OSGeo - User contributions [en]

LIDAR Format Letter

2015-05-04T12:25:49Z

Wiki-Brylie: /* Signed */ Brylie Christopher Oxley

== Cover Letter from the OSGeo Board of Directors ==

The Board of the [http://osgeo.org Open Source Geospatial Foundation] (OSGeo) is presenting this letter to the geospatial community at large. The letter highlights concerns about the need for standards in LiDAR data formats, from many people within the OSGeo community. Although specific organizations are named in the letter, the OSGeo Board of Directors would like to focus on the general importance of standards in the industry, and learn from this example so we can make geospatial information easily accessible to all users. As always, if there is anything that the OSGeo Board can do to help, then please let us know.

Signed:
* Jeff McKenna (OSGeo President), Michael Smith (OSGeo Treasurer), Jáchym Čepický (OSGeo Secretary), Massimiliano Cannata, Vasile Craciunescu, Bart van den Eijnden, Gérald Fenoy, Anne Ghisla, Jorge Sanz

=Open Letter of the Need for Open Standards in LiDAR=
April 2015.

We, the undersigned, are concerned that the current interoperability between LiDAR applications, through use of the open "LAS" format, is being threatened by ESRI's introduction and promotion of an alternative "Optimized LAS" '''''proprietary format.''''' This is of grave concern given that fragmentation of the LAS format will reduce interoperability between applications and organisations, and introduce vendor lock-in.

We request that:
# The OGC initiate the formalisation of an open standard for storing LiDAR data, and that OGC sponsors help prioritise the development of this open LiDAR standard.
# ESRI support the OGC in their [http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/vision mission] "to advance the development and use of international standards and supporting services that promote geospatial interoperability." In particular, ESRI joins with the OGC in consolidating an Open Standard for use of LiDAR data. This might include proposing ESRI's "Optimized LAS" as an Open Standard to remove any technical or legal hurdles in use of "Optimized LAS" as an Open Standard. A simple test to determine if "Optimized LAS" can be used as an Open Standard would be if "Optimized LAS" can legally be implemented by Open Source software such as libLAS or LASzip.
# Users and sponsors of LiDAR data, publicly state their preference for the use of an open LiDAR format over proprietary when selecting software and services.
# The custodians of the open LAS format [http://www.asprs.org/LD-Division/LAS-Working-Group.html LAS Working Group (LWG)], who are part of [http://www.asprs.org/ American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS)], request the term "LAS" not to be included in the name of a proprietary format, as it makes such a proprietary format appear to be an approved derivative of LAS.

=Signed=
Name, Affiliation(s), Optional comment on interest in Open LiDAR format

# Suchith Anand, Geo for All, committed to Open Principles in Geo Education and Policy.
# Martin Isenburg, founder of [http://rapidlasso.com rapidlasso GmbH] and creator of [http://rapidlasso.com/LASzip LASzip], [http://rapidlasso.com/LAStools LAStools], and [http://rapidlasso.com/PulseWaves PulseWaves].
# Cameron Shorter, GeoSpatial Director at [http://lisasoft.com LISAsoft]. Core contributor and coordinator of [http://live.osgeo.org OSGeo-Live]. Contributor to numerous OGC testbeds, technical lead on a range of previous Australian and New Zealand Open Government initiatives.
# Stefan Keller, founder and director of [http://www.hsr.ch/geometalab Geometa Lab]; Professor in GIS, databases, open (government) data and interoperability; maintainer of GeoConverter; contributor to open source software (GDAL/OGR, QGIS).
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/phogan Patrick Hogan], [http://goworldwind.org/ NASA World Wind] Project Manager, committed to the US National Spatial Data Infrastructure principles, one being "to make geographic data more accessible to the public" [http://www.fgdc.gov/nsdi/nsdi.html NSDI]. Open standards are essential for this.
# Lene Fischer, Associate Professor, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen. User of Open and free Data from The Danish Geodata Agency - Using LAZ and LAS http://download.kortforsyningen.dk/content/dhmpunktsky.
# [http://www.ege-como.polimi.it/index.php?content=maria_brovelli Maria Antonia Brovelli], Full Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, [http://www.polimi.it/en/university/ Politecnico di Milano]. Geo For All, committed to Open Principles in Geo Education and Policy and to Open Principles in Research.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/ronfortunato Ron Fortunato], President of [http://www.trilliumlearning.com/AmericaBridge/ Trillium Learning] LLC. Committed to open data standards that are necessary for education and all levels of communication.
# [http://www.geodatawiz.com/armin-schmidt Armin Schmidt], Chief Developer at [http://www.GeodataWIZ.com GeodataWIZ Ltd] and Chairman of [http://www.archprospection.org ISAP], committed to better science through Open Data.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/gconti Giuseppe Conti], CTO Trilogis Srl, Italy. Committed to open data standards that maximize opportunity for innovative solutions, unencumbered by artificial obstacles to data exchange.
# [http://pt.linkedin.com/pub/jorge-rocha/1b/560/499 Jorge Gustavo Rocha], Professor, Computer Science Department, University of Minho, Portugal, committed to better science through [http://www.gistam.org/EventChairs.aspx?y=2016 Open Data].
# [http://people.eecs.ku.edu/~miller/ Jim Miller], University of Kansas, Professor, Computer Science. Open standards for data exchange are essential for education and research.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/brandt-melick/22/869/261 Brandt Melick], Information Technology Department Director, Springfield Oregon USA. The need to promote open solutions is paramount.
# Alex Paza Makini, National University Solomon Islands, Natural Resources and Applied Science. Committed to open data standards for education and research, and everything beyond.
# Jorg M. Hacker, Professor, Director/Chief Scientist of [http://www.airborneresearchaustralia.com Airborne Research Australia], Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. Open formats have always been a great benefit to airborne LiDAR.
# Didier Richard, Head of IS Training Dept. in Education and Research Directorate of [http://www.ign.fr Institut National de l'Information Géographique et Forestière], France. OGC user, Contributor to OSGeO projects like GDAL.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/adryane-gorayeb/74/517/96a Adryane Gorayeb], [http://www.ufc.br/ Federal University of Ceará Brazil], Geography Department. Open standards for data exchange are essential for education and research.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/yuryryabov Yury Ryabov], PhD, Senior researcher at [http://www.istc.ru/istc/db/inst.nsf/wsu/i0001823 Russian Scientific-Research Centre for Ecological Safety], [http://www.interacademies.net/Academies/ByRegion/CentralEasternEurope/13383.aspx Russian Academy of Sciences], Saint Petersburg, Russia. Open data formats are essential for successful and reproducible scientific research.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/teresa-lamelas-gracia/40/4a7/20b María Teresa Lamelas], [http://cud.unizar.es/ Centro Universitario de la Defensa Zaragoza], [http://geoforest.unizar.es/es/index.php GeoForest-IUCA]. Committed to open data standards for education and research.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidherries David Herries], [http://www.interpine.co.nz/SitePages/Home.aspx Using LiDAR for forest yield modelling at Interpine Innovation]. Establishing open data standards provide scope for exponential growth in innovation. This is key to a rapidly developing technology like LiDAR.
# [[User:Ivansanchez|Iván Sánchez Ortega]], [http://www.mazemap.no Mazemap]. OSGeo Charter member and Open Data nerd.
# [[User:AnitaGraser|Anita Graser]], GIS specialist with AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, OSGeo Charter member and QGIS team member. Committed to open data standards for education and research.
# [[User:vehrka|Pedro-Juan Ferrer]], [http://www.geomaticblog.net Geomaticblog]. OSGeo Charter member and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/karl-donert/3/160/571 Professor Karl Donert], President European Association of Geographers (http://www.eurogeo.nl/ EUROGEO)
# Drew Fenton, Boulder Creek, CA [http://www.savetheredwoods.org/redwoods/coast-redwoods/ Countdown to the Last Coast Redwood]. Please protect Open Standards for geospatial data!
# [[User:Bolosig|Wladimir Szczerban]], [http://www.geoinquiets.cat Geoinquiets] Geogeek & OSGeo Spanish Local Chapter Member, Spain
# [http://vmx.cx Volker Mische], OSGeo Charter member and creator of GeoCouch
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/clquintanilla Carlos López Quintanilla], [http://www.psig.es PSIG] [http://www.geoinquiets.cat Geoinquiets] GIS consultant, Spain
# [[User:woodbri|Stephen Woodbridge]], [http://imaptools.com iMaptools], OSGeo Charter member.
# [[User:odoepner|Oliver Doepner]], [http://oliver.doepner.net doepner.net], Software Engineer (Java,Linux), Open Standards and Open Source advocate
# [[User:Lucadelu|Luca Delucchi]], [http://gis.cri.fmach.it Fondazione Edmund Mach], OSGeo Charter member, FOSS4G and Open Data developer, advocate, contributor and user.
# Antoine Cottin, CTO of [http://www.carbomap.com Carbomap Ltd.] and creator of [http://github.com/carbomap/Fleurdelas Fleurdelas], Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
# [http://strk.keybit.net Sandro Santilli], [http://strk.keybit.net/services.html NetLab], Free Software Hacker. There are already too many users slave to their tools, let's stop that!
# [http://www.itopen.it Alessandro Pasotti], [http://www.itopen.it ItOpen], GIS Free Software Developer.
# [http://www.roccatello.com Eduard Roccatello], [http://www.3dgis.it 3DGIS], 3DGIS CTO and co-Founder
# [[User:moovida|Andrea Antonello]], [http://www.hydrologis.com HydroloGIS], OSGeo Charter member, Open Source GIS developer, HydroloGIS co-founder.
# [http://www.associazionegfoss.it Stefano Campus], President of [http://www.associazionegfoss.it GFOSS.it] Association (Associazione Italiana per l'Informazione Geografica Libera), Italian Local Chapter of OSGeo Foundation.
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Madi Margherita Di Leo], OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Sacosta Sergio Acosta y Lara], OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Maximdubinin Maxim Dubinin], CEO at NextGIS, OSGeo Charter Member. Another 'standard' proprietary format? No, thank you.
# [[User:Steko|Stefano Costa]], Soprintendenza Archeologia della Liguria, Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo, Italy
# [http://www.geog.illinois.edu/people/jgrn Jonathan Greenberg], Assistant Professor, [http://publish.illinois.edu/jgrn/ GEARS Laboratory], Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/bob-basques/14/8B2/537 Bob Basques], Saint Paul, Mn., Technical Director for SharedGeo.
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Maning Maning Sambale], OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Pcav Paolo Cavallini], QGIS PSC
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Dr Phillip Davis], Member OSGeo Geo For All education advisory board, Director @ GeoAcademy
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Nbozon Nicolas Bozon], Researcher and software developer, OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/ruslanrainis Ruslan Rainis], Professor, Director, [http://www.research.usm.my/default.asp?tag=36 Centre for Research Initiatives in Liberal Arts & Social Sciences](CRI-LASS). Open GeoInformation for a Sustainable Tomorrow and the Bottom Billions.
# [[User:Silli|Silvia Franceschi]], [http://www.hydrologis.com HydroloGIS], OSGeo Charter member, Environmental Engineer Open Source GIS power user, HydroloGIS co-founder.
# Oscar Martinez Rubi [http://esciencecenter.nl Netherlands eScience Center] eScience engineer.
# Werner Macho, QGIS team member. Committed to open data standards for education and research.
# Giuseppe Patti, Geologist and Freelance Geospatial Advisor, GFOSS supporter.
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Drappo Daniel Rappo], Professor, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, School of Business and Engineering Vaud.
# [[User:nachouve|Juan Ignacio Varela]], Freelance Geospatial Advisor and OSGeo Local Chapter Member.
# [[User:dmorissette|Daniel Morissette]], President at [http://mapgears.com Mapgears], OSGeo Charter member.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/raulnanclares Raul Nanclares], RS&GIS Specialist
# [http://www.ing.unitn.it/dica/hp/index_eng.php?user=rigon Riccardo Rigon], Professor at University of Trento (Italy)
# [[User:Siki| Zoltan Siki]] Budapest University of Technology and Economics (Hungary), OSGeo Charter member.
# [http://lefsky.org Michael Lefsky], Professor of Remote Sensing Science, Colorado State University and Director, Center for Ecological Applications of Lidar.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/lucas-c-villa-real/7/a0b/b06 Lucas Villa Real], Research software engineer at IBM Research - Brazil.
# [http://terraremote.com Loren Dawe], GIS Manager at Terra Remote Sensing Inc. Lidar Supplier and Open Standards Advocate
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Warmerda Frank Warmerdam], Software Developer, OSGeo Charter member
# [http://ch.linkedin.com/pub/jens-ingensand/0/836/6b0 Jens Ingensand], Professor, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, [http://www.heig-vd.ch/international School of Business and Engineering Vaud].
# [http://nsidc.org/research/bios/khalsa.html Siri Jodha Khalsa], Research Scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center, [http://cires.colorado.edu/ Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences], University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
# [http://gis.uster.ch/ Andreas Neumann], GIS manager, City of Uster, Kanton Zurich, Switzerland
# [http://www.iwmi.org/ Yann Chemin], Researcher - Remote Sensing, International Water Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/etiennebracine Etienne B. Racine], Geomatics and remote sensing project manager, WSP, Canada
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/alejandro-hinojosa/7/33b/342 Alejandro Hinojosa], [http://cicese.mx CICESE Research Center], Earth Sciences Division, GIS & Remote Sensing Lab, Ensenada, Mexico
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:epifanio Massimo Di Stefano], OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://clas.ucdenver.edu/directory/faculty-staff/Rafael-Moreno Rafael Moreno], University of Colorado Denver, [http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/CLAS/Departments/ges/Pages/Geography.aspx Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences]. Openness is fundamental to progress.
# Peter Drexel, GIS manager, [http://www.vorarlberg.at/vorarlberg/bauen_wohnen/bauen/vermessung_geoinformation/start.htm State of Vorarlberg (State Survey Office)], Austria
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/marco-minghini/a8/3b6/198 Marco Minghini], Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, [http://www.polimi.it Politecnico di Milano]. Committed to Open Principles in Geo Education and Research.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/candan-eyl%C3%BCl-kilsedar/65/380/976 Candan Eylül Kilsedar], WebGIS Developer, Research Fellow at [http://www.polimi.it Politecnico di Milano].
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:AlastairMcKinstry Alastair McKinstry], Debian Linux meteorology/GIS developer, Ireland
# [http://people.unibo.it/it/elena.mezzini2 Elena Mezzini], Remote-sensing in forest ecology, Research Fellow, Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Bologna, Italy.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=43566064 Mihai A. Tanase], Honorary fellow, Dept. of Forest and Ecosystem Science, The University of Melbourne, Australia
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dave-murray/10/742/3a2 Dave Murray], GIS Coordinator at [http://www.ci.westminster.co.us/ City of Westminster]
# Ayesa Martínez Serrano, Estudiante de Doctorado en [http://www.ciga.unam.mx/ Geografía del Centro de Investigaciones en Geografía Ambiental de la UNAM-México]
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/christopher-crosby/15/b7/114 Christopher Crosby], co-founder, [http://www.opentopography.org/ OpenTopography]
# [http://sg.linkedin.com/in/sgganesh Shanmugam Ganeshkumar], Vice President - Consulting, [http://www.geoicon.com GeoICON]
# [[User:Chaitanya|Chaitanya Kumar CH]], GIS Developer with [http://www.egis-geoplan.com/ Egis Geoplan - India] and OSGeo Charter member.
# KS Rajan, Associate Professor and Head, [http://lsi.iiit.ac.in/ Lab for Spatial Informatics, IIIT Hyderabad] and Chairman, [http://www.kaiinos.com/ KAIINOS Geospatial Technologies]; Promoter and Supported of Open Source, Open Data, Open Standards and e-Governance in India
# Pericles Nacionales, RS/GIS Specialist and OSGeo Charter member.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/vasilecraciunescu Vasile Crăciunescu], Researcher at Romanian National Meteorological Administration and OSGeo Board member.
# [http://geo.tuwien.ac.at/staff/andreas-roncat/ Andreas Roncat] PostDoc Researcher, Research Groups Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, [http://www.geo.tuwien.ac.at/ Department of Geodesy and Geoinformation], Vienna University of Technology, Austria. In full agreement with [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Maximdubinin Maxim Dubinin]: Another 'standard' proprietary format? No, thank you.
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:remanuele Rob Emanuele], Software Developer, Azavea Inc.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/iliecodrinamaria Codrina Ilie], Researcher at the Groundwater Engineering Research Center, [http://utcb.ro/utcb/index_en.html Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest] and OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Djay Gérald Fenoy], Software Developer, OSGeo Charter Member.
# [http://www.aston.ac.uk/eas/staff/a-z/dr-lucy-bastin/ Lucy Bastin], Software Developer at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission / Computer Science lecturer, UncertML developer, Member of OGC SWG on User Feedback.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/matt-wilkie/b1/3b1/a35 Matt Wilkie], Geomatics Analyst at [http://www.gov.yk.ca/ Yukon Government], [http://www.env.gov.yk.ca/geomatics Department of Environment]. A practising GIS Professional for 20+ years. Throughout that time, the process of manipulating data into, through and out of proprietary formats has been the most aggravating source of inefficiency and wasted time. Things are hard enough without adding unnecessary barriers.
# [[User:Annakrat|Anna Petrasova]], OSGeo Charter Member, GRASS GIS developer
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mark-seibel-gisp/45/517/942 Mark Seibel], Geospatial Hacker. Long live open Geo data & software.
# [http://www.wrsc.org/people/ben-discoe Ben Discoe], [http://vterrain.org/ Virtual Terrain Project] and [http://www.leica-geosystems.us/en/HDS-Laser-Scanners-SW_5570.htm Leica Geosystems HDS], I wrangle point clouds every day. Semi-open E57 is bad enough. No more closed formats!
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ilda-clos/19/21b/391 Ilda Clos], GIS & IWRM specialist
# [[User:Danielkastl|Daniel Kastl]], Founder [http://georepublic.info Georepublic] and OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Geejee Gert-Jan van der Weijden] Chairman of OSGeo.nl (local Dutch chapter)
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:rjhale1971 Randal Hale] Owner of North River Geographic Systems, Inc
# Volker Wichmann, [http://www.saga-gis.org SAGA GIS] and [http://www.laserdata.at LASERDATA LIS] developer
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/erictheise Eric Theise], Software Developer, San Francisco, CA.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/geogeek Darrell Fuhriman], Director of Technology, Renewable Funding/ Adjunct Instructor, [http://www.pdx.edu/geography/ Department of Geography, Portland State University]
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ilkka-korpela/85/96/875 Ilkka Korpela], Academy Research Fellow, [http://university.helsinki.fi/en University of Helsinki]. Open formats benefit everyone.
# [http://www.pdx.edu/profile/meet-researcher-david-percy David Percy], Faculty, [http://geology.pdx.edu/ Dept of Geology, Portland State University].
# [http://dggs.alaska.gov/pubs/staff/kawoods Ken Woods], [http://dggs.alaska.gov/ Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys]. Providing a web-based map interface to the entire collection of [http://maps.dggs.alaska.gov/elevationdata all publicly available point-cloud data] in Alaska, USA.
# [[User:Wenzeslaus|Vaclav Petras]], using [http://grass.osgeo.org/grass70/manuals/r.in.lidar.html r.in.lidar] and [http://grass.osgeo.org/grass70/manuals/v.in.lidar.html v.in.lidar] in [http://grass.osgeo.org/ GRASS GIS] and afraid of [http://joinup.ec.europa.eu/elibrary/case/complex-singularity-versus-openness formats embraced by one vendor]
# [http://cehv.osu.edu/people/nespor.2 Jan Nespor], [http://www.osu.edu/ Ohio State University]
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcosninoruiz Dr. Marcos Nino-Ruiz], Geospatial e-Enabler, [http://aurin.org.au/ AURIN] - [http://www.unimelb.edu.au/ The University of Melbourne], Australia
# Ed Russell, [http://www.ctmap.com/Computer Terrain Mapping, Inc.], Longmont, Colorado
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jim-robb/3/90/195 Jim Robb], [http://www.ziadesigngroup.com/ Zia Design Group/Zia Maps LLC], Boulder, Colorado. Establish and legally support an Open LiDAR format.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/travis-flohr/6/8a3/938 Travis Flohr], [http://la.wisc.edu/ University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Landscape Architecture]. Open geo standards are imperative to be successful in a transdisciplinary and collaborative world.
# [http://www.aber.ac.uk/en/iges/staff/academic-staff/pfb/ Pete Bunting] Senior Lecturer in Remote Sensing within the [http://www.aber.ac.uk/en/iges Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University] and developer of the open source [http://www.spdlib.org SPDLib] software package for processing LiDAR data.
# Chris Clasen, Lidar Scientist, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
# [http://au.linkedin.com/in/peterscarth Peter Scarth] Senior Research Scientist [http://www.gpem.uq.edu.au/jrsrp Joint Remote Sensing Research Program]. Open standards are essential for research data archival and reuse.
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Just Just van den Broecke] OSGeo Charter member and Secretary of OSGeo.nl (Dutch Local Chapter)
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:fjbehr Franz-Josef Behr] Professor of spatial information processing at Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/monia-molinari/8a/b78/a48 Monia Elisa Molinari], Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, [http://www.polimi.it Politecnico di Milano].
# Don Brown, USGS, Enterprise GIS Specialist.
# [http://www.xing.com/profile/Thomas_Baumann84 Thomas Baumann], [http://geosysnet.de geoSYS], Project Manager GIS+Webmapping.
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:mlennert Moritz Lennert], Université Libre de Bruxelles, Member of the GRASS GIS PSC
# Paulo Machado, [http://www.ptinovacao.pt/en/ Portugal Telecom Inovação] Committed to open data standards and open source software.
# [http://igeat.ulb.ac.be/fr/equipe/details/person/eleonore-wolff/ Eleonore Wolff], [http://www.ulb.ac.be/facs/sciences/index.html Universite Libre de Bruxelles]
# [http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Romanuel_Ramon_Antunez/ Romanuel Ramon Antunez], Member of UACEE, GIS Developer, Professor at [http://www.uci.cu University of Informatics Science], Cuba.
# [http://ajolma.net Ari Jolma], Biwatech Ltd.
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Pmeems Paul Meems], Active GIS developer in the [http://mapwindow4.codeplex.com/ MapWindow Open Source GIS] team.
# [http://www4.ncsu.edu/~ljsox Leslie John Sox], Master's GIS Student, NCSU Center for Geospatial Analytics,[http://cnr.ncsu.edu/geospatial], Degrees in Laser and Electro-Optics Technology, Geospatial Information Science, Raleigh, NC.
#[http://carlosgrohmann.com Carlos H. Grohmann], Assistant Professor (GIS/RS), University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:cschweik Charles Schweik], Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Rhaubourg Régis Haubourg], GIS manager, Adour-Garonne Water Basin Agency, France
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:kalxas Angelos Tzotsos], OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:EdzerPebesma Edzer Pebesma], Professor, Institute for Geoinformatics, University of Muenster
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:oosterkamp Hugo Oosterkamp], Consultant Water & Sanitation
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:brylie Brylie Christopher Oxley] Free/Open Source software developer

