In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

Since the Tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004, volunteers around the world have been involved right from the start in the force task when a major event is seeking help from mappers. Over the years, OSM and its Humanitarian OSM Team (HOT) has been playing a key role in collaboration with emergency managers (e.g. MapAction, UN-OCHA, USAID, local government) and has demonstrated its usefulness. The HOT was involved in many crisis management situations, such as the Earthquake in Haiti in 2010 (http://cosmha.wordpress.com/ &  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/FR:WikiProject_Haiti), the Revolution of the people in Tunisia and Libya, the Ketsana Typhoon in Philippines, the Tsunami in Japan, the flooding of Richelieu River in Canada, etc.

In Denver, the delegation of Japanese was well represented with two subjects at the State of the Map and one at the FOSS4G: http://2011.foss4g.org/sessions/response-osgeo-japan-other-comunities-great-east-japan-earthquake-0. In some other countries, such as Tunisia and Libya, OSM has been demonstrated to be an empowerment tool such as Facebook and Twitter during a crisis when information was at stake. Contribution of volunteers from Japan and other parts of the world (e.g. Haiti) has been done mostly in collaboration with NGO’s, public organisation, UN offices and private contributors. Finally, in the disaster risk panel, chaired by Kate Chapman from HOT, at the State of the Map conference on Sunday, a project utilizing OSM and Open Source Software for Disaster Risk reduction in Indonesia was presented and general discussion was made on what is so challenging for mapping Team in such exercise (e.g. using commercial imagery, government trust and licensing problems).

While the first day of the State of the Map 2011 in Denver was a bang on Business day and Mapping Party, the second part of the Conference has been schedule as the Weekend – Community. During these three beautiful sunny days in the Colorado Capital City, technical development, ethics, grassroots mobilizing effect, quality control, humanitarian mission, symbology enhancement were some of the subject presented and discussed.

The total number of registered persons was estimated around 255 (as one of the biggest ever) and more than 15 sponsors supported the Conference. This Denver edition marked a step forward maturity for the OSM Foundation and its related OSM projects (OpenCycleMap, OpenTrailView, OpenStreetMap-3D, etc.) as well as its presence in North-America (will see after the event). With more than 400 000 members, OSM is one of the biggest open source project in the world in terms of members participating within the same environment. This edition of 2011 marked a point where the community has a vibrant presence in many continents and looks more diverse than ever (Africa: Tunisia, Middle-East: Israel, Australia, Americas, Europe and Asia: Philippines and India). State of the Map Conference is very different than usual or formal IT/GIS Conference, it just lets sense of humour, Humanity and Engagement been expressed and playing a role in all contribution and activists presentation. The fun-filled atmosphere lets the community to learn unique story of OSM mapping projects (e.g. blind mapper in the Philippines, live balloon photography to document the size of protests in Chile, Address Hunter multi-player game), their positive changes all over the world (e.g. Mapping for Changes) and at the same time what is yet to be develop for the upcoming years (e.g. Road Sheilds, OpenTrailView, Local Chapter).

While there is still new private partners involved recently with OSM, such as ESRI (e.g. ArcGIS Editor for OSM), this “Do It Yourself” (DIY) type of mapping project looks now as a datasource that cannot be ignored by public (e.g. USGS, Ordnance Survey) and private (e.g. MapQuest, Bing, Yahoo! and Google) geospatial data provider in their business model.

OpenStreetMap annual event finished Sunday night with its General Meeting with new board members, but the presence of OSM at FOSS4G 2011 during the week ahead will still be active in Denver in workshops (http://2011.foss4g.org/sessions/introduction-humanitarian-openstreetmap-team and http://2011.foss4g.org/sessions/foss4g-routing-pgrouting-tools-openstreetmap-road-data-and-geoext), presentations and discussion on Open Data.

We mentioned it over two years ago and now it reaches a major milestone, the open source SOLAP server GeoMondrian 1.0 has been released.

What is GeoMondrian? "GeoMondrian is an open source Spatial OnLine Analytical Processing (Spatial OLAP or SOLAP) server, a spatially-enabled version of Pentaho Analysis Services (aka. Mondrian). As far as we know, it is the first implementation of such a server and it is open source! [...] GeoMondrian provides then a consistent integration of spatial objects into the OLAP data cube structure, instead of fetching them from an external spatial DBMS, web service or a GIS file. To summarize, GeoMondrian brings to the Mondrian OLAP server what PostGIS brings to the PostgreSQL DBMS, i.e. a consistent and powerful storage and querying for geospatial data!"

