Call For papers Geospatial devroom @FOSDEM

Please forward!

FOSDEM is a free open source event bringing together about 5000 developers in Brussels, Belgium. The goal is to provide open source software developers and communities a place to meet at. The next edition will take place the weekend 31/1 -> 1/2/2015. This year for the first time there will be a geospatial devroom on Sunday 1/2/2015!

Geospatial technology becomes more and more part of mainstream IT. The idea is to bring together people with different backgrounds to better explain and understand the opportunities Geospatial can offer. This devroom will host topics explaining the state of the art of geospatial technology, and how it can be used amongst other projects.

The geospatial devroom is the place to talk about open, geo-related data and software and their ecosystem. This includes standards and tools, e.g. for spatial databases, and online mapping, geospatial services, used for collecting, storing, delivering, analysing, and visualizing puposes. Typical topics that will be covered are:

• Web and desktop GIS applications

• Interoperable geospatial web services and specifications

• Collection of data using sensors/drones/satellites

• Open hardware for geospatial applications

• Geo-analytic algorithms/libraries

• Geospatial extensions for classical databases (indexes, operations)

• Dedicated databases

HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR TALK PROPOSAL

Are you thrilled to present your work to other open source developers? Would you like to run a discussion? Any other ideas? Please submit your proposal at the Pentabarf event planning tool at:

https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM15

When submitting your talk in Pentabarf, make sure to select the 'Geospatial devroom' as  'Track'. Please specify in the notes if you prefer for your presentation a short timeslot (lightning talks ~10 minutes) or a long timeslot (20 minutes presentation + discussion).

The DEADLINE for submissions is **1st December 2014**

Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch with the organisers of the devroom at fosdem-geospatial@gisky.be!

Johan Van de Wauw

Margherita Di Leo

Astrid Emde

Anne Ghisla

Julien Fastré

Martin Hammitzsch

Andy Petrella 

Dirk Frigne

Gael Musquet

A new tool for (INSPIRE) metadata management in GRASS GIS

For those who deal with geospatial data and GRASS GIS, and need to fulfill the requirements of the INSPIRE directive for metadata, one of the most exciting outcomes of the Google Summer of Code 2014 [1] is the INSPIRE metadata support developed by Matej Krejci. This is the first step towards full metadata management through GRASS, and covers the editing part.

Purpose

The module allows to create / load / edit / export / validate xml metadata with (currently) two profiles:

• Basic GRASS profile
• INSPIRE profile

You can select either of them in the drop-down menu on the top left corner.

Metadata map editor

In the radio button on the top left corner, you can select either Metadata map editor or Metadata external editor. The former will modify the metadata of the maps currently present in the mapset. You can visualize them in the tree on the left hand side.

Working directory

The working directory (workdir button on the top right) is where you wish your metadata to be saved, or where you want to browse metadata from (in case you are using the Metadata external editor). The default setting is a folder called metadata stored in the current mapset.

Editing the metadata

Select the map you wish to create the metadata for. Selecting Edit will open your metadata. You will notice that some of the fields are already filled. These information, such as the date of creation, resolution and so on and so forth, are reported as detected by GRASS. You can always modify them though. 

Validation

Once your metadata is complete, you can validate it against the INSPIRE requirements, pushing the Validate button at the bottom. If you haven't filled some of the fields properly, like in this example, you will get a series of error that need to be fixed in the various tabs of the editor.

Requirements

The module wx.metadata requires GRASS 7.1 and has external dependencies:

• OWSLib development version

git clone git://github.com/geopython/OWSLib.git
cd OWSLib && sudo python setup.py install

• Jinja templates

git clone git://github.com/mitsuhiko/jinja2.git
cd jinja2 && sudo python setup.py install

Installation

GRASS> g.extension wx.metadata

Launch it as:

GRASS> g.gui.metadata

Notes

[1] Google Summer of Code is the program with which Google supports Open Source software, and encourages students to join and start contributing to open source communities. In fact, students selected by mentors from OS organizations, are paid a stipend to develop a project that has been identified by the community. During the "summer of code", students are constantly supported by their mentors and the OS community. OSGeo, the Open Source Geospatial Foundation, has been participating to GSoC since 2007. OSGeo serves as an umbrella organization for several OS Geospatial projects.