evaluate the impact of climate change using statistical analysis and geoprocessing methods.

Presenter: Riccardo De Filippi

Biography:

Researcher at the Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Trento since February 2009 in the group of predictive modelling for biomedicine and environment. I worked for 8 years in Zurich Switzerland at the ETH Zurich and FAL Agroscope, obtained my Master Course in Geoinformation Science at the Wageningen University in the Netherlands. My interests are on GIS and the use of GIS to environmental sciences and in particular on climate change.

Authors:
Riccardo De Filippi(1), Cesare Furlanello(1), Shamar Droghetti(1), Marco Grimaldi (1), Ilaria Pertot (2)
(1) Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Via Sommarive 18 38050 Povo, TN, Italy
(2) SafeCrop Centre, IASMA, via Mach 1, S.Michele all’Adige, 38010, TN, Italy

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Open Web Processing Services for Improving Accuracy of GPS tracks using Filtering and Map-Matching

This paper presents open geo-processing services to support co-registering the vehicle GPS traces with road network, based on open GIS standards and open source geospatial software. An integrated approach is proposed to glue open source geospatial software to provide Web Services for enhancement of GPS tracks. Map matching algorithms for vehicle tracking data are implemented using the PyWPS interface. Track-logs are stored in the PostgreSQL/PostGIS enabling handling of large volume data of road network, and the Openlayers client is used to visualize the processing results.

As a part of the core processes of map matching in PyWPS, specific filters of GPS tracks, related to vehicle motion characteristics, are first applied to produce high quality vehicle trajectories. Secondly, advanced curve-to-curve distance measurement algorithms – Hausdorff distance and Frechet distance are implemented in Python to perform map matching of road network. The system has been tested under dense urban road network conditions in Osaka City in Japan. The results of the experiments suggest that the Web Services are effective for retrieval of the paths from urban street network and accurate matching of tracking data form low-cost GPS tracking devices. The services implemented as a part of this research will be not only useful for vehicle tracking but also for automated update of road network and in improving quality of community driven geo-data collection initiatives such as the Open Street Map.

Presenter: Xianfeng Song Venkatesh Raghavan and Daisuke Yoshida

Biography:

Xianfeng Song research interest is Geo-Processing Workflow and their applications in infrastructure management and environment modeling. His current research include (1) Optimizing geospatial Web services chain based on QoS (2) SWAT model for hydrology simulation and sediment yield estimation (3) Map-Matching and LBS Services. He is presently Associate Professor at the Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is an active member of the OSGeo-China Chapter.

Venkatesh Raghavan (Venka) has been involved in OSGeo since its inception. He was one of the Directors in the first OSGeo Board and is currently a Charter Member. He is deeply involved in OSGeo Local Chapters in Asia. Presently based in Japan as Professor of Geoinformatics at Osaka City University. His research interest include distributed geoprocessing, Sensor Net and Remote Sensing for change detection.

Daisuke Yoshida is a doctoral student at the Graduate School of Creative Cities, Osaka City University and works at the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Tezukayama Gakuin University as a lecturer. He has participated on a Japanese volunteer program, JICA in the Philippines to provide technical assistance for implementing SDI prototype using FOSS4G tools. His research interests are Web-GIS development, LBS, Real-time GPS, Mobile GIS and digital archives. He has also been a FOSS4G trainer at several international workshops. He is board member OSGeo-Japan Chapter and organizer for FOSS4G-Osaka annual events.

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Case Study: Pollutant Release and Transfer Registry

The German Environmental Agency has implemented a geo portal application to meet the European Union regulation for a Pollutant Release and Transfer Registry (PRTR). It is based completely on Open Source software running Debian, Postgres and the OSGeo SDI stack with PostGIS, MapServer, Apache and Mapbender.

The background maps have been created from OpenStreetMap data. The data has been generalized and processed to meet the performance needs of the application. Maps are rendered using MapServer and served through the OGC WMS standard. The application meets the European INSPIRE directive and PRTR.

Many SDIs and geoportal applications operated by the German government already rely completely on Free and Open Source Software. On top of this the PRTR portal uses now also uses freely available community crowd based spatial data as background maps.

Presenter: Arnulf Christl

Biography:

http://arnulf.us/Arnulf

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GeoServer in Production

Putting a web gis server in production requires a dedicated effort to ensure consistent performance, stability and scalability.

This presentation will explore the common task of setting up a GeoServer instance for production and tuning the components to ensure proper allocation of resources. Scaling the solution with a cluster, and tips on keeping staging and production instances synchronized, will also be discussed.

Presenter: Andrea Aime

Biography:

Andrea Aime is a senior software engineer at OpenGeo and lead developer in the GeoServer and GeoTools communities. He has been focusing on Java GIS development, stability and performance over large data sets, rendering and spatial analysis for the last years.

