IGC2008

Proposal for a symposium at the 33rd IGC Geoscience World Congress 2008

Geoscience World Congress 2008

http://www.33igc.org/ (Oslo 2008)

Deadline: 31. August 2006 (!)

Proposed:

• GFOSS Session
• Public Geodata Session

GFOSS Session

Title: Free and open-source geospatial software in Earth Sciences

Description: An immense amount of spatial data is collected by earth-scientists every year, including information collected during field-work, geophysical and remotely sensed data, maps, etc. This information has to be stored, interpreted and, ideally, published and shared within the Earth Sciences community. To tackle this challenge without the help of dedicated geospatial software and networks is unthinkable. Unfortunately, proprietary software-solutions tend to be expensive or downright unaffordable for scientific institutions, particularly in less developed countries. However, during the last two decades several alternative software packages were developed in the open-source community and are now available for free. The functionality of these highly flexible software solutions includes, amongst others, classical GIS and remote sensing task, virtual reality and geospatial databases.

This symposium attempts to provide a forum to present and discuss all aspects of scientific work in Earth sciences which utilised free and open-source geospatial software.

Proposed convenor (preliminary, to be defined):

     Markus Neteler 
     Center for Scientific and Technological Research 
     MPBA/SSI 
     Via Sommerive 18 
     38050 Povo (Trento) 
     Italy 
     e-mail: neteler AT osgeo.org

Contact:

     Henning Lorenz 
     Department of Earth Sciences 
     Uppsala University 
     Villavägen 16 
     75 236 Uppsala 
     Sweden 
     e-mail: henning.lorenz AT geo.uu.se

Public Geodata Session

... to be defined ...

• better access to state-collected geodata
• value of open geospatial data standards
• avoidance of negative effect by a license, copyright and protection oriented policy towards sharing geographic data