=Background=
==About LiDAR==

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar LiDAR] (Light Detection And Ranging) is a form of high precision range measurement, much like a radar system, but one that uses laser light instead of radio waves. The standard LiDAR product is a 3D point cloud that can be conceptualized as a series of point measurements representing distance between the sensor to a returned emission.

For over a decade (since 2003), there has been a common format for storing LiDAR data, the [http://www.asprs.org/Committee-General/LASer-LAS-File-Format-Exchange-Activities.html “LAS” format], and open source libraries have been developed to read, write and process these LAS files: [http://live.osgeo.org/en/overview/liblas_overview.html libLAS] and [http://github.com/LASlib/LASlib LASlib]. These libraries have been incorporated within many LiDAR applications, allowing read/write access to a common exchange format, and resulting in full interoperability between the applications. There is also an open source compression algorithm for the LAS format called [http://laszip.org LASzip] that many LiDAR data portals use to compress LAS into smaller LAZ files for faster download. Many LiDAR software packages have added [http://laszip.org/#software-with-native-laz-support native support] for these compressed LAZ files.

==LAS Limitations==

Quoting [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars/ Paul Ramsey]:

: LAS format is not without its drawbacks:

:* While it is a binary format and does not waste any space unnecessarily, neither does it apply any compression to the data it stores. That’s not good for archival use.
:* Also, LAS stores points in scan order, so accessing any particular chunk of points involves reading the whole file. That’s not good for random access.
: Clearly there is a little more work to be done. Can LAS be improved? In fact, it already has been:
:* An open source compression library, LASzip can apply 20''':'''1 lossless compression to LAS files, making them great for archival purposes.
:* Other LAS users have experimented with re-ordering points in a LAS or LASzip file to allow random access to internal chunks of the LIDAR point cloud.
: Basically, making LAS smaller and faster is not rocket science, and if the work were incorporated into libLAS then the whole LIDAR community could leverage it together, and the user community would only have one file type to interchange.

=='Optimized LAS' A ''' ''Proprietary'' ESRI Format'''==
ESRI announced, 12 January 2014, the release of an [http://www.lidarnews.com/content/view/10214 "Optimized LAS"] format which is claimed to provide faster access and smaller file sizes (similar to the open [http://laszip.org LASzip] format). This announcement created a outburst of vocal protest in the LiDAR community [[http://rapidlasso.com/2013/12/30/new-compressed-las-format-by-esri/ 1] [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars/ 2] [http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com/2014/01/15/las-laz-lazzip-zlas-and-you/ 3] [http://www.northrivergeographic.com/archives/lidar-software 4] [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars-2/ 5] [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/02/lidar-format-wars-3/ 6]].

The implementation of the "Optimized LAS" format is not available as Open Source and the format and algorithm details itself are undocumented, which means nobody can currently create alternate implementations, neither closed nor Open Source. This causes both technical as well as legal barriers for other applications reading and/or writing to this proprietary format. It creates a vendor lock-in scenario which is contrary to the principles of the Open Geospatial Consortium, the OSGeo Foundation, and many government IT procurement policies.