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OSGeo - Globally Powering SDIs

This presentation gives an insight to the Open Source Geospatial Foundation.

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) is an international non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of open source geospatial software, community collaboration and spatial data access. OSGeo is a community of communities reaching into all areas of interest to the global spatial infrastructure.

Millions of end users and web developers unknowingly use Open Source Geospatial software in a daily manner. The investment into the core software goes into the tens of millions of US$. Several 10 thousand GIS professionals use Open Source geospatial software an a daily basis. Thousands of active members in more than 40 local chapter initiatives continuously build the global OSGeo community. Activities can be grouped into three areas:

• Software Projects
• Spatial Data Projects
• Education and Research

In order to be able to provide a reliable technical infrastructure and protect its software projects OSGeo has a legal body. It is a non-profit organization incorporated in Delaware, USA and is supported by 73 individual charter members from 20 nations. These vote for the board of directors who in turn employ the CEO. This way an organization has been created that can also take on copyright ownership for code.

OSGeo operates and maintains development environments for its software projects with code repositories, tracking systems, mailing lists, web sites, wikis, build bots, download space and so on. To be able to focus its efforts on viable projects these are first vetted by the incubation process. Any geospatial Open Source project can apply for incubation by submitting an application form. During incubation several aspects of the project and its governance are evaluated. Many of these processes have been gleaned from larger organizations like the Apache Foundation, for example the code provenance review that each project has to go through or the list of accepted licenses that comes from the Open Source Initiative. Projects are expected to provide well documented working code and documentation as well as a functioning community and communication infrastructure.

OSGeo provides for a forum of users, service and data providers and developers. It cooperates with existing communities from all realms rather than trying to do all on its own. One example is the memorandum of understanding between OGC and OSGeo allowing for quicker development and deployment of standards and leveraging OGC’s integration potential with proprietary software vendors.

One issue that is of mutual interest to all communities is the availability of spatial data justifying a meta level project of its own, the Geospatial Data Committee. Initially thought to become a place where to upload global spatial data it quickly became evident that this would not make much sense due to the great amount of data and the need for a high frequency of updates. Other issues were also found to be much more pressing, for example the need for a clear policy on copyright and licensing and usage of spatial data and most of all a usable meta data policy and repository of resources.

In summary OSGeo has developed into a natural global repository of spatial data services, providers and users.

Presenter: Arnulf Christl

Biography:

http://arnulf.us/Arnulf

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GeoKettle: A powerful open source spatial ETL tool

Geospatial Business Intelligence (BI) tools (geo-analytical dashboards, reporting and Spatial OLAP) present to users summarized data from operational systems in interactive maps, charts, graphs and reports. They allow decision-makers to analyze data in order to make better decisions. They rely on data warehouses which organise geo-analytical data according to dedicated data structures (e.g. star schemas). They enable a fast navigation in large data volumes in order to not hinder the analysis process flow. Some spatial ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) tools are used to build such data warehouses. GeoKettle (http://www.geokettle.org) a spatially-enabled version of Pentaho Data Integration (Kettle) is a powerful, metadata-driven spatial ETL tool dedicated to the integration of different spatial data sources for building/updating data warehouses. It is part of the open source geospatial BI software stack designed by the GeoSOA research group at Laval University. This talk will present how GeoKettle works and its different features.

Presenter: Dr. Thierry Badard

Biography:

Dr. Thierry Badard is professor in geoinformatics at the Department of geomatics sciences of Laval University in Quebec City (Canada). He heads the GeoSOA research group and is a full time researcher and a member of the steering committee of the Centre for Research in Geomatics (CRG). He is also a regular researcher of the GEOIDE Network of Centres of Excellence in geomatics. He has more than 13 years of experience and he has been involved and has led national and international R & D projects of importance. His research interest deals with geospatial (Web) Services Oriented Architectures (SOA), location-based and context-aware web services, geospatial Business Intelligence and geo-analytical tools and the design of intelligent mobile applications for better decision support. He acts as a reviewer for several international journals and scientific conferences and has already an important record of scientific contributions. Dr. Thierry Badard is also involved in the geospatial free and open source community. He is administrator and project coordinator of the GeOxygene, GeoKettle, GeoMondrian and Spatialytics open source projects. He is an OSGeo charter member and acts as a member of the OSGeo conference committee and a reviewer for the OSGeo Journal. He is in charge of the free software commission in the OSGeo Francophone local chapter and he is a founding co-chairs the OSGeo Quebec local chapter. He is also a founding co-chair of the ICA (International Cartographic Association) working group on open source geospatial technologies. For further details, please visit http://geosoa.scg.ulaval.ca.

