Geospatial devroom at FOSDEM 2017 on Sunday 5/2/2017 in Brussels

Call for Presentations

Please forward!

FOSDEM is a free and non-commercial event bringing together about 5000 developers in Brussels, Belgium. The goal is to provide open source software developers and communities a place to meet and share thoughts. The participation is free of charge, although donations are welcome. The next edition will take place on 4 - 5 February 2017. For the third (!) time there will be a Geospatial devroom and will be happening on Sunday 5/2/2017!

Geospatial technologies and mapping used to be specialist work, but nowadays location and maps are becoming part of many projects/applications, which usually use only a small subset of the possibilities the data and software offer.

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 purposes.

We welcome submissions about:

• Web and desktop GIS applications;

• Collaborative editing / versioning of geodata and metadata;
• Interoperable geospatial web services and specifications;
• Collection of data using sensors / UAVs / satellites;
• Geo-analytic algorithms / libraries;
• Geospatial extensions for classical databases (indexes, operations) and dedicated databases;
• Big geodata, scalable GIS applications;
• Volunteered Geographic information - Crowdsourced geodata.

HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR PROPOSAL FOR A TALK

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:

 https://fosdem.org/submit

Make sure to select the 'Geospatial devroom' as 'Track'. If you have an account from previous years, you should be using the same.

Please specify in the notes if you prefer for your presentation either a short timeslot (lightning talks ~10 minutes) or a long timeslot (20 minutes presentation + discussion). However, note that time slots are indicative and will be assigned according to the timing of the session.

The DEADLINE for submissions is Thursday **1st December 2016**.

Notification of acceptance will be sent to the Authors by 11/12/2016 at the latest.

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

Want to know what FOSDEM geospatial is like? Check out the videos and the presentations of our previous two editions: [1,2]

The organizers

Johan Van de Wauw

Margherita Di Leo

Anne Ghisla

Martin Hammitzsch

[1] https://archive.fosdem.org/2015/schedule/track/geospatial/

[2] https://archive.fosdem.org/2016/schedule/track/geospatial/

A Geospatial report of FOSDEM16

FOSDEM is a huge free non-commercial conference gathering open source developers from all over the world. It is the most important event of this kind, held every February at ULB, Brussels since 2000. It is always amazing how a conference that is offered for free could reach such a high level of offer in terms of content and services. Remember that it is also possible to sponsor it. FOSDEM 2016 was another successful edition, fully packed with interesting talks.

Several presentations of interest for the "geospatial" world were also given. Most of them were concentrated in "our" geospatial devroom, that was organised this year for the second time by members of various geo communities such as OSGeo, LocationTech and OSM, and coordinated by Johan van der Wauw. The devroom was well attended, and featured a wide overview of recent developments in geospatial applications. Talks have been recorded and will be available soon on FOSDEM website; slides of each presentation are also being added to the talks listed on the Geospatial devroom page.

We presented the results of OSGeo students who took part in Google Summer of Code 2015, featuring for each project one slide with a short description provided by the students themselves. We had asked the students to summarize their work in a template describing the state of the project before and after their contribution, enhancing their addition. Some students also provided a graphical image to better summarize the project.
We had the pleasure of having Stephanie Taylor and Mary Radomile, from Google's GSoC organisation team, among the audience, who kindly made themselves available for answering questions regarding the program. Mentoring organisations' application period for GSoC 2016 starts in a few days - we're going to apply again for OSGeo, keep fingers crossed!

The geospatial devroom confirmed itself as the reference event at FOSDEM for the "geospatial people". For next year, an idea could be to look for sponsorship in order to facilitate keynotes or speakers that request travel grants, like for example this year could have been the case for GSoC students to come and present their work themselves. 

At least a couple of keynote talks deserve mention as well. The first was a really moving tribute in memoriam of Ian Murdock, one of the founders of the Debian project recently passed away.

The other was given by Blake Girardot and summarised the outstanding work carried out by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT).

A report by madi and anne, GSoC 2015 admins @OSGeo

Guida all'uso di OSGeo-Live in macchina virtuale per utenti windows

OSGeo-Live e` un progetto basato su Lubuntu, che comprende un DVD, unita` USB o immagine disco virtuale, che permette di provare una grande varietà di software libero senza la necessita` di installarlo. Il progetto e` interamente basato su software libero, che permette di duplicarlo e ridistribuirlo liberamente.