One year after releasing the "Optimized LAS" format, ESRI released a Windows only library (DLL) as a free-of-charge (gratis) download that is claimed to convert between LAS and "Optimized LAS". Note there is a distinct difference between a "free-of-charge" binary distribution of DLLs and publishing something as "Open Source". Unless the source code of the library is released as Open Source under an Open Source license, libLAS and related products will be legally prevented from incorporating ESRI's reader/writer code into their codebase, or from fixing any underlying bugs or performance limitations which may exist in ESRI's product.

Ironically, ESRI later placed their '''binary''' library files [http://github.com/Esri/esri-zlas-io-library on github] accompanied by an Apache License, but no source code was published. The distribution of binaries without source code is allowed by Apache License, but very uncommon and misleading, to say the least. The practice goes against the basic idea of “Open Source” and the Open Source Initiative (OSI) even has an FAQ entry on the obvious contradiction of [http://opensource.org/faq#non-distribution “Open Source” without source code].

==OGC's Efforts For An ''' ''Open'' LiDAR Standard'''==

The [http://www.opengeospatial.org/ Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)] has indicated their interest in developing a standard LiDAR format.

Carl Reed (formerly on OGC staff) provided the following information on OGC's previous efforts to work toward enabling Open Standards in LiDAR:

: "Over the last 8 or so years, the OGC approached ASPRS at least twice regarding LAS and worked with ASPRS to bring LAS into the OGC for consideration as both a Best Practice and an OGC standard. OGC member Rick Pearsall worked diligently on this. Rick worked for NGA, was active in the OGC, and was also the Standards Committee chair at ASPRS. Rick and Carl tried and failed. These attempts go back to [http://www.asprs.org/a/society/divisions/ppd/ppd_meetings/2007springppdreport.pdf at least 2007]. More recently, Carl Reed had an email dialogue with Lewis Graham to bring LAS into OGC as an OGC Best Practice. Carl thought progress was being made, but then for some reason all communication stopped."

[http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/organization/staff/ssimmons Scott Simmons] (Executive Director, Standards Program) has explained the OGC's continuing interest in pursuing point cloud encoding standards, including a member-initiated mechanism to extend LAS data with OGC-standard XML content.
: The OGC invites interested members who wish to work on this effort to please contact Scott Simmons (Executive Director, Standards Program E-mail : ssimmons@opengeospatial.org) to register their interest and discuss details. OGC will also be holding an ad hoc session at the OGC's next [http://www.opengeospatial.org/event/1506tc Technical Committee meeting in Boulder, CO, USA in early June] to bring together all interested parties from all sectors (government, industry, academia) for this and plan next steps.

==History: LAS and ESRI's 'Optimized LAS'==

Martin Isenburg, one of the leading experts in LIDAR formats, and creator of [http://rapidlasso.com/LASzip LASzip], [http://rapidlasso.com/LAStools LAStools] and [http://rapidlasso.com/PulseWaves PulseWaves], explains the history of LAS and "Optimized LAS":

: '''Summary:'''

:* The LAS format has been used successfully for over a decade.
:* Within last couple of years, ESRI has added native LAS support into ESRI products.
:* ESRI discussed embracing the open [http://laszip.org LAZ] format and simultaneously developed a proprietary "Optimized LAS" format.
:* The open geospatial community offered, on numerous occasions, to work with ESRI to avoid format fragmentation.
:* ESRI's proprietary "Optimized LAS" format is very similar in design and performance to the open [http://laszip.org LASzip] format.

: '''1998: Original LAS format definition'''

: The original development of the LAS format started in 1998 according to [http://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lasroom/zKqchDj1JL4/discussion Lewis Graham]. The effort was at first led by pioneers of the LiDAR industry until the format was donated to the [http://www.asprs.org/Committee-General/LASer-LAS-File-Format-Exchange-Activities.html ASPRS]. Since then ASPRS's [http://www.asprs.org/LD-Division/LAS-Working-Group.html LAS Working Group (LWG)] has been maintaining the LAS format, guiding it from the initial LAS 1.0 version until today's LAS 1.4 version. This effort successfully created an open data exchange format for discrete LiDAR points that is currently supported by practically every LiDAR-related software program.

: '''2011: ESRI joins LAS Working Group'''

: ESRI did not join the LWG of the ASPRS until rather late, the 24th of August in 2011. At that time ESRI was not a significant "player" in the LiDAR market given they did not have much support for LiDAR in any of their products. That was to change soon as they were planning to add LAS as a native data type in ArcGIS 10.1.

: Shortly before that, in June 2011, Martin Isenburg received a personal message from the ESRI development team: "I have a question about LAS compression. I’m evaluating some potential enhancements and support for [LAS and] LAZ is one of them. Compression time and amount is impressive." When inquiring two months later about the status of [http://laszip.org LAZ] integration Martin was told: "We’re in beta and working to finish the current release. I very much doubt LAZ will make it in because it’s too big a change at this time. So, we’ll be considering, for the following release, [for] what we want to do regarding compression and spatial indexing."

: '''June 2012: ArcGIS 10.1 includes [proprietary] LAS Dataset file'''

: In June 2012 ESRI released ArcGIS 10.1 and introduced the proprietary "LAS Dataset file (*.lasd)" that groups collections of files into one logical unit. This format of this useful LAS container file was not shared with others despite several private and eventually [http://groups.google.com/d/topic/lastools/jwHpi0efUgA/discussion public] requests.

: '''2012/2013: Collaboration Discussions'''

: There were encouraging follow-ups from the ESRI team about adopting the open LAZ format in January 2012: "I would be interested in having a more in depth meeting with you to better understand the great work you are doing with LAS and how we can possibly better partner on this." and again in December 2012: "If you have time, I'd like to set some time aside Tuesday afternoon to meet with <an important person> at the ESRI booth. Does 2pm sound okay?" The meeting went well and it looked as if ESRI was going to embrace the LAZ format because shortly after the meeting Martin got word that: "I hear from <an important person> that it was a success and that he had a good meeting with you. I wanted to see if we can have a telephone discussion on Wednesday or Thursday this week related to the potential of incorporating LAZ into ArcGIS."

: Then the first signs of hesitation showed. First there were legal issues raised in February 2013: "Currently the legal aspects are being reviewed. They were having some issues separating the LPGL aspects from LASzip from the remainder of LAStools etc." and then in April 2013 concerns about the code were made: "We have started to look into the integration of LAZ, but came across some issues. We don’t want to copy files from the other package, mix and match or hack around. We were hoping for an API to stream points out of a LAZ file as well as write LAZ files. There should be a simple code sample for that?" and - following up on that - in June 2013 Martin was told "I see value in LASzip becoming a de-facto standard that provides compression to the LAS format. If this is to happen then it needs to be bundled together with appropriate reference implementations, examples and documentation as a standard and so ensure that issues as defined earlier in email do not occur."

: '''June 2013: ESRI asked to sponsor clean LASzip DLL'''

: At that time [http://laszip.org LASzip] was an open source project without sponsorship. The original funding from [http://www.erdc.usace.army.mil/Locations/ColdRegionsResearchandEngineeringLaboratory.aspx USACE] that had turned [http://laszip.org LASzip] from an academic prototype into an industry strength compression engine had long run out. So Martin asked ESRI to become a sponsor to create the clean [http://laszip.org LASzip] API that ESRI was after. The answer was: "ESRI often helps in the financing of Open Source projects and I could foresee ESRI possibly helping in LASzip. [...] If you are interested in promoting LASzip as such a standard and doing the required work then I would recommend you put together a proposal and I can look to get ESRI as a sponsor."

: Immediately Martin proposed to ESRI: "I hereby propose to write an easy to use open source DLL wrapper for LASzip that will make it easier to integrate LASzip in a standardized manner into other software products such as ArcGIS, LP 360, or Terrasolid. This will come with example code on how to use the DLL for reading and writing LAZ files and include a few compressed example files. I hereby ask ESRI to provide funding for this effort without imposing any limitations on the produced DLL API."

: '''July 2013: ArcGIS 10.2 includes [proprietary] LAS indexing '''

: With the release of ArcGIS 10.2 in July 2013, ESRI introduced spatial indexing to speed up area-of-interest queries. Their new proprietary *.lasx files were seemingly identical in functionality to the open *.lax files that had been [http://groups.google.com/d/topic/lastools/j0qA8NBMHJs/discussion announced] two years earlier - in May 2011 - and were [http://rapidlasso.com/2012/12/03/lasindex-spatial-indexing-of-lidar-data/ presented] at ELMF in November 2012.

: '''July 2013: Open LASzip API released'''

: After more requests for an easier interface to [http://laszip.org LASzip] (in particular for [http://forsys.cfr.washington.edu/fusion/fusionlatest.html USDA's FUSION]), Martin [http://groups.google.com/d/topic/lastools/oplsDhhnhDQ/discussion released] a clean, well-documented, and easy-to-use LASzip DLL (without ESRI funding). Martin expected that developers at ESRI would now use it to add read and write support for [http://laszip.org LAZ] to their next release of ArcGIS.

: '''December 2013 : ESRI discovered to be secretly developing proprietary LAS format'''

: In December of 2013, several LAStools users contacted Martin with suspicions that ESRI may be creating a proprietary LAS compression. Martin [http://rapidlasso.com/2013/12/30/new-compressed-las-format-by-esri/ broke the news] as soon as it became evident that ESRI had used the time it needed to resolve "legal issues" and "code problems" to put together their own proprietary compressed format with near-identical performance and functionality to [http://laszip.org LASzip]. A few days later ESRI released an [http://www.lidarnews.com/content/view/10214/ official FAQ] to confirming this was the case.

: From day one, Martin has worked with stakeholders, including ESRI, to avoid format fragmentation. Martin's core argument for resolving this to everybody's benefit was that - coincidentally - a natural break was happening in the LAS format with the introduction of the new LAS 1.4 point types. Martin outlined a detailed plan for how a joint development of [http://laszip.org LASzip] for LAS 1.4 between rapidlasso and ESRI could exploit this natural break in the LAS format to accomplish two things at once:
:# Add the unspecified technical additions that ESRI had hinted at desiring, and
:# Extend the [http://laszip.org LASzip] compression scheme to handle the new point types introduced with the LAS 1.4 specification. As there was no pressing need at the time to handle LAS 1.4 Martin had delayed the extension of [http://laszip.org LASzip] to the new LAS 1.4 point types to make sure a cooperation with ESRI would remain a viable option.

: '''1 April 2014: Positive reception to "Optimized LAS" / LASzip collaboration April Fools announcement'''

: In an attempt to convince ESRI management of the community desire for an open standard, Martin released an April Fools' Day [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/04/01/esri-and-rapidlasso-develop-joint-lidar-compressor/ prank press release] pretending that ESRI had already agreed to the envisioned collaboration to develop a joint LiDAR compressor. Community [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/04/01/esri-and-rapidlasso-develop-joint-lidar-compressor/ jubilant reactions (see comments)] left no doubt about the sentiment on this issue within the LiDAR community.

: '''October 2014: Announcement of [open] LAS Compatibility mode'''

: [http://www.csc.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/ Digital Coast, NOAA Coastal Services Center] became a Gold Sponsor of [http://laszip.org LASzip] for the development of the [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/10/06/rapidlasso-announces-laszip-compatibility-mode-for-las-1-4/ LAS 1.4 compatibility mode] that was [http://groups.google.com/d/topic/lastools/nUFMkKSz53g/discussion beta-released] in November 2014. This allowed support for the new point types in [http://laszip.org LASzip] without closing the door on a potential cooperation with ESRI for a joint LAS 1.4 compressor.

: '''November 2014: ESRI announces proprietary extension to LAS 1.4'''

: In November 2014 [http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-las-optimizer-updated ESRI announced] that they had added their [http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-las-optimizer-updated own extension] for the new LAS 1.4 point types to "Optimized LAS", dismissing the opportunity to develop a joint compressor and avoid format fragmentation by exploiting this "natural break" in the LAS format as Martin had suggested.

: Since then, ESRI has been [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/11/06/keeping-esri-honest/ promoting] "Optimized LAS". By including the term "LAS" in "Optimized LAS" and "zLAS", the distinction between the open LAS format and proprietary format is blurred. This is likely to mislead novice and future users, thereby endangering many years of standardization work. To date, [April 2014], the [http://www.asprs.org/a/society/committees/standards/LAS_1_4_r13.pdf custodians of the LAS format], the LAS Working Group (LWG) of the ASPRS has [http://rapidlasso.com/2015/02/22/lidar-las-asprs-esri-and-the-laz-clone/ yet to make an official statement] regarding use of the "LAS" name in promoting a proprietary LiDAR format.

=Value of Standards=

The importance of Open Standards is described in most government IT policies. For instance, the United Kingdom policy states:
: … Government assets should be interoperable and open for re-use in order to maximise return on investment, avoid technological or supplier lock-in, reduce operational risk in ICT projects and provide responsive services for citizens and business. This should also lower barriers to entry for more diverse sources of IT services, including citizens and SMEs. <ref>All about Open Source – [http://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/78959/All_About_Open_Source_v2_0.pdf An Introduction to Open Source Software for Government IT], Version 2.0, United Kingdom Cabinet Office</ref>

The value of Open Standards has been described in numerous national studies on the effects of standards on economic growth.