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ebRIM interface for GeoNetwork OpenSource

We propose to hold a talk on the new EbXML interface to the GeoNetwork OpenSource catalog. This work has been commissioned by the European Space Agency and is set to become part of a future GeoNetwork 3.0 release. We will highlight the various OGC specifications involved in this effort, such as OGC 110r2 – “ebRIM profile of CSW”, OGC 07-144r2 “Basic Extension Package”, and OGC 07-038 – “Cataloguing ISO metadata using the ebRIM profile of CSW”. We will discuss about the architecture and implementation of the EbRim interface in GeoNetwork, what is supported and what are the limitations and, time permitting, talk a little about the direction of GeoNetwork in terms of software architecture.

Presenter: Heikki Doeleman and Jose Benito Garcia Segura

Biography:

Note: we propose to do the presentation with 2 people. We are:

Mr. Heikki Doeleman has obtained a M.Sc. in Computational Linguistics from the University of Amsterdam. He has since worked as a software engineer and software architect in various project, with an emphasis on Java and J2EE. Heikki has been involved with developing GeoNetwork OpenSource for a project in the Netherlands (“National GeoRegister”) and for a project with the European Space Agency.

Mr. Jose Benito Garcia Segura is a software engineer with 10 years of experience working in software projects, most of them related to geographic systems. He has worked with several GIS systems both opensource (mapserver, geonetwork, degree, gvSIG, uDig, geotools, mapbuilder/openlayers, etc.) and commercial (ESRI’s software). He has been involved in several projects related to spatial data infrastructures for some Spanish administrations and last year he has worked in 2 projects related to GeoNetwork: an implementation of ebRIM interface for ESA and the replacement of the map viewer with Openlayers for the Netherlands Spatial Infrastructure.

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GeoServer: Past, Present, and Future

2009 has proven to be another interesting year for the GeoServer project. GeoServer has continued to evolve in terms of exciting new features, stability, and performance.

This presentation will provide a “year in review” describing some of the new and noteworthy of this past year. As well as provide a general overview of GeoServer and the features it provides.

The coming of GeoServer 2.0 brings some major new features to the table such as the new web administration interface and configuration systems. Along with a heap of others including a RESTful configuration api, advanced labeling and rendering improvements, and layer level security just to name a few.

This presentation will close with a sneak peak of what the future holds for GeoServer, and a look at the new features and improvements currently being worked on by the GeoServer developer community.

So if you are an expert GeoServer user, or just a novice trying to figure out if GeoServer is right for you, this talk is for you.

Presenter: Justin Deoliveira

Biography:

Justin is a senior software engineer at OpenGeo. He has been one of the lead developers on the GeoServer project since 2005, as well as an active open source software developer since 2003 contributing to such projects as GeoTools and uDig. Justin is also a charter member of the Open Source GeoSpatial Foundation (OSGeo).

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Beyond "press Ctrl-P" in web map printing

The situation is quite familiar for many end users: on-line maps provide a tremendous choice in flexibility when it comes to navigation or even manipulating your own data. But when it comes to making a print, people are left with the all too common “use your browser’s built-in print function” advice, leading to unsightly prints that may be sufficient for the occasional trip to the coast, but are far from the professional looking prints you used to achieve with your favorite thick client viewer.

We would like to present a novel approach to web map printing based on a component-based template for the print that can be both visualized and manipulated by the end user. Powerpoint-like flexibility is available to the user in positioning, resizing and customizing components like maps, legends, text labels, images, view ports, etc.. Finished templates can be sent to the server for rendering in PDF (using the wonderful iText library) and saved for later reuse.

Presenter: Jan De Moerloose

Biography:

Jan De Moerloose is one of the architects of the Geomajas web mapping framework. He has been involved in both Java and Ajax-based GIS projects. His professional interests include web mapping and GIS enterprise integration.

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Behind the buzz of cloud computing- 52North Open Source Geoprocessing Software in the Google Cloud

Mainstream IT providers such as IBM, Amazon and Google have already started to provide large computational and storage facilities to third parties in an on demand and scalable fashion-also known as cloud computing.
The presentation will elaborate what is behind the buzz word of cloud computing in regard to open source geospatial applications. In detail, the combination of the 52North Open Source Web Processing Service in the Google Cloud will be presented to show that cloud computing is more than marketing. Scalability as one of the core propositions of cloud computing will be tested in the Google Cloud in the context of a real world scenario.

Presenter: Bastian Schaeffer

Biography:

Bastian Schaeffer is the head of the 52North Geoprocessing Community

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Challenges and possibilities of Mobile GIS : perspective from a developing country

Mobile phone is the most commonly used electronic device around the world. Unlike many other appliances mobile phones are extremely popular and used to link communities in developing countries as well. But geo-enabled services on mobile devices are not well accepted in these contexts yet, opposed to the situation in many developed counties.