The upcoming week is looking to be very interesting for the industry of geospatial in the USA as well as the "open source / open data" world. As lucky as I am, I will be the on-site Slashgeo editor representative (Slashgeo is also the media partner for both Conferences) in both events in Denver, Colorado: State of the Map 2011 (Annual conference about the progress of OpenStreetMap and free geo-data in general) and FOSS4G 2011 (global conference focused on Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial, organized by OSGeo).

          
State of the Map 2011 is almost sold out in terms of registration and as the first FOSS4G in the USA, it might be the biggest FOSS4G conference ever in terms of number of attendees. Denver will be THE place to be for sharing new ideas on a Free and Open world which sharing geospatial information and tools is needed from everyone, everywhere and everyday.

First, my planning at the State of the Map weekend event is to look at what is next for OpenStreetMap in terms of quality, real applications, its role when dealing with major disaster event, ESRI/Microsoft contribution to OSM, crowd sourcing with OSM for public organisation such as USGS, etc.

Secondly, the FOSS4G 2011 might be a good gathering for social networking in the open source high tech world, but also to see the new trends coming from the industry, such as WPS, cloud map and tiling services. My planning for the FOSS4G is to attend presentation or workshop related to: geocache, WFS Transactional, WPS project, GIS in the Cloud, mobile applications, PgRouting, PostGIS, Open Data with Open Source, Web Mapping Performance, etc. I will keep you posted with some quick impression and nice pictures of the main geospatial open source and open data social and technical events. Denver is looking open, global and free for the entire week!

Nicolas Gignac, on-site Slashgeo editor representative at the FOSS4G and State of the Map 2011

Via email I learned that a week ago ESA released a new version of their open source SAR toolbox named NEST, now at version 4B-1.0. This is their first major update this year. We mentioned NEST releases since 2008.

Supported product formats include: 

• ENVISAT ASAR, ERS AMI 1 & 2 (CEOS & Envisat format from PGS and VMP), JERS SAR, ALOS PALSAR, TerraSarX, ADARSAT-2, Cosmo-Skymed, BEAM DIMAP, GeoTIFF, HDF, NetCDF, ENVI, PolsarPro, GETASSE30 DEM, ACE DEM, ASTER DEM and SRTM DEM

What's new for version 4B:

• Interferometry
  • Improved interferogram and coherence estimation
  • Topographic phase removal
  • Filtering of spectras in range and azimuth
• Command line interface improvements
• Easier Coregistration from the command line
• Band variables for batch processing of BandMaths
• ReprojectionUI for graph processing
• Automatic fetching of DORIS and PRARE orbit files
• Automatic GETASSE30 download
• New interpolators
• HSV View
• Uses JDK 7
• Bug fixes
• Significant performance improvements

Still in catch up mode, here's the last three weeks of geospatial open source news in batch mode.

• Of huge pertinence to the geospatial open source and open data communities, the FOSS4G 2011 and State of the Map conferences are set to being in a few days. If you're in the Denver area and still hesiting, don't, they are really worth. I'll have to miss them myself this year, but Slashgeo's editor Nicolas Gignac will be attending and provide coverage.
• Directions Mag share an interview with Peter Batty on what to expect at FOSS4G 2011
• Another recent article at DM is named Open Source Licensing: Risk and Opportunity, risks related to intellectual property and governance
• Sextante, the open source spatial java data analysis library, can now work in ArcGIS, and run SAGA and GRASS GIS in ArcGIS via Sextante, and why not, use Sextante algorithms in ArcGIS Model Builder
• PostGIS's Paul Ramsey continues to share insightful comments in an entry named Open source is not free (as in beer) ...
• Users of Autodesk's MapGuide Open Source will be happy to know MapGuide Maestro 3.5 has been released. We already know that MapGuide Maestro 4.0 is introducing 'Local Conneciton Mode'
• V1 mentions updates to the open source multi-modal routing software OpenTripPlanner, which now supports Canada, Poland, India, Spain, Ireland, and Israel (we covered OpenTripPlanner in May 2005) 
• Tim links to a generic article on Quantum GIS in the GeoInformatics magazine, and here's a tip on modifying SVG symbols in QGIS
• Here's an entry on getting GPS data (GPX format) into SpatiaLite, either from QGIS, CSV or OGR
• Here's web-based PostGIS geometry and raster viewer, no need to install anything
• GeoServer now has extensions to monitor and audit your GeoServer installation

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode. Yes, on a Saturday! I'll be away for the next three weeks and dare delay my family's departure to feed you with these.