: ... the national studies demonstrate that standards have a positive influence on economic growth due to the resulting improved diffusion of knowledge. The contribution of standards to the growth rate in each country is equivalent to 0.9% in Germany, 0.8% in 0.3% in the UK and 0.2% in Canada. <ref>Prof. Dr. Knut Blind, Prof. Dr. Andre Jungmittag, Dr. Axel Mangelsdorf [http://www.din.de/sixcms_upload/media/2896/DIN_GNN_2011_engl_akt_neu.pdf "The Economic Benefits of Standardization"], ''DINN, 2000''. Retrieved March 2015.</ref>

=Further Reading=

# [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars/ Paul Ramsey provides background to LAS vs Optimised LAS]
# [http://rapidlasso.com/2015/02/22/lidar-las-asprs-esri-and-the-laz-clone/ Running commentary by Martin Isenburg, author of LASlib]
# [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/11/06/keeping-esri-honest/ Earlier comment from Martin Isenburg]
# [http://rapidlasso.com/2013/12/30/new-compressed-las-format-by-esri/ First call-to-action by Martin Isenburg]
# [http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-announces-las-compression/ ESRI Announces "Optimised LAS"]
# [http://www.lidarnews.com/content/view/10214 ESRI description of "Optimised LAS"]
# [http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/ica-osgeo-labs/2015-March/001225.html Discussion background on this topic at Geo for All list]
# [http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/esris-claim-at-being-good-standards.html Refuting ESRI's response and claim to be good Open Standards citizens]
# [http://blog.abs-cg.com/2015/04/lidar-format-wars-creep-into-geospatial.html Questioning why some spatial media are not running this story]

News coverage:
# [http://www.itnews.com.au/News/402914,open-source-devs-in-uproar-over-esri-las-lock-in-plans.aspx IT News]
# [http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/04/21/1624219/osgeo-foundation-up-in-arms-over-esri-las-lock-in-plans Slashdot]
# [http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/LIDAR-offenes-Dateiformat-LAS-in-Bedraengnis-2609710.html Heise Online] [http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Lidar-Format-War-Geo-Softwarehaus-Esri-vs-Geo-Community-2615341.html Follow-Up] - German speaking IT news.
# [http://www.spatialsource.com.au/2015/04/21/os-developers-concerned-over-new-esri-lidar-format/ Spatial Source]
# [http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-great-airplane-laser-debate-is-as-youd-expect-about-file-formats Motherboard]

Blog coverage:
# [http://blog.abs-cg.com/2015/04/lidar-format-wars-creep-into-geospatial.html Adena Schutzberg]
# [http://odoepner.wordpress.com/2015/04/16/osgeo-open-letter-lidar-laszip-vs-esri/ Oliver Doepner]
# [http://www.northrivergeographic.com/archives/esri-osgeo-lidar-and-things Randal Hale]

=References=

<references />

[[Category: Standards]]

Geodata Discovery Working Group

2014-06-13T12:31:36Z

Wiki-Brylie: /* Participants */ Brylie Christopher Oxley

This is a [[Working Group]] started by the [[Public Geospatial Data Committee]].

''NOTICE'': There are two BOFs on this topic at [[OSGeo_at_FOSS4G2006#BOFs|FOSS4G2006]] on ''Geodata'' and about ''Geodata Discovery and Metadata Models''.

While OSGeo can consider hosting sets of public geodata, (and for the purposes of offering maintained [[Geodata Packaging Working Group|packages]] of high-quality data for education and demonstration, it probably will), we can compile a set of best practises and references to good prior art for building and maintaining collections of data and metadata.

== Focus ==

* Metadata for collections of geographic information.
* Providing best practise and prototypes for geodata search facilities
* Help with providing input into the OSGeo repository/services at http://osgeo.telascience.org/
* Providing 'catalog'/discovery/search services as part of OSGeo activities in promoting access to public domain and open licensed bodies of data.

== Participants ==

* [[User:JoWalsh|Jo Walsh]]
* [[User:SchuylerErle|Schuyler Erle]]
* [[User:bitner|David Bitner]]
* [[User:Pnaciona|Perry Nacionales]]
* [[User:Neteler|Markus Neteler]]
* [[User:Arnulf Christl|Arnulf Christl]]
* [[User:virtualmemorys|Bob Wang]]
* [[User:Ocantan|Oscar Cantán]]
* [[User:Sfkeller|Stefan Keller]]
* [[User:candrsn|Carl Anderson]]
* [[User:K1_Kabiri|Keivan Kabiri]]
* [[User:kgjenkins|Keith Jenkins]]
* [[USER:gjlawan|Greg Lawrance]]
* [[User:brylie|Brylie Christopher Oxley]]
* ''please add yourself''

== Existing (Meta) Search Projects and Related Efforts ==

More on metadata models at [[Geodata_Metadata_Requirements]]

Search services:
* See [[Geodata_Metadata_Requirements#Discovery]]
* (Meta) Data Catalogues / Data Repositories
** [http://www.geotorrent.org/ GeoTorrent] hosts BitTorrents of shapefile/TIFF format data.
** [http://www.fao.org/geonetwork/ GeoNetwork] "Find Interactive Maps, GIS datasets, Satellite Imagery and Related Applications"
** [http://www.dlese.org/libdev/dcs_overview.html DLESE Collection System] offers a metadata repository and editor and supports OAI-PMH as data provider and harvester
** [http://gis.hsr.ch/gmdb/ Geo Meta Data Base (GMDB)] - Metadata repository and editor based on ISO 19115/119 Metadata and Dublin Core with XML export and OAI-PMH data provider support (german only)
** GDI Portals (country specific): [http://www.geodata.gov US], [http://www.gogeo.ac.uk UK], [http://www.geoportal.bund.de D], [http://www.geoland.at/ A], [http://www.geocat.ch CH], [http://geodaten.llv.li/geoshop/public.html LI], [http://www.geoportail.fr/ FR], [http://www.icde.org.co/ CO]...
* (Meta) Search engines:
** [http://geometa.info/ geometa.info] - search engine for geospatial services, data and documents combining structured and unstructured data (currently german only)
** [http://www.google.com/search?q=allinurl%3A+getcapabilities Google search] using 'allinurl' parameter

Lists about data sources and services:
* Lists on web services:
** http://www.skylab-mobilesystems.com/ger/wms_serverlist.html simple WMS service URL list
** http://www.refractions.net/white_papers/ogcsurvey/ Automated OGC Survey on the Web (WMF, WFS, ...)
** http://geometa.info/search.jsp?query=type%3Awms WMS search engine
** http://exploreourpla.net/maps/

** [[Orthophotography]] Annotated list of Orthophotography WMS Services
* Lists on data services:
** http://datagateway.nrcs.usda.gov/ US data servers
** [http://geopole.org/ Geopole.org - WMS server list]

== Public Datasets for Possible Mirroring or Distribution ==

=== Regional data sets ===

These data sets comprise raster and vector data (with permittive license):

* [http://www.so.ch/de/pub/departemente/bjd/gis/daten.htm SO!GIS® data of Kanton Solothurn] (Switzerland)
* [[Edu Data Package North Carolina]] (USA)
* [http://www.findgis.com FindGIS - Florida City, County & Goverment Agency GIS Data Download & FTP Sites]

=== Gazetteer Data ===
... basically placenames with coordinates ...

* [http://www.geonames.org/ Geonames.org] gazetteer (includes [http://earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html/ NGA GNS Gazetteer])
* [http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/nasa-exp/BlueMarble-Placenames.zip?download WorldWind Placenames] (markusN can provide PERL to read this)
* [http://lists.burri.to/pipermail/geowanking/2007-March/003772.html Geowanking-List: Toponymic accurracy of Google and Yahoo Maps] => a very good example why releasing this data is useful for public authorities and the society

=== Vector data ===
* VMAP0 - 1:1Mio, very generalised vector data for many features, around 70 [http://www.terragear.org/docs/vmap0/coverage.html layers] (already at telascience) - see also [http://www.mapability.com/info/vmap0_index.html here] for docs
* [http://aprsworld.net/gisdata/world/ World map for APRS], 1:1.1mio
* [http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/wessel/gshhs/gshhs.html GSHHS] - world coastlines, different scales available
* TIGER/Line (USA) - street and addressing data for the US
* RNF (Canada) - street and addressing data for Canada
* [http://www.openstreetmap.org OpenStreetMap] - data available through a [http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/REST HTTP based XML interface]. They've also been getting requests for shapefile and GML output of their data.
* [http://www.maplibrary.org/stacks/Africa_lite.asp African geodata]

=== Raster data ===
* DEM
** [ftp://e0srp01u.ecs.nasa.gov/srtm/version2 SRTM V2]
** [http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/image/2minrelief.html ETOPO2]
** [http://topex.ucsd.edu/WWW_html/srtm30_plus.html TOPEX]: SRTM30 (with GTOPO30 data for high latitudes where SRTM data are not available)
** [http://ekman.csc.noaa.gov/TCM/ NOAA TCM] LIDAR / IfSAR
* Satellite Data
** Landsat ([http://onearth.jpl.nasa.gov/ OnEarth] - [http://telascience.sdsc.edu/tela_data/onearth/ mirror already at telascience])
** [http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/ Blue Marble] / [http://www.iac.ethz.ch/staff/stockli/bmng/ Blue Marble Next Generation] (mirror already at telascience)
** ASTER (from GLCF)
** MODIS (from NASA EDC)
** USGS Urban Orthos (URL?)
* Maps derived from Satellite Data
** Nested Imagery Layer (Best of -- resolution -- with seamless zoom through multiple levels)
** [http://glcf.umiacs.umd.edu/data/landcover/ AVHRR Landuse Map] from GLCF
** [http://www.shadedrelief.com/natural/ natural earth]
** [http://dmsp.ngdc.noaa.gov/html/projects/lights.html City lights]
** [http://www.worldwildlife.org/freshwater/hydrosheds.cfm HydroSHEDS] - Hydrological data and maps based on SHuttle Elevation Derivatives at multiple Scales
** [http://unosat.web.cern.ch/unosat/ UNOSAT imagery] http://unosat.web.cern.ch/unosat/asp/prod_free.asp

== Wishlist for Public Datasets ==

* Orthophotos
** Possible sources:
** http://www.fgdl.org/download/index.html
** http://datagateway.nrcs.usda.gov/

== Search Protocols ==

* GIS-specific:
** OGC's CSW 2.0 (work in progress...)
*** [http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/29 OpenGIS Catalogue Services - ebRIM (ISO/TS 15000-3) profile of CSW]
*** (ISO/OGC's "ISO19115/ISO19119 Application Profile for CSW 2.0")
*** See a comparison between [http://www.gis.hsr.ch/wiki/OAI-PMH CSW and OAI-PMH]
** OGC's WFS (profile) serving (profiled) ISO 19115/19119 metadata format...?
** 'Lean and mean' proposals on project level...
*** [[Simple Catalog Interface]]
* Related search/harvest protocols - possibly to be profiled or specialized by geoinformation requirements:
** [http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.html OAI-PMH] (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting 2.0)
*** See also [http://www.modoai.org/ mod_oai], an Apache module under development
** [http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/ Search/Retrieve via URL] (SRU/SRW)
** [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSearch OpenSearch] proposal from A9
** [http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/agency/document.html Z39.50 ANSI/NISO standard protocol]
** [http://www.ebxml.org/ ebXML]/ebRIM Messaging Service 2.0

== Hosting Plan ==

(placeholder for an initial hosting plan sketch)

== See Also ==

* [[Geodata Packaging Working Group]]
* [[Geodata Licensing Working Group]]
* [[WMS Tile Caching]] proposal
* [[Geodata processing at telascience.org]]

[[Category:Public Geospatial Data Committee]]

Geodata Repository

2013-10-21T12:19:34Z

Wiki-Brylie: /* TODO */

''The notes on the [[Talk:Geodata_Repository]] Talk page for this page describe the background to this effort''

A full list of suggestions for public domain data sets that are nice-to-haves is maintained at [[Geodata Discovery Working Group]].

= Getting involved =

The geodata repository has a dedicated blade server at telascience - cf [[SAC Service Status]]. Right now this is geodata.telascience.org ; we need to get an osgeo.org domain pointed to it. The plan is to have something very much up, running and demoable by FOSS4G.