This study attempts to investigate limitations related to providing GIS services, related to the technological frameworks and services which would be useful to general public, in current context of a developing country. The opportunities for providing socially useful geo-enabled services while accepting the limitations of technological and economical factors in local contexts are explored. The possibility and the suitability of integrating FOSS GIS frameworks with device independent mobile computing is explored. Important roles of mobile web for mobile GIS ,applicability of OGC standards and value of interoperability in mobile GIS is highlighted. The study is based on the experience in Sri Lanka, related to adopting FOSS based approaches in web and mobile GIS.

Presenter: Nimalika Fernando

Biography:

I am a post-graduate research student at University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. For few years, I am trying to introduce FOSS GIS to local community, including education system and industry .I started working with open source web GIS and then saw the possibilities offered by stand alone FOSS GIS tools as well in GIS related activities. With some experience in adopting FOSS tools based web GIS solutions to address local issues in economical and practical manner, my present research work is aimed at integrating participatory GIS in mobile context. I am seeking the possibility of integrating OpenLS , WFS capabilities with mobile computing and customization of the GIS content depend on the capabilities of the mobile device.

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GISVM, the ultimate tool for teaching FOSS4G

GIS Virtual Machine is a new concept of FOSS4G distribution, based on Virtualization technology, which enables it to be a completely installed, configured and ready to use GIS Workstation. And, as a Virtual Machine, it can literally run anywhere.

GISVM is a full-feature GIS Workstation based exclusively on free GIS software: PostgreSQL, PostGIS, GeoServer, Mapserver, FWTools, QGIS, GRASS, gvSIG, uDIG, Kosmo and OpenJump, on Ubuntu Desktop.

As such it offers the growing number of professionals and general users, who need to perform any kind of GIS task, an opportunity to quickly and painlessly start using FOSS4G on their current computer environment.

A case study will be presented on using GISVM at university training, for teaching “ecological modeling and spatial data analysis”, aimed at Master and Doctoral level students in different Universities. It demonstrates how it can be used with excellent results in the framework of teaching purposes.

Presenter: Ricardo Miguel Moreira de Pinho

Biography:

Born in Portugal (1968),
1982 – A computer lover since first started to use Sinclair ZX Spectrum and later Commodore Amiga.
1992 – As a Civil Engineer, has used extensively AutoCAD, Autodesk Civil and GIS solutions on several real world project designs.
1997 – Worked on the Portuguese National Autodesk Distributor (www.micrograf.pt) as a technical software expert responsible for all Civil and GIS Autodesk products.
1999 – Started implementing a Geographic Information System, on a Portuguese Local Authority Administration (www.cm-oaz.pt), based on several GIS proprietary solutions.
2006 – GIS Senior consultant on a Regional Digital project (www.edvdigital.pt) with the challenge to define GIS initiatives on a very low budget (FOSS4G).
2008 – Conceived, built and launched on the internet, the GISVM project (www.gisvm.com).

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MapServer Project Status Report

This session starts with a status report of the MapServer project, followed by an open question/answer session to give a chance to users to interact with members of the MapServer project team.

We will go over the main features and enhancements made to the software in the last year, the current and future direction of the project, the organization of the project and the role of the Project Steering Committee (PSC), and finally discuss contribution opportunities for interested developers and users.

Don’t miss this chance to meet and chat with the members of the MapServer project team!

Presenter: Daniel Morissette and Jeff McKenna

Biography:

Daniel is President and Software Developer at Mapgears. He has been a member of the MapServer development team since 2000 and a member of the MapServer Project Steering Committee (PSC) since its inception. Daniel has contributed new features and enhancements in several areas of the software over the years and played the role of release manager for several releases.

In 2008 Jeff started his own consulting company based around FOSS4G, Gateway Geomatics, and is actively contributing to OSGeo. Founding and Charter member of OSGeo Maintainer for Maptools.org Developer for MS4W Developer for OSGeo4W MapServer Project Steering Committee (PSC) member MapServer documentation lead OSGeo FOSS4G conference committee chair FOSS4G Workshop committee member founding co-chair of OSGeo Ottawa Local Chapter

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Summary of MapServer OGC Web Services

Interoperability is increasingly becoming a focus point for organizations that distribute and share data over the Internet. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) focuses on the development of publicly available geospatial web standards. MapServer currently supports numerous OGC specifications, allowing users to publish their data services in an interoperable manner. This discussion will review the OGC specfications supported in MapServer as well as provide information on implementation options and issues, as well as what the future holds for OGC support in MapServer.

Presenter: Jeff McKenna

Biography:

Primary: Jeff McKenna (Gateway Geomatics)
Secondary: Daniel Morissette (Mapgears)

Jeff McKenna:

In 2008 Jeff started his own consulting company based around FOSS4G, Gateway Geomatics, and is actively contributing to OSGeo.