In questa breve guida vediamo come e` possibile  utilizzare l'immagine disco in una virtual machine installata su windows.

Una chiarificazione sulla terminologia. Definiamo "host" il sistema operativo che ospita l'altro Nel nostro caso l'host è windows. Definiamo invece "guest" il sistema operativo che viene ospitato. In questo caso il guest è ubuntu (64 bit).

Ottenere l'immagine disco di OSGeo-live

L'immagine disco della OSGeo-Live si trova a questo URL, scegliere l'ultimo link - download virtual machine. 

Secondo la velocità della vostra connessione, il download potrebbe durare alcune ore. Alla fine, decomprimere il file usando l'utility 7zip.

Ottenere e installare la virtual machine

Installeremo la Virtual Box di Oracle, che e` disponibile a questo URL. L'ultima versione è:

• VirtualBox 5.0.10 for Windows hosts o ultima versione disponibile, e
• VirtualBox 5.0.10 Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack > All supported platforms

Quest'ultimo pacchetto permette di estendere le funzionalita` della macchina virtuale, ad esempio ingrandire lo schermo, condividere una cartella, ecc.

Attenzione: l'ultima versione della macchina virtuale potrebbe avere qualche problema di compatibilità con Windows 10. In questo caso, scaricate la versione 4.2 (e il pacchetto Extension Pack relativo alla stessa versione)

Per installare, fare doppio click e seguire le istruzioni dell'installer, prima per la virtual box e poi l'estensione. Lasciare le impostazioni di default.

Creazione della macchina virtuale

Avviare VirtualBox. Cliccare su "Nuova" per creare una nuova macchina virtuale.

Dare un nome alla macchina virtuale che stiamo creando, ad es. OSGeo-Live. Scegliamo tipo: Linux, versione: Ubuntu (64 bit).

Clicchiamo "Avanti". Siamo chiamati a decidere quanta memoria vogliamo destinare alla macchina virtuale, deve essere almeno 1024, di più se il vostro computer ha più di 4 GB di RAM. Questa scelta dipende dalle caratteristiche del nostro computer. Un buon compromesso è assegnare non più della metà della memoria disponibile.

Nella prossima finestra ci viene chiesto se abbiamo già un'immagine disco o vogliamo crearne una. Noi l'abbiamo (OSGeo-Live) dunque scegliamo la terza opzione, "Usa un file virtuale di disco fisso esistente". Cliccando sulla cartellina gialla, andiamo a selezionare l'immagine disco nel nostro computer.

Una volta selezionato il file, clicchiamo "Crea".

 Abbiamo creato la macchina virtuale, ma non abbiamo finito. Clicchiamo su "Impostazioni".

 Andiamo su "Generale" > "Avanzate". Impostiamo "bidirezionale" in entrambe le caselle. Questo ci permette di copiare e incollare e trascinare oggetti tra la macchina guest e la macchina host e viceversa.

Nella sezione "Schermo", andiamo ad impostare la memoria video assegnata alla macchina virtuale a 64 MB.

Ora dobbiamo creare un canale di comunicazione fra guest e host, in cui si possano condividere i dati in maniera bidirezionale. Senza tale cartella, tutti i dati creati nella macchina guest, rimarrebbero all'interno del file immagine della macchina virtuale e non potrebbero uscire da questo ambiente "isolato". 

Per fare questo, sulla macchina host (Windows) creiamo una cartella ad hoc, per esempio la chiamo "Cartella_Condivisa". 

Dalle impostazioni della macchina virtuale mi sposto sul tab "Cartelle condivise", e clicco sull'icona col + verde, che aggiunge una nuova cartella condivisa.

Da "Percorso della cartella" andiamo a cercare la Cartella_condivisa appena creata nell'host. 

Spuntiamo "Montaggio automatico".

Ora avviamo la macchina virtuale cliccando sul bottone avvia.