== How you can help ==

* Offer feedback on the [[Geodata Metadata Requirements]] - if you have a dataset you would like to contribute, does this model express it adequately?
* Write or contribute an example [[Simple Catalog Interface]]
* If you would like to install software and/or data on the repository machine, please talk to the good people at [[SAC]] or visit #osgeo and #telascience on irc.freenode.net to find out how to get an account and get started

== Who is involved now ==

* [[User:JoWalsh|Jo Walsh]] is working on the backend data store and machine level metadata interfaces (also presenting this material at [[OSGeo at FOSS4G2006|FOSS4G 2006]])
* Chris Schmidt is helping with an OpenLayers-based browsing interface
* Schuyler Erle is helping with web service / application glue
* Sean Gillies' OWSLib is, half-beknownst to him, a big part of all these applications - see the OWSLib API user stories at http://trac.gispython.org/projects/PCL/wiki/OwsCapabilitiesUserStory
* Markus Neteler is contributing data processing code and resources as part of the GRASS data packaging effort
* Norm Vine is providing a point of contact for administering the system and general reality-checking to all involved.
* [[User:Mspott|Martin Spott]] maintains the content of the [[Geodata_Repository#PostGIS_serving_vector_data|PostGIS-repository]] on 'zuluviz'.

= Interface Design =

In order to be useful to people, a geodata repository needs a way for users to become quickly + easily informed as to what kind of data they're getting: metadata about the data, and the quality/quantity of data involved.

For Raster images, one way to do this is to include an extent-wide image of the data -- http://openlayers.org/gallery/ has screenshots which show some of what I mean where, although more directed towards applications. By having a whole-extent screenshot overview, users can quickly and easily see what they're getting. Additionally, assuming this data is to be made available as WMS, setting up an OpenLayers instance to allow users to browse the rasters and see at a more detailed level would be beneficial.

Vector data/attribute data would also need to be described, in text or some other way. http://freemap.in/world/ is an example of a browsable map which displays attribute data -- clicking on a country fills the sidebar with data. This interface was set up in about 20 minutes, and given decent map files, this kind of set up could be largely automated, allowing users to (again) get an overview of the data they're looking at before they download it or set it up on their own servers.

= Data sources =

Sources of public geodata for initial setup in a repository.

== PostGIS serving vector data ==

There's a [http://www.postgis.org/ PostGIS] server (thanks to John Graham for hosting this site at [http://www.telascience.org/ TelaScience]) which stores different flavours of vector data; also known as "Landcover-DB". Current datasets include: VMap0, VMap1, AptNav, GSHHS, PGS, SWBD, MGRS, TIGER, StatsCan, OSM, GeoNames, CountryCodes and FGSODB - see below for further explanation.

=== Access - how to get to it !?===

* [http://mapserver.flightgear.org/ Graphical MapServer interface]
* [http://mapserver.flightgear.org/download.psp Download Shapefiles]
* [[Geodata_Repository#WMS_.2B_WFS_.2B_TileCache_services|WMS + WFS + TileCache services - see below]]

The web mapping colour schema has been applied in accordance with the [http://etc-lusi.eionet.europa.eu/CLC2000/classes/ Corine Land Cover] project.

* Direct read access to the database is available to users of the 'geodata.telascience.org' system. Retrieval in SQL syntax as "SELECT asText(wkb_geometry) FROM <Tablename> WHERE <Column> LIKE '<Keyword>'".
* Collaborative editing via [http://www.featureserver.org/ FeatureServer] is being prepared.
* Dump into Shapefiles provided occasionally or upon request; regular schedule possible if required.
* Other data access upon request, depending on the purpose and use.

'''CAVEAT''' We regret that, due to technical reasons, direct PostGIS database access is currently unavailable.

=== On Offer ! ===

Short explanation of available datasets (to be extended - the number of datasets as well as their explanation ;-):

{|border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0"
!Name
!Description
!# of layers
|-
|VMap0
|Selected subsets of [http://www.mapability.com/info/vmap0_intro.html Vector Smart Map Level 0] polygons, lines and points, starting with a selection that has proven to be useful for creating [http://www.flightgear.org/ FlightGear] Scenery from it. Added a 'geonameid' column for joining urban areas with GeoNames (see below). Current details explained at the [http://www.custom-scenery.org/Background.262.0.html World Custom Scenery Project], will get synced some day.
|33 [[LandcoverDB_VMap0_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|VMap1
|First attempt of a selection that would be "nice to have" for FlightGear from [http://www.mapability.com/info/vmap1_intro.html Vector Smart Map Level 1] - and certainly for other purposes as well. Added a 'geonameid' column for joining urban areas with GeoNames. Details similar to VMap0.
|58 [[LandcoverDB_VMap1_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|AptNav
|Geometric average of runway center locations plus runway/taxiway shapes as used by the FlightGear and X-Plane flight simulators; data taken from [http://www.x-plane.org/home/robinp/ Robin Peel's Airport Database]. Locations converted to OGC-style POINT geometries. Use 'icao' column for searching.
* This import is currently tied to the state of the FlightGear 1.0.0 Base Package release.
|1 [[LandcoverDB_AptNav_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|GSHHS
|[http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/wessel/gshhs/gshhs.html Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Shoreline Database] 1.6 shorelines.
|4 [[LandcoverDB_GSHHS_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|PGS
|[http://www.nga.mil/portal/site/nga01/index.jsp?epi-content=GENERIC&itemID=9328fbd8dcc4a010VgnVCMServer3c02010aRCRD&beanID=1629630080&viewID=Article NGA Prototype Global Shoreline].
|1 [[LandcoverDB_PGS_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|SWBD
|[http://edc.usgs.gov/products/elevation/swbd.html SRTMv2] Water Body Data.
|1 [[LandcoverDB_SWBD_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|MGRS
|Military Grid Reference System, alias UTMREF.
|1 [[LandcoverDB_MGRS_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|TIGER
|[http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/ Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing system] line data. Roads, railroads and water/stream line data from the 2006se release, water body and landmark polygons from 2005fe (thanks to Chris Holmes at [http://www.openplans.org/ The Open Planning Project] for providing pre-processed data).
|6 [[LandcoverDB_TIGER_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|StatsCan
|Line data of the [http://www.statcan.ca/ Statistics Canada] [http://www.statcan.ca/bsolc/english/bsolc?catno=92-500-XWE 2006 Road Network File].
|1 [[LandcoverDB_StatsCan_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|OSM
|[http://www.openstreetmap.org/ OpenStreetMap] Import of the [http://planet.openstreetmap.org/ planet dump]. Split up into 23 different road-, railroad- and stream-layers; schema taken from [http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Map_Features#Highway Highway Map Features].
* This import is done manually - typically the weekend after a new planet dump is being made available.
|6 [[LandcoverDB_OSM_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|GeoNames
|Complete content of the "allCountries" export table from the [http://www.geonames.org/about.html Geonames.org geographical database] (as of 2008-08-08). Locations converted to OGC-style POINT geometries. Added a 'pplkey' column for searchable classification of size for populated places [1-7]; schema proposed by Markus Neteler:
* continental scale (>= 1:50 million): >= 1 million inhabitants
* multi-national scale (>= 1:10 million): 500000-1 million inhab.
* country scale (>= 1:1 million): 100000-499999 inhab.
* regional scale (>= 1:500000): 50000-99999 inhab.
* city scale (>= 1:50000): 10000-49999 inhab.
* local scale: < 10000
|6 [[LandcoverDB_GeoNames_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|CountryCodes
|Translation table for country codes as proposed [http://www.intevation.de/pipermail/freegis-list/2004-July/001784.html here] (thanks to Silke Reimer for preparing the table).
|1
|-
|FGSODB
| This is the primary location of the [http://scenemodels.flightgear.org/models.php FlightGear Scenery Models Repository]; models consist of AC3D geometries, RGB/PNG textures and in some cases animations that are defined in XML wrappers. Locations in OGC-style POINT geometries.
|1 [[LandcoverDB_FGSODB_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|Custom Scenery
|Landuse data at selected areas [http://mapserver.flightgear.org/map/?lon=9.20438&lat=47.63982&zoom=11 (example)] has been auto-classified from Landsat7-images and converted into suitable polygons at the [http://www.custom-scenery.org/Research-Deve.274.0.html World Custom Scenery Project].
In contrast to the datasets which are listed above, this chapter is the place for our future development. It consists of VMap0 data as a basis and is being improved either by "home grown" landcover data or by imports of "free" (TM) datasets.
|61 [[LandcoverDB_CS_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|}
Many thanks to Norman Vine for running the HCRA, the "Human Communications Relay Agent" :-)

=== Procedures .... ===

==== How the data gets in ====
Many datasets are readable with the GDAL/OGR(/OGDI) toolbox. Notably these are the
* VMap datasets,
* GSHHS,
* PGS,
* SWBD and
* MGRS.

The 'ogr2ogr' command is used here, hidden behind a somewhat complex contruct of shell scripts which automates the whole thing. Writing to the DB is accomplished by the PostGIS driver provided by 'ogr2ogr'.

Some other datasets are automatically or manually (for those sets which are not expected to change often) transformed into OGC-compilant SQL scripts and run through the respective SQL monitor.

Few datasets are being imported directly into the DB with Perl/DBI. AptNav, for example, is parsed from a text file with a home-grown parser in Perl and written to the database table with DBI.

Everything that is meant to represent a geometry is stored in the DB using OCG-compilant geometry types POLYGON, LINESTRING and POINT. A POINT, for example, is written into the DB as

INSERT INTO <Tablename> ([...]) VALUES ([...] PointFromText('POINT(<Lon> <Lat>)', 4326) [...])

The data are stored internally in the respective, geospatially searchable geometry data type.

=== Timeline ===

==== Phase 1 ====

* Import data from many different sources and shape it into a unified format - first results available (see above).
* Retrieve exact locations of major river dams and waterfalls (keywords: St. Lawrence, Niagara, Bosporus, Gibraltar, ....).
* Build joins between VMap0/1 urban areas and GeoNames populated places (via names and geographic vincinity).

==== Phase 2 ====

* Generation of static per-country and per-region shapefiles; distribution via HTTP and via [http://geotorrent.org/browse.php geotorrent.org].

==== Phase 3 ====

* Design and implement a storage-/data-model for road data that is capable of serving the needs of [http://www.openstreetmap.org/ OpenStreetMap] while remaining conformant to OGC-standards. Merge the ideas explained in the [http://www.remote.org/frederik/tmp/towards-a-new-data-model-for-osm.pdf OSM New Data Model] paper as well as Schuler's [http://freemap.in/~sderle/pg_osm/ OSM on PostGIS] initiative - in other words: Try "squaring the circle" ;-)
* Now that OpenStreetMap has (also) imported TIGER, convince OSM to imcorporate an equivalent of VMap0 at places that are currently not covered, finally to create a global road network of maximum detail and accuracy.
* Merge landcover- and stream-layers from VMap1, TIGER/OSM and Landsat7-classification into the foundation of VMap0 to create a global landcover dataset of maximum detail and accuracy.

==== Sequence undefined ====

* Add proper metadata according to OSGeo metadata recommendation/standard.
* Find suitable desktop client to [http://www.featureserver.org/ FeatureServer].
* Add polygon data that's been automagically retrieved from Landsat7 images at the [http://www.custom-scenery.org/Research-Deve.274.0.html World Custom Scenery Project] - procedure available.
* Add polygon data that's been manually digitized from Landsat7 images.

==== What you can do ====

* Help is very much appreciated to add a reasonable colour schema. Work is currently on its way to convert the map display over to the CORINE [http://www.corine.dfd.dlr.de/media/download/clc_lut_en.pdf colour values] but this schema doesn't cover all our needs.

==== DONE ====

* Generation of shapefiles on-the-fly for user-defined region and layer(s). Use 'pgsql2shp' and consider the 2 GByte-per-file limit: [http://mapserver.flightgear.org/download.psp Landcover Database Shapefile Download]
* Rebuild TIGER layers from 2006se release according to [http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOSDOC/Loading+TIGER+data these instructions] - mostly finished.
* Limit the "viewing angle" of WMS/WFS-services in order to save the DB-servers' life .... Solved by setting MAXSCALE for some layers.

=== Old status ===

* see [[Geodata processing at telascience.org#Data:_VMAP0_1:1Mio_World_Vector_Data]]

== Blue Marble NG ==

* Mapserver as WMS

=== Status ===
* By bittorrent: http://data.freemap.in/view/DataSet/9

== SRTM ==

=== Status ===
* SRTM30 data is available now by WMS/WCS: http://data.freemap.in/view/DataSet/11

== Landsat-7 ==

* Mapserver as WMS
* Telascience already serving the raw data - http://onearth.telascience.org/

=== Status ===

* Waiting for disk space to finish unpacking the raw data on zuluviz.sdsu.edu
* Interim plan is to write a simple WMS wrapper script that generates a GDAL VRT to assemble composites on the fly

== Seamless imagery ==

=== Status ===
* Create mechanism to have multi-resolution seamless "best of" imagery server [[seamlessimagery|Multi-resolution seamless imagery]]

== WMS + WFS + TileCache services ==

Many layers (see list above) are served as WMS/WFS at http://mapserver.flightgear.org

WMS: http://mapserver.flightgear.org/ms?Service=WMS&Version=1.1.1&request=GetCapabilities

WFS: http://mapserver.flightgear.org/ms?Service=WFS&Version=1.0.0&request=GetCapabilities

TileCache: http://mapserver.flightgear.org/tc (EPSG:900913 !!)