• Founding and Charter member of OSGeo
• Maintainer for Maptools.org
• Developer for MS4W
• Developer for OSGeo4W
• MapServer Project Steering Committee (PSC) member
• MapServer documentation lead
• OSGeo FOSS4G conference committee chair
• FOSS4G Workshop committee member
  founding co-chair of OSGeo Ottawa Local Chapter

Daniel Morissette:

Daniel is a software developer, mostly interested in webmapping and data access and distribution. He has been an active developer and user of open source geospatial software since 1999 and have led and/or contributed to several open source projects over the years:

• MapServer (member of the MapServer PSC)
• GDAL/OGR (member of the GDAL PSC)
• MITAB (project lead)
• AVCE00 and E00Compr (project lead)
• MapTools.org (one of the instigators and maintainers of the maptools.org portal)
• Involved directly or indirectly in several MapTools.org projects

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Anatomy of a digital field mapping with BeeGIS

BeeGIS is an open source GIS software for field mapping conceived for pen computer.

This software was create to be efficiently and friendly used during digital field data capture by professionals (mainly geologists and engineers), it wants to drastically reduce the loss of information and times fully supporting data acquisition, sharing and transferring.

Enhancements on the already tested GPS tool, the geonotes and the annotation tools were made as well as several new tools were created, as for example:

• the fieldbook: this tool allows to organise geonotes properly, access them quickly and save them to and load them from disk.
• the photo sync: the tool allows to geotag a picture in its right shutting position by synching date and time between picture and GPS.

This presentation shows all new and old digital field mapping tools contained in BeeGIS by means of a step by step description of a sample mapping excursion, lead by a team of two people armed with a tablet pc and an android based smartphone.

authors: Andrea Antonello, Silvia Franceschi, De Donatis Mauro, Susini Sara

Presenter: Andrea Antonello,Silvia Franceschi,Mauro Dedonatis

Biography:

Andrea Antonello works on GFOSS development since his degree in environmental engineering at the University of Trento, Italy. Together with Silvia Franceschi he leads HydroloGIS, a company that makes use as well as develops GFOSS software for environmental analyses and is specialized in technology transfer from universities. Andrea is coordinator and main developer of the JGrass project and part of the project steering committee of uDig. Since 2007 he is doing a PhD about GFOSS development for digital field mapping (BeeGIS extensions for JGrass).

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JGrass, present and future

Since its merge with the uDig community the JGrass team had a hard time to migrate all of its most important components into the new framework. After two years the move has proved to be well chosen. Not only the existing modules were enhanced, but also possibilities were created for large scale customizations for complex water household projects for pubblic administrations.

This presentation will first introduce the current state of the JGrass project and its tools:

• the openmi modeling system
• the console scripting engine
• new geomophological tools
• new complex models

It will then describe the ongoing efforts like for example:

• support for tiled reading and writing of GRASS raster maps to solve memory issues
• browsing tools for the embedded and remote database instance
• jiffle support for the new mapcalc
• grass rasters and nasa worldwind

As a separated part also the new JGrass manuals will be presented.

The presentation is status report for the JGrass project, focused on describing both the current state and the most important future enhancements.

authors: Andrea Antonello, Silvia Franceschi, Riccardo Rigon

Presenter: Andrea Antonello,Silvia Franceschi,Riccardo Rigon

Biography:

Andrea Antonello works on GFOSS development since his degree in environmental engineering at the University of Trento, Italy. Together with Silvia Franceschi he leads HydroloGIS, a company that makes use as well as develops GFOSS software for environmental analyses and is specialized in technology transfer from universities. Andrea is coordinator and main developer of the JGrass project and part of the project steering committee of uDig. Since 2007 he is doing a PhD about GFOSS development for digital field mapping (BeeGIS extensions for JGrass).

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JGrass-uDig's sense of climate change

This presentation guides the user through a collection of tools for hydro-geomorpohologic and climate analysis.
These tools are contained in the JGrass spatial analysis toolbox extentions for uDig and known as the Horton Machine.
Among other things the maximum discharge Peakflow model, the full hydrological model Newage, the SaintGeo propagation model and the soil stability Shalstab model will be presented.

The steps by step description will consider:
- definition of an environmental scenario
- data collection: extraction of the main terrain attributes from the DEM (slopes, gradients, curvatures, contributing areas, as well as the river network and the hillslopes map).
- preparation for the models: data analysis, validation and interpolation (precipitation, temperature, air pressure, wind speed and soil moisture).
- modeling: connection of the collected data to the attributes of the territory. Use of hydrological models to calculate environmental attributes on the extracted watershed.
- discussion of the obtained results: with focus on the evolution of the water flow and the snow coverage, considering the soil interaction with precipitation, temperatures and other meteorological quantities.

