In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

Here's the recent open source / open data geonews in batch mode.

Software-related:

• On the iD Map Editor, the new OpenStreetMap editor, reached the Beta 1 state, if you want to see it in action, here's a nice 1-minute video
• It was mentioned in our press release section, but deserves additional attention, "GeoServer Beginner's Guide is a new book from Packt that teaches the readers to build custom maps using the dynamic real-time geospatial information. With the help of this book, readers will learn sharing of real-time maps quickly" Here's Jody's review of the book
• Via OR I learned about the release of Titan 0.3 which supports georeferenced data: "Titan is a highly scalable graph database optimized for storing and querying large graphs with billions of vertices and edges distributed across a multi-machine cluster. Titan is a transactional database that can support thousands of concurrent users."
• Here's about Scribe - A tool to facilitate the creation of Maps with MapServer
• Via OR, here's the code for WebGL Heatmap "a JavaScript library for high performance heatmap display"
• An open source Desktop GIS we never mentioned before, VSceneGIS Desktop v0.9.5, which seems to have only Spanish documentation
• Interested by the desktop GIS uDig? Here's a course on geographic scripting in uDig
• Amongst other updates, New final version of i3Geo available: i3Geo 4.7 and deegree 3.2.0 webservices released
• You can't wait? Here's Some cool new features in the upcoming QGIS 2.0
• And yes, OpenLayers 3 is getting closer to reality, the latest code sprint summary

Open data:

• Related to OpenStreetMap, the LearnOSM website got a major facelift and there's OSM PLUS - the OpenStreetMap Commercial Users Summit, the first meeting to occur on June 10th in San Francisco... with Garmin being another of the major companies diving into OpenStreetMap
• Geoff tells us about EuroGlobalMap, a free and open authoritative European geospatial data site
• The City of Chicago now offers its data on GitHub, most of it being georeferenced: "This is a new experiment, where we can see if it’s possible to crowdsource better data. GitHub provides the necessary functionality."
• On the topic of open data, you can read the new entry named The Flawed Economics of Closed Government Data by Brian Timoney

Everything else:

• Here's an entry on Map overlays with WebGL: affine, polynomial, TPS transformations in JavaScript with GLSL
• There's a new Open Source Geospatial Laboratory established at the University of Warwick, UK
• Here's the Keynote speakers at FOSS4G-CEE 2013

A story discussed over Slashdot: Hackers Can Jam Traffic By Manipulating Real-Time Traffic Data.

Their summary: "Hackers can influence real-time traffic-flow-analysis systems to make people drive into traffic jams or to keep roads clear in areas where a lot of people use Google or Waze navigation systems, a German researcher demonstrated at BlackHat Europe. 'If, for example, an attacker drives a route and collects the data packets sent to Google, the hacker can replay them later with a modified cookie, platform key and time stamps, Jeske explained in his research paper (PDF). The attack can be intensified by sending several delayed transmissions with different cookies and platform keys, simulating multiple cars, Jeske added. An attacker does not have to drive a route to manipulate data, because Google also accepts data from phones without information from surrounding access points, thus enabling an attacker to influence traffic data worldwide, he added.' 'You don't need special equipment for this and you can manipulate traffic data worldwide,' Jeske said."

I have a lot of geonews to catchup. You'll get everything that's pertinent (at least from my point of view ;-), but just a bit later than usual. Thanks for your patience!

Here's the recent Google-related geonews. Nothing major, but several interesting items.

From official sources:

• The first update to the Google Maps SDK for iOS
• Google informs us that Ski Resorts are now on Google Maps

From other sources:

• The GEB informs us that Google released 3D imagery in Berne (Switzerland), Anaheim (California) and other cities around the world
• Ogle Earth has an entry named Reconstructing the Chelyabinsk meteor’s path, with Google Earth, YouTube and high-school math
• Related, the GEB has an entry named Mapping meteor impacts
• Still the same source a book named "Google Earth and Virtual Visualizations in Geoscience Education and Research"
• The GEB shares a kmz to watch U.S. watersheds in Google Earth
• The GEB reminds us that we can animate GPS tracks in Google Earth
• You're an Olympics fan? Previewing the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi
• If you prefer Grand Prix racing, Ride along GP tracks from all over the world
• There has been games for Google Earth for a while, but now we're talking about multiplayer games: Two player driving shooter game in Google Earth

Google is not alone trying to take advantage of trillions, Slashdot runs a story named Oxford Tests Self-Driving Cars.