== TelaScience / OSGeo / FlightGear Landcover Database Shapefile Download ==

See http://mapserver.flightgear.org/download.psp

== City of Vienna, Austria ==

[http://data.wien.gv.at OGD Wien] offers data under CC-BY. This data can be imported to [[OSM]]. Supported interface standard include:
* WMS
* WFS GML
* JSON
* KML geplant
Contact on IRC at #ogdwien.

= Metadata =

* [[Geodata Metadata Requirements]] - a baseline for what would be asked for / expected of data sets in an OSGeo repository
* A simple metadata-in-GeoRSS webservice that is also as FGDC compliant as possible/desirable.
* [[Simple Catalog Interface]]

= See Also =

* OSGeo's [[Geodata Discovery Working Group]] - half-dormant
* http://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Global_datasets
* [http://www.mapdex.org/search/ MapDex] offers a metadata search facility
* [http://www.geonames.org/ GeoNames] is a gazetteer and naming collection
* http://www.fao.org/geonetwork/srv/en/main.search
* http://geoportail-geoportal.ainc-inac.gc.ca/metaindex_e.asp
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_towns
* http://mapas.mma.gov.br/i3geo/menutemas/servicoswms.php WMS servers collection in RSS format
* http://mapas.mma.gov.br/i3geo/wscliente.htm Web service client

[[Category:Public Geospatial Data Committee]]
[[Category:Infrastructure]]

Geodata Repository

2013-10-21T12:19:02Z

Wiki-Brylie: /* How the data gets in */ grammar, wording, structure

''The notes on the [[Talk:Geodata_Repository]] Talk page for this page describe the background to this effort''

A full list of suggestions for public domain data sets that are nice-to-haves is maintained at [[Geodata Discovery Working Group]].

= Getting involved =

The geodata repository has a dedicated blade server at telascience - cf [[SAC Service Status]]. Right now this is geodata.telascience.org ; we need to get an osgeo.org domain pointed to it. The plan is to have something very much up, running and demoable by FOSS4G.

== How you can help ==

* Offer feedback on the [[Geodata Metadata Requirements]] - if you have a dataset you would like to contribute, does this model express it adequately?
* Write or contribute an example [[Simple Catalog Interface]]
* If you would like to install software and/or data on the repository machine, please talk to the good people at [[SAC]] or visit #osgeo and #telascience on irc.freenode.net to find out how to get an account and get started

== Who is involved now ==

* [[User:JoWalsh|Jo Walsh]] is working on the backend data store and machine level metadata interfaces (also presenting this material at [[OSGeo at FOSS4G2006|FOSS4G 2006]])
* Chris Schmidt is helping with an OpenLayers-based browsing interface
* Schuyler Erle is helping with web service / application glue
* Sean Gillies' OWSLib is, half-beknownst to him, a big part of all these applications - see the OWSLib API user stories at http://trac.gispython.org/projects/PCL/wiki/OwsCapabilitiesUserStory
* Markus Neteler is contributing data processing code and resources as part of the GRASS data packaging effort
* Norm Vine is providing a point of contact for administering the system and general reality-checking to all involved.
* [[User:Mspott|Martin Spott]] maintains the content of the [[Geodata_Repository#PostGIS_serving_vector_data|PostGIS-repository]] on 'zuluviz'.

= Interface Design =

In order to be useful to people, a geodata repository needs a way for users to become quickly + easily informed as to what kind of data they're getting: metadata about the data, and the quality/quantity of data involved.

For Raster images, one way to do this is to include an extent-wide image of the data -- http://openlayers.org/gallery/ has screenshots which show some of what I mean where, although more directed towards applications. By having a whole-extent screenshot overview, users can quickly and easily see what they're getting. Additionally, assuming this data is to be made available as WMS, setting up an OpenLayers instance to allow users to browse the rasters and see at a more detailed level would be beneficial.

Vector data/attribute data would also need to be described, in text or some other way. http://freemap.in/world/ is an example of a browsable map which displays attribute data -- clicking on a country fills the sidebar with data. This interface was set up in about 20 minutes, and given decent map files, this kind of set up could be largely automated, allowing users to (again) get an overview of the data they're looking at before they download it or set it up on their own servers.

= Data sources =

Sources of public geodata for initial setup in a repository.

== PostGIS serving vector data ==

There's a [http://www.postgis.org/ PostGIS] server (thanks to John Graham for hosting this site at [http://www.telascience.org/ TelaScience]) which stores different flavours of vector data; also known as "Landcover-DB". Current datasets include: VMap0, VMap1, AptNav, GSHHS, PGS, SWBD, MGRS, TIGER, StatsCan, OSM, GeoNames, CountryCodes and FGSODB - see below for further explanation.

=== Access - how to get to it !?===

* [http://mapserver.flightgear.org/ Graphical MapServer interface]
* [http://mapserver.flightgear.org/download.psp Download Shapefiles]
* [[Geodata_Repository#WMS_.2B_WFS_.2B_TileCache_services|WMS + WFS + TileCache services - see below]]

The web mapping colour schema has been applied in accordance with the [http://etc-lusi.eionet.europa.eu/CLC2000/classes/ Corine Land Cover] project.

* Direct read access to the database is available to users of the 'geodata.telascience.org' system. Retrieval in SQL syntax as "SELECT asText(wkb_geometry) FROM <Tablename> WHERE <Column> LIKE '<Keyword>'".
* Collaborative editing via [http://www.featureserver.org/ FeatureServer] is being prepared.
* Dump into Shapefiles provided occasionally or upon request; regular schedule possible if required.
* Other data access upon request, depending on the purpose and use.

'''CAVEAT''' We regret that, due to technical reasons, direct PostGIS database access is currently unavailable.

=== On Offer ! ===

Short explanation of available datasets (to be extended - the number of datasets as well as their explanation ;-):

{|border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0"
!Name
!Description
!# of layers
|-
|VMap0
|Selected subsets of [http://www.mapability.com/info/vmap0_intro.html Vector Smart Map Level 0] polygons, lines and points, starting with a selection that has proven to be useful for creating [http://www.flightgear.org/ FlightGear] Scenery from it. Added a 'geonameid' column for joining urban areas with GeoNames (see below). Current details explained at the [http://www.custom-scenery.org/Background.262.0.html World Custom Scenery Project], will get synced some day.
|33 [[LandcoverDB_VMap0_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|VMap1
|First attempt of a selection that would be "nice to have" for FlightGear from [http://www.mapability.com/info/vmap1_intro.html Vector Smart Map Level 1] - and certainly for other purposes as well. Added a 'geonameid' column for joining urban areas with GeoNames. Details similar to VMap0.
|58 [[LandcoverDB_VMap1_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|AptNav
|Geometric average of runway center locations plus runway/taxiway shapes as used by the FlightGear and X-Plane flight simulators; data taken from [http://www.x-plane.org/home/robinp/ Robin Peel's Airport Database]. Locations converted to OGC-style POINT geometries. Use 'icao' column for searching.
* This import is currently tied to the state of the FlightGear 1.0.0 Base Package release.
|1 [[LandcoverDB_AptNav_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|GSHHS
|[http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/wessel/gshhs/gshhs.html Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Shoreline Database] 1.6 shorelines.
|4 [[LandcoverDB_GSHHS_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|PGS
|[http://www.nga.mil/portal/site/nga01/index.jsp?epi-content=GENERIC&itemID=9328fbd8dcc4a010VgnVCMServer3c02010aRCRD&beanID=1629630080&viewID=Article NGA Prototype Global Shoreline].
|1 [[LandcoverDB_PGS_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|SWBD
|[http://edc.usgs.gov/products/elevation/swbd.html SRTMv2] Water Body Data.
|1 [[LandcoverDB_SWBD_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|MGRS
|Military Grid Reference System, alias UTMREF.
|1 [[LandcoverDB_MGRS_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|TIGER
|[http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/ Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing system] line data. Roads, railroads and water/stream line data from the 2006se release, water body and landmark polygons from 2005fe (thanks to Chris Holmes at [http://www.openplans.org/ The Open Planning Project] for providing pre-processed data).
|6 [[LandcoverDB_TIGER_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|StatsCan
|Line data of the [http://www.statcan.ca/ Statistics Canada] [http://www.statcan.ca/bsolc/english/bsolc?catno=92-500-XWE 2006 Road Network File].
|1 [[LandcoverDB_StatsCan_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|OSM
|[http://www.openstreetmap.org/ OpenStreetMap] Import of the [http://planet.openstreetmap.org/ planet dump]. Split up into 23 different road-, railroad- and stream-layers; schema taken from [http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Map_Features#Highway Highway Map Features].
* This import is done manually - typically the weekend after a new planet dump is being made available.
|6 [[LandcoverDB_OSM_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|GeoNames
|Complete content of the "allCountries" export table from the [http://www.geonames.org/about.html Geonames.org geographical database] (as of 2008-08-08). Locations converted to OGC-style POINT geometries. Added a 'pplkey' column for searchable classification of size for populated places [1-7]; schema proposed by Markus Neteler:
* continental scale (>= 1:50 million): >= 1 million inhabitants
* multi-national scale (>= 1:10 million): 500000-1 million inhab.
* country scale (>= 1:1 million): 100000-499999 inhab.
* regional scale (>= 1:500000): 50000-99999 inhab.
* city scale (>= 1:50000): 10000-49999 inhab.
* local scale: < 10000
|6 [[LandcoverDB_GeoNames_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|CountryCodes
|Translation table for country codes as proposed [http://www.intevation.de/pipermail/freegis-list/2004-July/001784.html here] (thanks to Silke Reimer for preparing the table).
|1
|-
|FGSODB
| This is the primary location of the [http://scenemodels.flightgear.org/models.php FlightGear Scenery Models Repository]; models consist of AC3D geometries, RGB/PNG textures and in some cases animations that are defined in XML wrappers. Locations in OGC-style POINT geometries.
|1 [[LandcoverDB_FGSODB_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|-
|Custom Scenery
|Landuse data at selected areas [http://mapserver.flightgear.org/map/?lon=9.20438&lat=47.63982&zoom=11 (example)] has been auto-classified from Landsat7-images and converted into suitable polygons at the [http://www.custom-scenery.org/Research-Deve.274.0.html World Custom Scenery Project].
In contrast to the datasets which are listed above, this chapter is the place for our future development. It consists of VMap0 data as a basis and is being improved either by "home grown" landcover data or by imports of "free" (TM) datasets.
|61 [[LandcoverDB_CS_Detail|(DETAIL)]]
|}
Many thanks to Norman Vine for running the HCRA, the "Human Communications Relay Agent" :-)

=== Procedures .... ===

==== How the data gets in ====
Many datasets are readable with the GDAL/OGR(/OGDI) toolbox. Notably these are the
* VMap datasets,
* GSHHS,
* PGS,
* SWBD and
* MGRS.

The 'ogr2ogr' command is used here, hidden behind a somewhat complex contruct of shell scripts which automates the whole thing. Writing to the DB is accomplished by the PostGIS driver provided by 'ogr2ogr'.

Some other datasets are automatically or manually (for those sets which are not expected to change often) transformed into OGC-compilant SQL scripts and run through the respective SQL monitor.

Few datasets are being imported directly into the DB with Perl/DBI. AptNav, for example, is parsed from a text file with a home-grown parser in Perl and written to the database table with DBI.

Everything that is meant to represent a geometry is stored in the DB using OCG-compilant geometry types POLYGON, LINESTRING and POINT. A POINT, for example, is written into the DB as

INSERT INTO <Tablename> ([...]) VALUES ([...] PointFromText('POINT(<Lon> <Lat>)', 4326) [...])

The data are stored internally in the respective, geospatially searchable geometry data type.

=== TODO ===

==== Phase 1 ====

* Import data from many different sources and shape it into a unified format - first results available (see above).
* Retrieve exact locations of major river dams and waterfalls (keywords: St. Lawrence, Niagara, Bosporus, Gibraltar, ....).
* Build joins between VMap0/1 urban areas and GeoNames populated places (via names and geographic vincinity).

==== Phase 2 ====

* Generation of static per-country and per-region shapefiles; distribution via HTTP and via [http://geotorrent.org/browse.php geotorrent.org].

==== Phase 3 ====

* Design and implement a storage-/data-model for road data that is capable of serving the needs of [http://www.openstreetmap.org/ OpenStreetMap] while remaining conformant to OGC-standards. Merge the ideas explained in the [http://www.remote.org/frederik/tmp/towards-a-new-data-model-for-osm.pdf OSM New Data Model] paper as well as Schuler's [http://freemap.in/~sderle/pg_osm/ OSM on PostGIS] initiative - in other words: Try "squaring the circle" ;-)
* Now that OpenStreetMap has (also) imported TIGER, convince OSM to imcorporate an equivalent of VMap0 at places that are currently not covered, finally to create a global road network of maximum detail and accuracy.
* Merge landcover- and stream-layers from VMap1, TIGER/OSM and Landsat7-classification into the foundation of VMap0 to create a global landcover dataset of maximum detail and accuracy.