AUTHORS: Silvia Franceschi, Andrea Antonello, Riccardo Rigon

Presenter: Silvia Franceschi,Andrea Antonello,Riccardo Rigon

Biography:

Silvia Franceschi graduated in Environmental and Territorial Engineering at the University of Trento, and in 2004 she gained a first level master in Project Management at the Department Mechanical Engineering at the University of Padova. Specialized in hydrology, geomorphology and hydraulics, she worked at the Department Civil and Environmental Engineering of the University of Trento where she contributed to the development of both distributed and semi-distributed hydrologic applications. Silvia is a power user of GFOSS GIS tools. She actively contributes to the JGrass, BeeGIS and uDig projects.

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Yukon Planning Atlas - Building regional capacity for land and resource management

Production of data products occurs at various stages of regional land use planning processes, most commonly in analog formats of text, maps, tables and photographs. Distribution is often limited an local, due to the high cost of reproduction of color maps and images.

By developing workflows that also prepare and manage data for distribution as web map services, a subset of the regional planning database can be published to a broader community. The FOSS4G framework can then be used to lever this data, providing the interoperability necessary for multi-agency resource management. The adoption of Open Source technologies may also help reduce costs for capacity building.

The Yukon Planning Atlas is a Mapserver/Chameleon application developed to distribute ecological, cultural and economic data assembled for production of land use plans following settlement of aboriginal land claims. Training in the use of the application is provided to build capacity in knowledge management with First Nation and government land and resource officers.

This presentation will review the process for developing an Open Source application, describe the workplan for preparing and publishing WMS data, and demonstrate the use of a FOSS4G application.

Presenter: Jeff Hamm

Biography:

Jeff combines systems thinking with geography to develop information solutions for land use planning, resource management and municipal service delivery. He has spent the last 20+ years in Yukon Canada, helping develop Open Source solutions that build local capacity to manage traditional knowledge, ecological and economic data.

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The Use of Open Geospatial software in SOPAC for Data Cataloging

Since the establishment of the Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) in 1972, the SOPAC OIP Programme has been involved in geophysical, bathymetric, marine and coastal surveying and mapping using various techniques across the Pacific Islands region. The data collected from over 30 years of surveys has been carefully recorded but now are on a risk of been lost.

GEONETWORK an online searchable digital library is now been implemented to facilitate the
systematic and concerted effort to rescue this data and create a more structured system for storing and documenting these vital datasets and also facilitate the security, accessibility and sharing of geographically referenced thematic information. Among these efforts the SOPAC Geonetwork team also supports capacity building and improved knowledge and expertise of open source spatial software such as Quantum GIS and Grass GIS. Such platforms have been used in the conversion of older data formats before cataloguing on the SOPAC GEONETWORK.

GEONETWORK now holds a range of data from regional bathymetry, coastal topography datasets, technical reports, seismic data,map products, marine physio-chemical datasets, maritime boundary Information, sea level data, regional marine scientific research cruise information and data, satellite imagery and scanned aerial photography.
The use of open source software is seen as an important step in maintaining a sustainable level of regional interest and use of such data, since proprietary software is expensive for Pacific Island countries to purchase and maintain.

Presenter: Keleni Raqisia

Biography:

Keleni Raqisia, first developed her interest in Open Spatial software while studying GIS at the University of the South Pacific, where she conducted a very brief survey of the, “Use of Open GIS software in the South Pacific Islands" as a student project. She worked briefly for the Fiji Forestry Department and later joined SOPAC where she currently, is working as the Ocean and Islands Information System officer responsible for the recovering of archived Marine related data and cataloging using the open, on-line searchable digital library platform,Geonetwork. A large part of her work ,has also been involved in the application of open source spatial software such as Quantum GIS and Grass GIS for converting old datasets before cataloging in Geonetwork. She hopes to extended a regional interest in the use of Open Spatial software since proprietary software is expensive for Pacific Island countries to purchase and maintain.

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Using OGC Standards to link BI and Spatial

There is an area of increasing interest in linking GIS or spatial analysis capability into the everyday reporting and analysis tools used within Business. This is not linking simple jpeg images of countries but full blown GIS server implementations that provide a capability for Business Reporting solutions that are typically focussed on charting, pivoting and tables to include a dynamic linked spatial analysis capability.

In this presentation I will explore the use of combinations of Open Source and commercial software in conjunction with OGC standards to provide a generic connection framework between Business Intelligence tools such as BIRT, Business Objects, Cognos, Hyperion and Microsoft Excel with Geospatial solutions such as Geoserver that conform to OGC standards. The integration is based on the concept of a platform that manages data flows, controls the application logic and provides the required visualisations back to the BI tool. This being done within an OGC framework for communication with the GIS server. It uses the OGC standards – WMC (Web Map Context), WMS (Web Map Service), WFS (Web Feature Service) , and SLD (Styled Layer Descriptor) to interoperate with GIS Servers in a generic, standards based manner.

I will also provide an overview of how this platform is being used in a number of Government and private agencies to provide integrated decision support solutions.

Presenter: Andy Meehan

Biography:

Andy is the Chief Technology Officer for Integeo which is an Australian owned company specialising in adding spatial analysis capability to their existing Business Intelligence deployments.