From the open source front:

• Mentioned before, the open source map design tool TileMill reached version 0.4.1   
• Some recent improvements of QGIS: an extraction projection tool for QGIS, a new MapInfo to QGIS style converter and Shield Labels for QGIS
• Not the first time it happened, a briton got arrested during his OpenStreetMap mapping activities, yes, that was before the recent London riots
• O'Reilly offers an entry named Open source maps tell data journalism stories in Afghanistan
• Paul Ramsey of the PostGIS fame shares interesting arguments on the open source vs proprietary debacle
• Here's an entry on generating elevation maps from along-track stereo pairs using the open source Orfeo ToolBox
• We told you ourselves a few times, but here's how James Fee telling us Why You Can’t Afford to Miss FOSS4G 2011

From the Esri front:

• The File GeoDatabase API version 1.1 has been released, in includes a .NET wrapper and bug fixes
• James Fee mentions PgMap and QMap to connect to spatial databases with ArcGIS 10.1 without SDE

From the Google front:

• In their learning series, here's an entry on GIS with Google Earth and Google Maps
• Google shares an entry on famine crisis relief in the Horn of Africa
• Here's the 50th anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall in Google Earth
• Google invites us to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial with Google Maps

On the Microsoft front:

• Microsoft updated their Bing Maps Account Center with three main improvements: Direct Publishing of Data Sources, Map Navigation for Data Editing, and Enhanced POI Data Search
• Here's an entry named KinectFusion Provides Low-Cost and Accessible 3D Interior Mapping

In the miscellaneous category:

• The Spatial Law blog shares a long entry named Geolocation and Privacy: Are We Going the Right Way?: "However, many of bills are so broadly written that if they were to become law they could apply to a broad range of geospatial products and services, including satellite and aerial imagery, GIS and GPS."
• VerySpatial mentions the launch of the augmented reality Layar Vision app to "recognize real-world objects and then trigger digital content based on that object"
• The GEB shares satellite imagery on the Japanese Tsunami that created some massive icebergs
• MacRumors details an Apple patent on schematic maps: "[...] a new maps application that could display a simplified subset of information most relevant to a user seeking specific information or routing."
• In special remote sensing news, Slashdot mentions a camera reaching its target by being thrown by a grenade launcher
• MapQuest tells us how free listing works on their MapQuest Local Business Center

In the maps category:

• O'Reilly discuss maps of the recent London riots
• Mapperz mentions the release of USGS historical maps

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode. As we can see by the lower number of stories shared recently, a lot of people are on holidays.

From the open source front:

• In an entry on GIS salary results, GeoChalkboard mentioned that after Esri software at 93%, open source GIS came second at 14% as their primary platform
• Two entries on QGIS, one on the upcoming massive improvements to raster performance and the second the upcoming new hatching modes

From the Esri front:

• If you like betas, ArcGIS 10.1 Beta 1 is now available

From the Google front:

• Google offers new 45° imagery for 35 cities: "Augsburg, Germany. Barstow, CA. Bartlett, TX. Big Bear, CA. Blackstone, VA. Catalina Foothills, AZ. Córdoba, Spain. Delano, CA. Desert Hot Springs, CA. Richmond, VA. Elgin, TX. Healdsburg, CA. Helendale, CA. Hemet, CA. Houston, TX. Mendoza, Argentina. Midlothian, VA. Napa Valley, CA. New Braunfels, TX. Ojai, CA. Ottawa, Canada. Pensacola, FL. Porterville, CA. Plant City, FL. Rancho Del Lago, AZ. Rosario, Argentina. Santa Clarita, CA. Sarasota, FL. Taylor, TX. Temecula, CA. Treasure Island, CA. Troy, IL. Twentynine Palms, CA. Wakefield, VA. Yucca Valley, CA."
• I also liked this example, using Google Earth to preview what you'll see from your seats at a Paul McCartney show

From the Microsoft front:

• We mentioned Microsoft exposing the location of PCs and devices,  they took action and their wifi location database isn't publicly available anymore

In the miscellaneous category:

• APB mentions tablets in grocery stores using RFID to provide location-based information, and instant deals, to shoppers
• C3 Technologies has been acquired by an unknown but presumably big company, they focus on generating impressive 3D  "maps" from aerial imagery, such as this example in Oslo
• Slashdot reports that working UAV aircrafts can be built by 3D printers within minutes
• V1 mentions GeoHive, a website offering world statistics on various themes, including population, and India will surpass China in population pretty soon

In the maps category:

• SS mentions that the online CORONA Atlas of the Middle East, based on spy imagery from 1968-1972, is now available  
• O'Reilly mentions the oldest surviving map of Great Britain, from the 14th century, now digitized. Also for the same region, there's a new Great British Picnics maps

Via Datalibre, I learned about OpenTreeMap, an open source software for collaborative, geography-enabled urban tree inventory.