Their summary: "Using advances in 3D laser mapping technology, Oxford University has developed a car that is able to drive itself along familiar routes. This new self-driving automobile uses lasers and small cameras to memorize everyday trips such as the morning commute. This car is not dependant on GPS because this car is able to tell where it is by recognizing its surroundings. The intent is for this car to be capable of taking over the drive when on routes that it has traveled before. While being driven, the car is capable of developing a 3D model of its environment and learning routes. When driving a particular journey a second time, an iPad on the dashboard informs the driver that it is capable of taking over and finishing the drive. The driver can then touch the screen and the car shifts to 'auto drive' mode. The driver can reclaim control of the car at any time by simply tapping the brakes."

While cleaning up old emails I ended up on this scientific article named Metrics to Measure Open Geospatial Data Quality published last year by Jingfeng Xia. Data quality is a topic we discussed before.

From the conclusion: "Because of the uniqueness and complexity of geospatial data, quality control is always a challenge to data providers, managers, analysts and data service providers. Metrics developed to measure data quality need to reflect the nature of the data, and therefore must be diversely structured to handle maps, coordinates, attributes and other types of geospatial data. A list of dimensions with clear and accurate definitions will provide necessary standards for the measurement. When the practice of open access is also considered, several more layers of complexity are added and additional tasks are created to solve issues pertaining to web communication, data usability, data integrity and related issues. Both quantitative metrics based on objective measurement and qualitative metrics based on subjective measurement are essential to the quality control of geospatial data."

Submission for papers in the Academic Track of FOSS4G 2013 is now open at http://2013.foss4g.org/ojs/

The FOSS4G 2013 Academic Track is bringing together researchers, developers, users and practitioners carrying out research and development in the geospatial and the free and open source fields.

With the Academic Track motto “Science for Open Source, Open Source for Science”, we aim to attract academic papers describing:

• The use of open source geospatial software and data, in and for scientific research
• Academic endeavours to conceptualize, create, assess, and teach open source geospatial software and data.

Based on these categories, to promote a strong connection between the Academic Track and the other elements of FOSS4G 2013, we hope for contributions within the following themes:

• Data Quality, Software Quality and Service Quality
• Community Building
• Doing more for less: Assessment of costs and benefits of open source applications and open source business models
• Use of Open Data to inform public services
• FOSS and FOSS4g: Is spatial special?
• Architectures and frameworks for open source software and data
• Teaching Geospatial Sciences with open source solutions
• Open Source GIS application use cases: Government, Participatory GIS, Location based services, Health, Energy, Water, Climate change, etc.
• Human Computer Interfaces and Usability in and around Open GI systems

We invite academics and researchers to submit full papers in English, of maximum 6,000 words, before the deadline of 1 February 2013. Templates for submissions in a variety of formats can be found here, and detailed requirements, regarding layout, formatting and the submission process, can be found on the FOSS4G 2103 Academic Track submission pages at http://2013.foss4g.org/ojs/

Your contributions will be reviewed (double-blind) by a diverse reviewing committee of experts in the field, who will be asked to assess the papers on originality and academic rigour, as well as interest for the wider FOSS4G community. We expect to select 20-25 papers for presentation and publication. From this selection, a maximum of 8-10 papers will be given the opportunity for inclusion in a special issue of the renowned international journal Transactions in GIS [1]. The remaining papers will be published in the online OSGEO Journal [2].

We would like to specifically invite “early stage researchers” (PhD students, PostDocs) to use this opportunity to aim for a high-ranking publication.

Authors of all selected papers will be expected to present their work in detail in a separate Academic Track (with 20-30 minute slots), and will also be given the opportunity to pitch the central theme of their paper in short ‘lightning’ talks to the larger community, to generate attention and cross-pollenate with industry, developers and users.