Andy has 25 year history in IT and has spent the last 3 years helping Australian and International companies and Government Departments add spatial analysis to their reporting solutions.

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The value of spatial information to the Australian economy

The spatial information sector has penetrated most sectors of the Australian economy and has been an important contributor to economic growth. In 2007 ACIL Tasman estimated that the spatial information industry had contributed between $6.4 billion and $12.6 billion to Australia’s GDP. Recent research leads us to believe that the contribution has increased significantly since 2007.
There are many examples of applications of spatial information that are transforming the way governments and businesses manage their affairs. Government applications include: biosecurity; national security; natural resources management; emergency management; geoscience; water resources planning and management; and the management of the consequences of climate change. Business applications can be found in: facilities management; property: planning and construction; forestry fisheries and agriculture; transport; logistics; property; and retail. Consumer applications are also increasing dramatically. GPS in car navigation, social networking and web based mapping tools are only the start of what is expected to become mainstream consumer applications in the near future.
The challenge for government, business and researchers is to facilitate access and use of this data. Development of a spatial data infrastructure has been on the agenda of governments for many years. The recent proposal by ANZLIC to develop the underlying framework for an ‘Australian Spatial Market Place’ is an important step forward in realising the vision of providing seamless access to existing and new users of spatial resources. The CRC Spatial and universities provide a second component – innovation. Further innovation and product development by business is the third component. Partnership between government, the research community and industry is fundamental to a successful way forward for the spatial information sector.

Presenter: Alan Smart

Biography:

Alan Smart is the Marketing Director a Principal Consultant working in the Canberra office of ACIL Tasman. He advises on economics, markets and policy for corporate and government clients.
Alan consults in the energy, water and infrastructure sectors and has long experience in development of market projections in the energy sector including gas, electricity and petroleum products.
Alan works with spatially based economic models and has undertaken projects concerned with the value of and markets for spatial information. In 2007 he led a review of the economic impact of spatial information in Australia and is currently undertaking a similar project for New Zealand.
Prior to entering consulting in 1998, Alan had over seventeen years experience as a senior executive in the Commonwealth Government in the energy, water and agriculture. He has extensive experience in energy policy reform and regulation. His appointments were in senior policy advising roles as well as in business operations including Chief Executive of the Pipeline Authority and Executive Director of the Timor Gap Joint Authority. Relevant areas of Alan’s work included oil pricing and taxation, gas and electricity market reform, regulation, pipeline access, risk and safety policy and corporate governance.
Alan has qualifications in Engineering and Economics and the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers, Australia.

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A review of international developments in policy and legal frameworks for sharing of spatial data

1. There is growing interest in, and demand for, access to spatial data

2. There has been a lot of work going on in the development of policy frameworks for access to and sharing of spatial data eg INSPIRE, GEOSS

3. There is recognition that legal issues need to be managed in order to facilitate access and sharing – we consider, in particular, the Australian experience with the use of Creative Commons (CC) licences (pioneered in the GILF ([Australian] Government Information Licensing Framework) PROJECT) in relation to public sector information.

4. We consider the advantages of using open content licensing (eg CC) to facilitate access to and sharing of spatial data and address some issues requiring further clarification.

Presenter: Professor Anne Fitzgerald, Neale Hooper

Biography:

PROFESSOR ANNE FITZGERALD, JSD, LLM (Columbia), LLM (London), LLB(Tas), is a Barrister and Professor in Law Research in QUT’s Law Faculty, where she teaches in the fields of intellectual property and internet law and is a principal researcher on projects for OAK Law and the CRC for Spatial Information (see http://www.oaklaw.qut.edu.au and http://www.aupsi.org.au). During the last 5 years, a major focus of her work has been the development of legal frameworks supporting access to public sector information and publicly-funded research, including the use of open licensing models (such as Creative Commons) in the government sector. She has been a member of the QUT-Queensland Government team that developed the Government Information Licensing Framework (GILF) and has been involved in that project from its inception in 2004. Anne was an expert advisor to the federal government’s review of the National Innovation System in 2008 (see Venturous Australia at http://www.innovation.gov.au/innovationreview). Her latest publication is ‘Open Access Policies, Practices and Licensing: A Review of the Literature in Australia and Selected Jurisdictions’ (2009), available for download at http://www.aupsi.org

Neale Hooper LLM, LLB, BA (Qld) is the principal lawyer for the Queensland Government’s Government Information Licensing Framework (GILF) Project and has led the project’s legal work since its inception in 2005. The objective of the GILF project is the development of a legal framework to facilitate increased online access to, and reuse of, public sector information, in a legally effective manner, including by the use of standardized open content licences, particularly Creative Commons licences. Neale is a leading IP and ICT lawyer with over 20 years experience with Queensland Crown Law, providing specialist law services in these areas. Presently he is on secondment to the Department of Environment and Resource Management and is a lead researcher on the CRC-Spatial Information Project “Enabling Real-Time Information Access in Both Urban and Regional Areas

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Maximising reuse of water information through Creative Commons Licensing

Access to water is integral to the sustainability of the Australian environment, human population and continuing industrial and agricultural development, however water scarcity is an ongoing facet of life in most parts of Australia.