Risoluzione di possibili problemi

Se a questo punto si verifica un errore come:

VT-x is disabled in the BIOS for both all CPU modes (VERR_VMX_MSR_ALL_VMX_DISABLED).

bisogna accedere al bios, per molti computer all'accensione premere F2, quindi andare in Configuration --> Intel Virtual Technology: [Enabled].

Avvio

Se tutto è andato a buon fine, dovremmo avere la seguente schermata. Andiamo nel menu "Dispositivi" e clicchiamo l'ultima opzione "Installa guest addition".

Montare la cartella condivisa 

Nel guest, creiamo una cartella condivisa, e montiamo la cartella condivisa dell'host. Apriamo un terminale e scriviamo:

mkdir /home/user/cartella_condivisa 
sudo mount -t vboxsf Cartella_condivisa \
/home/user/cartella_condivisa

La password per user è user.  

Call for Presentations Geospatial devroom @FOSDEM 2016

FOSDEM is a free and non-commercial event bringing together about 5000 developers in Brussels, Belgium. The goal is to provide open source software developers and communities a place to meet and share thoughts. The participation is free of charge, although donations are welcome. The next edition will take place the last weekend of January 30 - 31 2016. This year for the second time there will be a Geospatial devroom on Sunday 31/1/2016, organised by members of the OSGeo, Locationtech and OpenStreetMap communities.

Geospatial technology is becoming rapidly mainstream. The idea underpinning the geospatial devroom is bringing together developers with different backgrounds to disclose the opportunities offered by cutting-edge open source geospatial technologies. Due to the success of last year's geospatial devroom, a Belgium local chapter of OSGeo, OSGeo.be was founded, and is now taking part of the organisation of the devroom as driving community.

The Geospatial devroom is the place to talk about the state of the art of open, geo-related data, free and open source geospatial software and its ecosystem. This includes standards and tools, e.g. spatial databases, online mapping tools, geospatial services, used for collecting, storing, delivering, analysing, and visualizing geodata. We welcome submissions about: 

• 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) and dedicated databases

• Collaborative editing/versioning of geodata

• Big geodata, scalable GIS applications

• Volunteered Geograpic information - Crowdsourced data

HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR PROPOSAL FOR A TALK

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 using the Pentabarf event planning tool at:

https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM16

Make sure to select the 'Geospatial devroom' as  'Track'. Please, specify in the notes if you prefer for your presentation either a short timeslot (lightning talks ~10 minutes) or a long timeslot (20 minutes presentation + discussion). However, note that time slots are indicative and will be assigned according to the needs of the session.

The DEADLINE for submissions is Tuesday **1st December 2015**. Notification of acceptance will be sent to the Authors by Friday 11/12/2015 at the latest.

Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch with the organisers of the devroom at fosdem-geospatial@gisky.be! Feel free to forward this CfP to anyone potentially interested.

Johan Van de Wauw

Margherita Di Leo

Astrid Emde

Anne Ghisla

Martin Hammitzsch

Andy Petrella 

Dirk Frigne

Olivier Courtin

Thomas Gratier

INSPIRE tools inventory

I would like to make an inventory of the tools and components aiding the INSPIRE implementation that are available as FOSS. To do so, I have created a wiki page and I encourage your contribution in filling it. 

A lot of valuable pieces of software are being developed  and they could be ideally reused without reinventing the wheel all the times. 

If you are aware of a piece of Free software that responds to this requisite, please add it to the wiki page, with a small description and a link to relevant documentation page, or contact me if you don't have an account for the OSGeo wiki and do not wish to create one.

I think that eventually of this exercise will benefit everyone interested in reusing INSPIRE components. 

Thank you for your cooperation!