==== Sequence undefined ====

* Add proper metadata according to OSGeo metadata recommendation/standard.
* Find suitable desktop client to [http://www.featureserver.org/ FeatureServer].
* Add polygon data that's been automagically retrieved from Landsat7 images at the [http://www.custom-scenery.org/Research-Deve.274.0.html World Custom Scenery Project] - procedure available.
* Add polygon data that's been manually digitized from Landsat7 images.

==== What you can do ====

* Help is very much appreciated to add a reasonable colour schema. Work is currently on its way to convert the map display over to the CORINE [http://www.corine.dfd.dlr.de/media/download/clc_lut_en.pdf colour values] but this schema doesn't cover all our needs.

==== DONE ====

* Generation of shapefiles on-the-fly for user-defined region and layer(s). Use 'pgsql2shp' and consider the 2 GByte-per-file limit: [http://mapserver.flightgear.org/download.psp Landcover Database Shapefile Download]
* Rebuild TIGER layers from 2006se release according to [http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOSDOC/Loading+TIGER+data these instructions] - mostly finished.
* Limit the "viewing angle" of WMS/WFS-services in order to save the DB-servers' life .... Solved by setting MAXSCALE for some layers.

=== Old status ===

* see [[Geodata processing at telascience.org#Data:_VMAP0_1:1Mio_World_Vector_Data]]

== Blue Marble NG ==

* Mapserver as WMS

=== Status ===
* By bittorrent: http://data.freemap.in/view/DataSet/9

== SRTM ==

=== Status ===
* SRTM30 data is available now by WMS/WCS: http://data.freemap.in/view/DataSet/11

== Landsat-7 ==

* Mapserver as WMS
* Telascience already serving the raw data - http://onearth.telascience.org/

=== Status ===

* Waiting for disk space to finish unpacking the raw data on zuluviz.sdsu.edu
* Interim plan is to write a simple WMS wrapper script that generates a GDAL VRT to assemble composites on the fly

== Seamless imagery ==

=== Status ===
* Create mechanism to have multi-resolution seamless "best of" imagery server [[seamlessimagery|Multi-resolution seamless imagery]]

== WMS + WFS + TileCache services ==

Many layers (see list above) are served as WMS/WFS at http://mapserver.flightgear.org

WMS: http://mapserver.flightgear.org/ms?Service=WMS&Version=1.1.1&request=GetCapabilities

WFS: http://mapserver.flightgear.org/ms?Service=WFS&Version=1.0.0&request=GetCapabilities

TileCache: http://mapserver.flightgear.org/tc (EPSG:900913 !!)

== TelaScience / OSGeo / FlightGear Landcover Database Shapefile Download ==

See http://mapserver.flightgear.org/download.psp

== City of Vienna, Austria ==

[http://data.wien.gv.at OGD Wien] offers data under CC-BY. This data can be imported to [[OSM]]. Supported interface standard include:
* WMS
* WFS GML
* JSON
* KML geplant
Contact on IRC at #ogdwien.

= Metadata =

* [[Geodata Metadata Requirements]] - a baseline for what would be asked for / expected of data sets in an OSGeo repository
* A simple metadata-in-GeoRSS webservice that is also as FGDC compliant as possible/desirable.
* [[Simple Catalog Interface]]

= See Also =

* OSGeo's [[Geodata Discovery Working Group]] - half-dormant
* http://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Global_datasets
* [http://www.mapdex.org/search/ MapDex] offers a metadata search facility
* [http://www.geonames.org/ GeoNames] is a gazetteer and naming collection
* http://www.fao.org/geonetwork/srv/en/main.search
* http://geoportail-geoportal.ainc-inac.gc.ca/metaindex_e.asp
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_towns
* http://mapas.mma.gov.br/i3geo/menutemas/servicoswms.php WMS servers collection in RSS format
* http://mapas.mma.gov.br/i3geo/wscliente.htm Web service client

[[Category:Public Geospatial Data Committee]]
[[Category:Infrastructure]]

California

2012-03-04T17:20:52Z

Wiki-Brylie: /* Members */ Brylie Oxley

== Introduction ==
A local region based chapter of OSGeo on the west coast of the United States. California is home to Silicon Valley, some of the top Public Research/Teaching Universities and some very large industries.

=== Mission ===
(Proposed)
To promote the use and development of open source geospatial software in California.

=== Objectives & Goals ===
* Influence Professional Groups
** Give Presentations to groups with an interest in Open Geospatial and/or [http://www.osgeo.org/geodata| Public Geodata] (see list of [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/California_Chapter:_Outreach_Speakers available speakers])
** Demonstrate diplomacy and interoperability of the OSGeo stack with other solutions(Free or Not) through our activities.
** Represent OSGeo via booths, literature and presentations at academic and professional conferences in the Western US

* Development of OSGeo
** Maintain of list of local groups and events throughout California

*Promote Access to California Geodata
** Annual Award to the agency or institution in California that best exemplifies OSGeo's stance on [http://www.osgeo.org/geodata| Public Geodata]
** Work with the [http://www.osgeo.org/geodata| Public Geodata Project] to Generate a catalog of catalogs, search tools, and metadata harvesters to better enable public access to Geodata.http://www.osgeo.org/geodata
** Promote use of [http://www.osgeo.org/geodata| Public Geodata] Catalogs

== Events ==

We have an [[California/Exhibition Pack|California Chapter Exhibition Pack]], see the page for details if you want to use it.

=== Budget ===
Based on our fund raising efforts we will determine what our [[California/Budget| Budget]] will allow use to do.
The goal for '''2009''' is '''$1500'''..
For 2010 the new focus is on getting several new sponsors for OSGeo in general which would create additional funds for support of chapter activities.

=== Future/Confirmed ===

* [[California Chapter 2011 Annual Meeting]] October 22, 2011 - Davis, CA

=== Proposed ===

* [[Cartography Sprint]] -TBD

=== Past ===
(Reverse Date Order, Most recent 1st)
* [[Where 2.0 2011]] April 19-21, 2011, Santa Clara Hyatt
* California Invasive Plant Society annual meeting Jul11 - LiveDVD
* FLUXNET and Remote Sensing Open-Workshop June11 - provided LiveDVD to interested participants
* San Francisco GeoMeetup - 2011 monthly/recurrent
* [[AAG 2011]] April 12-16 Seattle
* [[CGS 2011]] April 29-May 1st, Bishop, CA
* Missed -[[ACM SIGSPATIAL 2010]] - Nov 2-5, San Jose ([http://acmgis2010.cs.ucsb.edu Conference Website])
* Missed -[[AGU 2010]] Dec, SF - It's always in California
* Missed -[[GTC WEST 2010]] Cal chapter involvement proposed. May 11-12, Sacramento
* [[CGS 2010]] May 1, Fullerton
* [[AAG 2010]] April 2010, Washington, D.C.
* [[Where_20_2010 | Where 2.0]]
* [[SCALE 2010]] Feb 19-21, Los Angeles
* [[AGU 2009]] December 14-18 - SF - It's always in California
* [[GIS Day 2009]] November - Worldwide Local events (Berkeley, Davis, ?)
* [[NACIS 2009]] October 7- 10 - Sacramento : We gave a 50 minute team demo on 4 OSGeo applications.

* [[OSCON 2009]] July 20-24, San Jose, CA - State of OSGeo "Lightening Talk" was a hit!
* [[Where 2.0 2009]] May 20-21 - San Jose, CA- Paul Ramsey will join us.
* [[USGS Open House 2009]] May 16-17 - Menlo Park, we we're invited at [[CalGIS]]
* [[CGS 2009]] May 2 - Santa Ynez - Always in California, small cheap, outreach to grade schools and non-profits.
* [[CalGIS 2009]] April 7-9 Sacramento - Booth was too expensive($800 for booth), Berkeley GIF Lab talked about QGIS
* [[AAG 2009]] (Mar) - Las Vegas
* [[California/InauguralMeeting|Inaugural Meeting]] (Feb) of California Chapter

* [[AGU 2008]] - Open Source Session at American Geophysical Union; San Francisco, CA
* GIS Day 2008 - UC Berkeley GIF Lab, US EPA Region IX
* [[OSBootCamp OSBootCamp 2008]] - Open Source day at UC Berkeley
* [[CGS 2008]] - Booth at the Calfornia Geographical Society meeting in Chico.
* [[4H Workshop]] - [[User:bwoodall|Bill]] will be running a workshop at UC Davis for 4H high schoolers on GPS/GIS

=== Missed Opportunities that might reoccur===
* [[OSCON 2010]] - Cal chapter involvement proposed. July?, Portland
* UCSB Vendor Fair, May 2011, Santa Barbara
* [[OpenSourceWorld 2009]] August, SF
* [[APCG 2009]] Sept 30 - Oct 3 - San Diego
* [[ACM GIS 2009]] November 4-6 - Seattle (pass it to [[cugos]], speaking opportunities)

== Membership ==
To be a member of the Chapter you simply need to state that by adding yourself to the list below.

=== Meetings ===
Meetings will be held annually at minimum and as needed in between.

==== 2011 ====
===== October Meeting =====
[[California Chapter 2011 Annual Meeting]] -
October 22,2011

==== 2010 ====

===== March meeting =====

*What:

OSGeo informal social. Anyone interested in geo is invited! Let's get together and:

#Meet face to face and do some geo talk
#exchange ideas about geo projects you are using / working on / would like to learn about
#present some topic of interest
#BBQ, beers.<br>
#Whatever else you feel like.

*Where:

680 Mission st Apt 34T San Francisco, CA 94105 [http://maps.google.com/maps?q=680+mission+st,+San+Francisco,+CA&ie=UTF8&hl=en&hq=&hnear=680+Mission+St,+San+Francisco,+California+94105&z=16 GMaps]

*When:

Saturday March 20th, 2010 11:30AM until 2:00pm (or more?)  

*Phone number in case you get lost:

(951) 906-1765 (leave msg if nobody answers)

*Instructions:

An easy walk from the Montgomery BART. Put your name down below so I can leave it by the door and you have no trouble getting in.

*Attending: (write your name down to get a sense of the headcount)

#Ragi Burhum
#Landon Blake
#Brian Hamlin
#Josh Livni
#Silas Toms
#Amit Kharb
#Alex Mandel
#Michele Tobias
#Lokesh Bali
#Tim Caro-Bruce

<br>

<br>

----

=== Members ===

Name(IRC/Chat Handle) - Short Description

*[[User:Cwhitney|Chris Whitney (Cwhitney)]] - UC San Diego / NASA ISS EarthKAM
*[[User:SunburnedSurveyor|Landon Blake(Sunburned Surveyor)]]
*[[User:Hollander|Allan Hollander ]]
*[[User:Cgs bob|Bob Moskovitz (cgs_bob)]]
*[[User:Wildintellect|Alex Mandel (Wildintellect)]] - UC Davis
*[[User:Dmbianco|David Bianco]] - US Army Corps of Engineers, Los Angeles
*[[User:Mdhancher|Matt Hancher]] - NASA Ames Research Center - interested in Bay Area local activities
*[[User:Jlivni|Josh Livni (jlivni)]] Umbrella Consulting (San Francisco)
*[[User:Bwoodall|Bill Woodall(bwoodall)]] San Diego
*[[User:StaceyEllis|Stacey Ellis]] - UC Davis
*[[User:MicheleTobias|Michele Tobias]] - UC Davis
*[[User:Mtreichler|Mike Treichler]] - UC Davis
*[[User:TaraAthan|Tara Athan]]
*[[User:Glennon|Alan Glennon]] - spatial@ucsb
*[[User:Darkblue b|Brian Hamlin (darkblue_b)]] - Berkeley
*[[User:J03lar50n|Joe Larson (j03lar50n)]] | CAL FIRE / San Luis Obispo County Fire | Cal Poly - SLO Alumni
*[[User:TheSteve0|Steve Citron (TheSteve0)]] - Pousty - ICF/Jones&Stokes, San Jose
*[[User:Osospdb|Paul Bartsch (osospdb)]] | UC Santa Barbara | Cal Poly - SLO Alumni
*[[User:Rburhum|Ragi Yaser Burhum(rburhum)]] | Self
*[[User:DylanBeaudette|Dylan Beaudette]] | CA Soil Resource Lab - UC Davis
*[[User:MPfister|Marc Pfister (drwelby)]] | ENPLAN (Redding)
*[[User:Lbali|Lokesh Bali]] | Richmond Police
*[[User:PacificGeodata|Matt Lamborn]] | Pacific Geodata - Napa, CA
* Frank Warmerdam | Google
*[[Jeff Hobbs]] | San Jose Water Company - San Jose, CA
* Bborie Park | Center for Vectorborne Diseases, UC Davis
* Brian Galey | Geospatial Innovation Facility, UC Berkeley
* [[User:brylie|Brylie Oxley]] | (brylie on freenode) - Nevada City, CA

== Fund Raising and Accounts ==
See the [[California Chapter Fundraising]] page for more information on fundraising, donations, and the financial accounts for the California Chapter.

== Geodata Access Award ==
See the [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/California/Geodata_Access_Award Geodata Access Award] page for more information on the annual award the California Chapter gives to a California organization in recognition of efforts to promote the free and open access to California GeoData.