Important Dates:

NOW: Submission open at http://2013.foss4g.org/ojs/
1 February 2013: Deadline for submission of full papers
1 April 2013: Reviewing decisions
1 May 2013: Paper revision deadline
15 September 2013: publication of selected papers
8-10 papers in Early View (on-line) Transactions in GIS
others in on-line OSGEO Journal
17-21 September 2013: FOSS4G Conference
early 2014: printed issue Transactions in GIS
For questions, comments and remarks, do not hesitate to contact the Academic Track co-chairs:

Franz-Josef Behr (Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences): franz-josef.behr [at] hft-stuttgart.de
Barend Köbben (ITC-University of Twente): b.j.kobben [at] utwente.nl
[1]: Transactions in GIS. Published by Wiley; included in ISI, with an impact factor of 0.54; edited by John P. Wilson, David O’Sullivan and Alexander Zipf. Print ISSN: 1361-1682 Online ISSN: 1467-9671. http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-TGIS.html

[2]: OSGEO Journal, the official Journal of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation; http://journal.osgeo.org/index.php/journal

Directions Mag offers an article named Research Explores How to Keep Up With Changing Web Mapping Technology, starting with 'change is inevitable: deal with it'.

From the results: "Despite the fact that the Google Maps API delivered on more of the requirements set out in the Needs Assessment Survey, the team selected Leaflet as the answer to the first question of which technology should be used for teaching. Leaflet was, in fact, second best in supporting the requirements, but the Diary Study suggested students made more progress and felt better working with that set of libraries. The team suggests that might be due to the added transparency and control provided by a fully open source library."

The Cartography and Geovisualization Group at Oregon State University has been experimenting with ways to improve web mapping. An OSU summary page explains the current situation:

"Today's web maps (such as those by OpenStreetMap, Google, Bing, or Yahoo!) have two major shortcomings.

(1) They use the Mercator projection for all scales and for all locations, and

(2) they only provide pre-rendered views for a series of predefined scales."

A colleague informed me of the new Open Access 'Geoscience Data Journal', specifically for describing geospatial datasets.

From their aims and scope: "Geoscience Data Journal provides an Open Access platform where scientific data can be formally published, in a way that includes scientific peer-review. Thus the dataset creator attains full credit for their efforts, while also improving the scientific record, providing version control for the community and allowing major datasets to be fully described, cited and discovered. An online-only journal, GDJ publishes short data papers cross-linked to – and citing – datasets that have been deposited in approved data centres and awarded DOIs."

Their content description: "A data article describes a dataset, giving details of its collection, processing, file formats etc., but does not go into detail of any scientific analysis of the dataset or draw conclusions from that data. The data paper should allow the reader to understand the when, why and how the data was collected, and what the data is."

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OGRS2012 :: Open Source Geospatial Research and Education Symposium

October 24 – 26, 2012 in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland
Hosted by School of Business and Engineering Vaud (HEIG-VD)

Follow us on https://twitter.com/OGRS2012 and tweet with #OGRS2012 !
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(our apologies for cross-postings)

Dear colleagues,

The Open Source Geospatial Research and Education Symposium (OGRS) program committee is glad to announce the publication of a tentative program. Also, the registration is now open. Register until end of September to take benefit of the early bird registration period.

Go to www.ogrs2012.org to discover the program and to do your registration.

OGRS is a meeting dedicated to exchanging ideas on development and use of open source geospatial software in both research and education. Several opportunities exist for presenting results, principles, methods and practices: keynote talks, regular presentations, posters with short presentations session, workshops and discussion groups.

Outcomes will validate the importance of the open source model and demonstrate how it can be used successfully for geospatial research and education.

There will be opportunities to mingle at evening events such as ice breakers and the social event at the Grand Hôtel des Bains.

We would appreciate if you could kindly distribute this announcement to other interested parties of your acquaintance.

Looking forward to your participation in this event.

Best regards,
OGRS program committee.
____________________________________________________________________
OGRS2012 Open Source Geospatial Research and Education Symposium
http://www.ogrs2012.org