The Australian Government has committed $450 million over 10 years to the Bureau of Meteorology to provide increased access to water information through the development of the Australian Water Resources Information System (AWRIS). The Bureau is committed to not only disseminating water information but to also maximising the reuse of that information. To this end the Bureau is collaborating with the Government Information Licensing Project ( http://www.gilf.gov.au/ )to make water information available under the least restrictive Creative Commons licence; the By Licence.

This presentation will give an overview of the development and proliferation of Creative Commons licensing in Australia with a particular focus on its application in AWRIS.

Presenter: Brendan Moran and Baden Appleyard

Biography:

Brendan Moran

Brendan supervises policy support and development in the Bureau of Meteorology’s Water Division including the development of regulations. He has been engaged in Commonwealth Government efforts to free up water information over the past three years, particularly in relation to the National Water Initiative. He has a background in environment and agricultural policy and management and holds a Masters in Sustainable Agriculture.

Baden Appleyard

Baden holds degrees in law and commerce, in addition to tertiary qualifications in management. Baden is a Barrister of the Supreme Court of Queensland and of the High Court of Australia. From 2000 – 2008 Baden was employed with the Australian Taxation Office, more recently as a Principal Litigator within the ATO Legal Services Branch, and having carriage of a broad variety of complex litigation in general and commercial law, insolvency and bankruptcy law, workplace law, family law, and administrative law particularly in relation to taxation, privacy law and FOI.

Baden also has extensive experience in the development of online legal education tools and has taught IT law at both undergraduate and masters levels since 1997. He has also delivered numerous presentations on the legal implications of emerging technologies. Over the past 12 months Baden has been Principal Research Fellow with the Faculty of Law at the Queensland University of Technology. During that period Baden was Project Manager of CRC-SI Project 3.0 which financially supports and provides assistance to underpin the legal and policy frameworks of the GILF. Baden has also worked with the GILF Team in OESR. Baden is currently working on the legal aspects of the Water Information Licensing Framework Project which is funded by the Bureau of Meteorology. Its task is to examine and provide best practice advice on licensing for provision of water information under the Water Act 2007(Cth).

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Shared Land Information Platform (SLIP) Enabler: Leveraging Public/Private Partnerships

The Shared Land Information Platform (SLIP) provides users with access to over 350 datasets streamed from over 20 agencies. This ‘connected’ Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) allows users to access the latest information for critical business decisions. SLIP is a world leading example of a shared platform.

The SLIP enabling framework, know as SLIP Enabler, provides a single point of access to real-time spatial data from a variety of government and commercial sources allowing businesses to become completely informed for critical business decisions instead of relying on quarterly or even annual updates of data. SLIP is supported by a platform of champions, applications and service providers. The shared infrastructure provides a cost-effective solution to state-wide or even national issues, from Emergency Management to Natural Resources and Health, and positions government for future growth.

As SLIP quickly becomes embraced throughout parts of Australia, Landgate has leveraged from outside spatial expertisee. This partnership with the commercial sector was put in place to ensure sustainability of resources and skills to meet a challenging resistance to a new SDI in many organisations. Utilising the expertise of commercial service providers and spatial vendors ensures SLIP can be connected to and used to meet the business needs of any organisation.

The benefits of SLIP are far-reaching, it has applications in private business and government. By partnering with the commercial sector, new and innovative business opportunities have become evident and it has highlighted the importance of supporting the commercial vendors to realise the goals of both organisations.

Presenter: Kylie Armstrong

Biography:

Kylie Armstrong is the Manager, Business Programs, Landgate and is also the SLIP Enabler Business Manager

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Rearranging the landscape of spatial database technology

There is a new open source spatial database in town. This database offers OGC compliance, coordinate system support, indexing, GDAL/OGR connectivity, table partitioning, replication, online upgrades, online backups, and much more. It’s backed by 24 × 7 support and a team that operates out of 58 countries. As a special bonus, we’ll showcase some shocking innovations in database technology. Watch this space!

Presenter: Andrew Ross

Biography:

Andrew Ross is Director of Development at Ingres where he leads a team of software engineers developing code to store map data in Ingres Databases. Andrew has been developing and using open source for over a decade and teaches using open source at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada since 2004. Andrew Ross is also Founder and President of the Free and Open Source Software Learning Centre (http://fosslc.org) which provides IT/video infrastructure to support open source communities and teaches skills with open source software. Andrew is a charter member of OSGeo.

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