== Chapter Outreach Speakers ==
You can find information about California Chapter members that are willing to serve as volunteer speakers at local events on the [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/California/Outreach_Speakers Outreach Speakers] page. This page includes a short biography for each speaker and a list of topics they would be willing to present.

== Meeting Minutes ==
Visit [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/California/Meeting_Minutes this wiki page] for more information about California Chapter meeting minutes.

== Community ==
=== Mailing List ===
The main arena for discuss events and ideas in California is the email list, please join.
[http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/california Mailing List Info Page] (You subscribe to the mailing list at this page.)

=== Related Groups ===
For a list of local group contact information and events see [[California/Local]]

* Bay Area User Group (Social) [http://baugos.com]

== California GIS Links ==
Moved to [[California/GIS]]

== California Open Source Links ==

[http://opensource.ca.gov/ California Open Source Working Group]

= Documentation =
[[2010 California Chapter Annual Report]]

[[Category: Local Chapters]]
[[Category: California]]

OSGeo education interested participants

2011-12-06T05:51:33Z

Wiki-Brylie:

== Contributors by Interest ==

The following are individuals who have self-identified themselves as interested in contributing or assisting with [[Education and Curriculum Committee]] projects. You are welcome to add yourself to the list and identify areas that you are particular familiar with or interested in contributing to.

*[[User:Pimpaa|George R. C. Silva]] (TZ GMT-3)
*[[User:Punkish|Puneet Kishor]] (TZ GMT-6)
*[[User:Ajolma|Ari Jolma]] (TZ GMT+2) (graduate level education MS, PhD; academic research; primary school education)
*[[User:Neteler|Markus Neteler ]] (TZ GMT+1) (general training/education materials; [http://www.grassbook.org/data_menu3rd.php educational datasets])
*[[User:AwaseKhirni|'''Awase Khirni Syed''' ]] (TZ GMT+3) (undergraduate/ graduate level education MS, PhD; educational datasets, open source urban data systems, open source geospatial software developement and training, GIScience Certification Mechanisms, experience in International training, open source geospatial sensing platforms, academic research on source collaboration.)
*[[User:Venkat|Venkatesh Raghavan ]] (TZ GMT+9)(training/education material; educational datasets, software packaging, translation, e-learning Course Management Systems, Moodle,Certification Mechanisms, experience in international training)
*[[User:Schweik|Charlie Schweik]] (Chair) (TZ GMT-5) (undergraduate and graduate level education; academic research on open source collaboration, public sector information technology, natural resource management)
*[[User:Pnaciona|Pericles Nacionales]] (general training/education materials; conservation and natural resource management)
*Ned Horning (Winter: GMT-5 Summer: GMT -4) (Interested in promoting open source software development and integrating open source into the conservation community)
*[[User:Tmitchell|Tyler Mitchell]] (TZ GMT-8) (interested in workshop material and curriculum development for high school through to university)
*[[User:Arnulf Christl|Arnulf Christl]] (TZ GMT+2) (Experience as GIS instructor for fulltime workshops, trainings and courses. Organization of commercial training courses with Open Source Geospatial Software. Preparation of course and presentation material, tutorials). (Interest in enhancing presentation material, publishing under Free license, in time hardcopy production, maintenance and update of content just as any OS dev project)
*[[User:Scw|Shaun Walbridge]] (TZ GMT-8) (academic research on open source collaboration; general training/education materials; educational datasets)
*[[User:Perrygeo|Matthew Perry]] (TZ GMT-8) (primarily interested in workshops/lab materials for university students, NGOs and using open source software to demonstrate all fundamental aspects of GIS (theory and practice). Also interested in seeing 'official' training courses and certification)
*[[User:Ianturton|Ian Turton]] : Penn State Uni, State College, developed Open Web Mapping course at Uni of Leeds, UK [http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/courses/postgrad/geog5780/] now modifying it for PennState. ianturton at gmail com [http://www.geovista.psu.edu/members/turton/index.html work] [http://pennspace.blogspot.com/ blog]
*[[User:Aaronr|Aaron Racicot]] (TZ GMT-8) (Interested in fostering more collaboration with academia through the introduction of open source GIS in the curriculum. Mainly interested in Undergraduate and Graduate level education and industry (NGO's and for-profit) collaboration. Certification is also an interest.)
*[[User:Helena|Helena Mitasova]] (TZ GMT-5) NCSU, Raleigh,NC, GRASS PSC member, interested in graduate level education and research, development of tutorials and workshops, educational dataset, publishing books and journal articles
*[[User:Maria|Maria Antonia Brovelli]] (TZ GMT+1) (Polytechnic of Milan and Polytecnic of Zurich, interested in Undergraduate, Graduate and Doctorat level education; academic research on new algorithms developed within open source GIS, on public sector information technology and NSDI, on environment and territory management)
*[[User:Volaya|Victor Olaya]] (TZ GMT+1) Spanish Free GIS Book PSC Member. University of Extremadura, Spain. Sextante Proyect [http://www.sextantegis.com]. Interested in creating a free GIS book in spanish and english, and in finding out how both the spanish and the english teams can collaborate and help each other.
*[[User:Maxi71|Massimiliano Cannata]] (TZ GMT+1) (Institute of Earth Sciences - University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland, Graduate and Continuing education; research and development in the field of Web-GIS and Environmental Modelling; consultant for the public administration authorities on environment, land and natural resources management)
*[[User:Rob.braswell|Bobby H. Braswell]] (TZ GMT-5) (developing documentation in the form of tutorial modules for training and education, especially related to earth science and remote sensing research)
*[[User:VincentP|Vincent Picavet]] (TZ GMT+1) OSGeo Francophone local chapter and Makina Corpus, FLOSS company. Interested in workshops and courses for FOSS GIS web applications and infrastructures. Particular interest in French language material, translation, and coordination between multi-languages groups.
*[[User:Bwoodall|Bill Woodall]] (TZ GMT-8) (Interested in workshops/labs for Youth, primarily for 4-H Youth Development Program )
*[[User:Mleslie|Mark Leslie]] (TZ GMT+10) Interested in workshop and lab material for a general or technical audience.
*[[User:Mlennert|Moritz Lennert ]] (TZ GMT+1) (University undergraduate GIS teaching lab and training course for professionals from "developing" countries; e-learning)
*[[User:Nigeltrodd|Nigel Trodd]] (TZ GMT+0) (Developed University undergraduate and postgraduate GIS and remote sensing courses for UNIGIS [http://www.unigis.org.uk] and Coventry University (UK) campus for geoimaging and geoinformatics [http://www.giscampus.f2s.com/gigi/topics.htm]; curriculum development, pedagogic and design issues as they pertain to GI novices and professionals; e-learning; interested in collaborating to develop courses for niche application domains, such as environmental hazards, that build on common materials)
*[[User:Ominiverdi|Lorenzo Becchi ]] (TZ GMT+1) (Web GIS developer, FAO cunsultant, interested in everything that can help reducing Digital Divide worldwide and support open knowledge, supporting the spanish GIS book)
*[[User:Martinweis|Martin Weis]] (TZ GMT+1) Geodesy/GIS in the agricultural sector/university: I would like to prepare courses and material for the use of FOSS in precision farming. Desktop GIS and SDI are to be integrated for this. 2008 I will have a GIS course, let's see what can be done...
*[[User:Smitch|Scott Mitchell ]] (TZ GMT-5) Courseware, tutorials and workshops for FOSS4G tools in general, but have been especially interested / involved in GRASS, GDAL/OGR (user perspective), QGIS, Mapserver; would be interested in contributing to books projects, but time commitments prevent much from me until 2008.
*[[User:Kevin1216|Kevin Yam]] (TZ GMT-5) Primarily interested in promoting open source software training, workshop and lab materials for university students, NGOs, public sectors.
*[[User:Marco|Marco Ciolli]] (TZ GMT+1) (University of Trento. General training/education materials; graduate level education MS, PhD; academic research; forestry; natural resource management and environmental hazard.)
*[[User:Clara|Clara Tattoni]] (TZ GMT+1) (University of Trento. General training/education materials; graduate level education MS; research; natural resource management; wildlife conservation and management.)
*[[User:Astrid Emde]] (TZ GMT+2) (Experience as GIS instructor for workshops and courses. Organization of commercial training courses with Open Source Geospatial Software.(Mapbender, UMN MapServer, PostgreSQL/PostGIS, WMS/WFS, GeoServer) Preparation of course and presentation material, tutorials. Interest in enhancing presentation material)
*[[User:Mardresen|Martin Dresen]] (TZ GMT+1) (Interest in developing Desktop GIS tutorials, exercises, presentations for university courses, further education, advanced training - especially in german!)
*Suchith Anand [http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/geography/contacts/staffPages/SuchithAnand/Suchith%20Anand.htm] (TZ GMT+0) (Interested in Open source GIS course and curriculum development, GIS education and training, Primary research interests in location based services, mobile GIS, automated generalization, optimization techniques etc)
*[[User:Dreamcon|Paul Flemming]] (TZ GMT-5) (Would be interested in helping to develop material for use in Senior elementary, grades 5 to 8, and High Schools to promote and explain the use of GIS in the real world)
*[[User:Doktoreas|Luca Casagrande]] (TZ GMT+1) Main developer of the Ominiverdi Livecd Project
*[[User:Vasile|Vasile Crăciunescu]] (TZ GMT+2) Manager of the geo-spatial.org project (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)
*[[User:Robert|Robert Szczepanek]] (TZ GMT+1) tutorials, exercises for QGIS and GRASS; lab materials and datasets for students and public sector; hydrometeo processes modelling
*[[User:Gezjames|Gerry James]] (TZ GMT-8) Interested in workshop and course materials that can be used by educators and consultants.
*[[User:Putler|Dan Putler]] (TZ GMT-8) (Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, PSC member of PAGC). Interested in course materials for undergraduate and graduate instruction on both basic GIS understanding and skills, and the use of GIS to address business problems. Research on new methods to improve geospatial analysis to address business problems, particularly as they relate to marketing).
*[[User:Palousegeo|Rick Rupp]] (TZ GMT-8) (GIS/Remote Sensing instructor at Washington State University) I'm interested in geospatial teaching materials and methods for undergraduate and graduate education. My research interests are in natural resources and data infrastructures.
*[[User:Nimalika|Nimalika Fernando]] (TZ GMT+5.30) Interested and involved in developing teaching materiel on introductory level GIS,Basic web-GIS,lab worksheets based on QGIS/MapServer
*[[User:Ahunter|Andrew Hunter]] (TZ GMT-7) (Geomatics Engineering, University of Calgary) General GIS training and education. Interests in open source and open data
*[[User:Camerons|Cameron Shorter]] (TZ GMT+10) One of the coordinators of [http://live.osgeo.org OSGeo-Live DVD], and we at [http://lisasoft.com LISAsoft] are providing GeoSpatial Open Source training in Australia.
*[[User:GeoEducator|Benjamin Branch]] (TZ GMT+5) Educational researcher in spatial thinking & cost analysis delivery (k-12 & Higher Ed, workfrce traning)
*Amir Pourabdollah [http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cgs/people/amir.pourabdollah] (TZ GMT+0) from the Centre for Geospatial Science, The University of Nottingham, UK. Interested in collecting educational materials in open source GIS, location based services, posotioning technologies and mobile GIS.
*[http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Vanhoesenj John Van Hoesen] (TZ GMT-5) - Interested in undergraduate and graduate GIScience education, open source geospatial, and applications in earth and environmental sciences.<br>
*[[User:Lluís|Lluís Vicens]] from the GIS & Remote Sensing Center ([http://www.sigte.udg.edu SIGTE]), University of Girona. GIS Analyst and Educator at UNIGIS International MsC, and several other courses.

'''Bold text'''

== Contributors by Time Zones ==

This should help in planning meetings. If you are not here yet, please add your info, or let me know and I will do so. Going from East to West, we have --

* TZ GMT+10
** Cameron Shorter
*TZ GMT+9
**Venkatesh Raghavan
* TZ GMT+3
** Awase Khirni Syed
*TZ GMT+2
**Ari Jolma
**Arnulf Christl
**Vasile Crăciunescu
*TZ GMT+1
**Markus Neteler
**Maria Antonia Brovelli
**Massimiliano Cannata
**Vincent Picavet
**Marco Ciolli
**Clara Tattoni
**Olutoyin Justus Oloniteru
**Martin Dresen
**Luca Casagrande
**Robert Szczepanek
*TZ GMT+0
**Suchith Anand
**Nigel Trodd
*TZ GMT-3
**George R. C. Silva
*TZ GMT-5
**Ian Turton
**Ned Horning
**Charlie Schweik, Maria Fernandez, Alexander Stepanov, Rob Braswell
**Scott Mitchell
*TZ GMT-6
**Phillip Davis
**Puneet Kishor
**Pericles Nacionales
*TX GMT-7
**Andrew Hunter
**--[[User:Brylie|Brylie]] 21:51, 5 December 2011 (PST)
*TZ GMT-8
**Tyler Mitchell
**Shaun Walbridge
**Matthew Perry
**Aaron Racicot
**Bill Woodall
**Gerry James
**Dan Putler
**Rick Rupp

[[Category:Education]]