From the main site: "Urban street trees have myriad proven benefits for communities including providing shade, improving air quality, assisting with stormwater runoff, raising property values, decreasing utility bills, and enhancing the look and feel of communities. While tree inventories provide municipalities with vital data to consult when managing the urban forest, creating a complete inventory is a time consuming and resource intensive process.  OpenTreeMap provides an easy-to-use public inventorying platform that enables individuals, organizations, and governments to collaboratively contribute to an interactive and dynamic map of a community’s tree population. OpenTreeMap can be used in a single municipality or cover a broader geographic region with many communities.

Main Features:

• Search for trees by species, location, or advanced filters such as diameter, date planted, or tree characteristics (flowering, native, etc.)
• Add trees individually or load tree datasets to the system
• Edit and add information about existing tree records including species name, location, height, plot size and type, conditions, actions needed, funding sources, data owner
• Upload tree photos
• Export tree lists as KML or CSV files
• Automatically calculate ecosystem benefits (greenhouse gas, water, energy,  air quality) based on a tree’s species and diameter
• Monitor user accounts, comments, and system edits
• Get optional integrated tree key to assist in identifying tree species"

Geocoded trees have been mentioned a few times in the past, including Google Earth 6's native support of 3D trees, using lidar to identify urban trees, or even embedding RFID tags in trees.

Top 10 Reasons to Attend FOSS4G 2011 in Denver
The Event Presents Great Value and Rare Opportunity

DENVER, July 27, 2011 -- The Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) conference is the premier international conference focused on open source geospatial software. The event presents a number of unique learning opportunities at a great value compared to similar professional conferences.

Following are the Top 10 reasons to consider attendance at this event.

1. Open source software for geospatial is gaining strong momentum with high performance and high-profile use cases, and you need to know what's available. If you are currently using closed source commercial software, you owe it to yourself and your organization to understand the capabilities, cost justifications, and the community of open source geospatial software developers.
2. Location: Denver is the recognized geospatial hub of the United States with many commercial geospatial data providers, commercial software companies, engaged software developers, and a wide array of federal agencies that create and manage geospatial data and applications. Coming to this hub will expose attendees to an engaged and vibrant community to interact and learn from.
3. Location: This is the first of these global gatherings to take place in North America in the past four years, and will likely not be repeated soon. The event makes its way around the world on a yearly basis, and if you live and work in North America, this is a chance to catch it while it's close.
4. Location: The weather and touring possibilities make it an excellent draw for global participants. The timing coincides with peak golden aspen viewing in the mountains, with typically clear and crisp autumn weather. Denver is also a key jumping off point for tours of the scenic American west, including many of the large national parks that are within a day's drive.
5. Gain a global perspective with presentations from speakers from around the world.
6. An introductory immersion welcomes newcomers with concentrated content to get you up to speed. With an all-day planned as an introduction, it's a prime opportunity to understand what's available and at a very low cost of only $149 for the day.
7. This is the top educational event for detailed workshops and sessions on tools, custom development, and applications. Again, there is great value here with Monday workshops at only $149 each, and one-day registration at only $349.
8. Evening social gatherings, big party night, and informal meetings make this a prime event to meet peers and extend your social network.
9. The event draws top developers in the community who are developing the next-generation tools. If you are looking for top talent to act as consultants in creating custom tools or to integrate FOSS solutions with your commercial implementations, this is the marketplace to meet them.
10. It's rare to encounter such a dedicated group of individuals on a mission to change the world with software. Be part of the movement to extend the reach and possibilities of Open Source Software for Geospatial and put a little passion in your work.

If you still aren't convinced, you can watch this video http://vimeo.com/osgeo/foss4g2011 from the local committee with a personal appeal, and insistence, that you come to FOSS4G in Denver.

About FOSS4G
FOSS4G is the global conference focused on Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial that is organized by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) with support from an all-volunteer organizing committee and professional conference management from the Geospatial Information Technology Association (GITA). The 2011 FOSS4G event in Denver marks the first North American event in four years, with the prior three events taking place in Barcelona, Sydney and Cape Town.

SOURCE: FOSS4G Organizing Committee

RELATED LINKS:
http://2011.foss4g.org/ FOSS4G Denver 2011
http://www.osgeo.org/ Open Source Geospatial Foundation
http://stateofthemap.org/ State of the Map Conference
http://www.gita.org/ Geospatial Information Technology Association