Image segmentation in GRASS GIS

Image segmentation is the process used to detect homogeneous objects in remote sensed images. This process is useful as a first step for classification. There are several tools around, both free and proprietary, that implement different algorithms. In these days I'm testing some of them and wanted to share some impressions.
To start I have selected my favourite GIS: GRASS. I'm using GRASS 7.1. The segmentation tool that I used is implemented in a module called i.segment, that was developed by Eric Momsen of North Dakota State University, during his Google Summer of Code in 2012.
The segmentation is performed on a group of bands and not on a single band, it means that the user can select the most significant ones in respect to the features she's investigating. The bands can be grouped using the command i.group (Shapiro, 2011).
The algorithm is iterative and can be time-consuming on large images. The parameter "memory" can be used to speed up the process if the machine  has a decent memory.
The main parameter worth to play with is the threshold parameter. The larger the threshold, the more objects are merged together. If the image is big, a useful tip is to test the threshold value on a smaller region then apply it to the region at large.
Another fantastic tools comes from Pietro Zambelli and is called i.segment.hierarchical (available in add-ons). It performs hierarchical segmentation for different threshold values, using the result of the previous run as a seed for the next one. It optimizes the computational time by subdividing the image in tiles and processing them in parallel.
The results of segmentation for increasing threshold values are shown hereinafter.
Threshold = 0.01

Threshold = 0.05

Threshold = 0.1

Threshold = 0.2

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. 

Please support the upcoming Vienna Code Sprint 2014

In the occasion of the upcoming Vienna Code Sprint 2014, the GRASS GIS Project Steering Committee decided earlier this year to  officially join this code sprint, considering it as a great opportunity  for joint activities. More than 60+ developers from the most important OSGeo project communities will be joining the event.

While the GRASS developers are donating their valuable time, the community of enthusiast users (you!) may contribute with donations,  even symbolic, that will be used to cover out-of-pocket expenses of the  participants. Companies can also decide to sponsor specific tasks!  Please don't hesitate to contact us (or Markus Neteler, neteler@osgeo.org) for further details.

As usual, all of the work done in the community sprint will be directly  contributed back to the GRASS project for the benefit of everyone who  uses it. Our scope at the sprint is to publish a first release candidate  of the stable GRASS GIS 6.4.4 version as well as a tech preview release of GRASS GIS 7.

For your convenience, here our easy-to-use Paypal button:

http://grass.osgeo.org/donations/

For our alternative bank transfer option, please contact Martin Landa (landa.martin@gmail.com)

Thanks for your support!

The GRASS Developers Team

About GRASS GIS

The Geographic Resources Analysis Support System (http://grass.osgeo.org/), commonly referred to as GRASS GIS, is an Open Source Geographic Information System providing powerful raster, vector and geospatial processing capabilities in a single integrated software suite. GRASS GIS includes tools for spatial modeling, visualization of raster and vector data, management and analysis of geospatial data, and the processing of satellite and aerial imagery. It also provides the capability to produce sophisticated presentation graphics and hardcopy maps. GRASS GIS has been translated into about twenty languages and supports a huge array of data formats. It can be used either as a stand-alone application or as backend for other software packages such as QGIS and R geostatistics. It is distributed freely under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). GRASS GIS is a founding member of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo).

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VERSIONE ITALIANA

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Sostieni il Code Sprint di Vienna 2014

In occasione dell'imminente Code Sprint di Vienna 2014, all'inizio di quest'anno il Comitato Direttivo (PSC) di GRASS ha deciso di aderire ufficialmente all'evento, considerata la grande opportunita` per attivita` comuni. Piu` di 60 sviluppatori dei piu`importanti progetti OSGeo parteciperanno all'evento.

Mentre gli sviluppatori di GRASS donano il loro prezioso tempo, gli utenti appassionati (tu!) possono contribuire con donazioni, anche simboliche, che verranno utilizzate per coprire le spese vive dei partecipanti.

Le aziende possono anche decidere di sponsorizzare un compito specifico! Per saperne di piu` non esitate a contattarci (o Markus Neteler neteler@osgeo.org). 

Come sempre, tutto il lavoro svolto durante lo Sprint verra` direttamente messo a disposizione del progetto GRASS, per il beneficio dell'intera comunita` di utenti. 

L'obiettivo per lo Sprint e` quello di pubblicare la prima versione candidata stabile di GRASS GIS 6.4.4 e la versione di anteprima tecnologica di GRASS GIS 7. 

Potete utilizzare il comodo pulsante Paypal all'indirizzo: http://grass.osgeo.org/donations/

Per opzioni di pagamento alternative, potete contattare Martin Landa (landa.martin@gmail.com).

Grazie per il vostro sostegno!

Il Team degli Sviluppatori di GRASS