India Chapter Report 2008

OSGeo India

 * Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2008
 * Contact name: Dr PS Roy

Key Accomplishments
The year 2008 for OSGeo India chapter can best be described as an extremely important and a landmark beginning. The chapter has now a legal stature as a not for profit society, aimed at furthering Open source geospatial goals and objectives. The chapter was formally registered as OSGeo-India in April 2008 with an officiating board consisting of four members and four office bearers. For further details see http://www.osgeo.in.

The year began with a vigorous attempt to reach out to geospatial community, administrators, students and a large number of stakeholders, by planning, organizing and conducting a series of workshops and training programmes in different parts of the country. A second major initiative was an attempt to mainstream use of the Open source geospatial tools for both desktop and web applications.

Workshops aimed at Capacity Building
Sri V Ravi Kumar, Joint Secretary, and Co- chair of the Events committee has taken a lead in conducting as many as eight workshops in North of India (Dehra Dun, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Roorkee, North East India (Shillong), West of India (Goa) and South of India (Visakhapatnam). The details of the workshops are at http://www.osgeo.org/journal/volume4. A similar effort was done with University of Hyderabad too.

In addition, Sponsored workshops by diffferent funding agencies were conducted at Rajahmundry (South India), and Pune (Western India). These are:

Rajahmundry Workshop
The workshop was held for five days for imparting training to officials of various line agencies in use of Open Jump in Rajahmundry. The workshop was part of an activity funded by Mr Vundavalli Arun Kumar, a law maker of India's Lower house, (Parliament) to help develop a GIS for the Rajahmundry Parliamentary constituency. This was followed by a half day programme in June 2008 to  reach out to over three hundred officials of various line agencies of the East Godavari district, Heads of Administration, state law makers ( Members of Assembly), Students, Faculty and Vice Chancellor of the Adi Kavi Nannaya University as well.

Rajahmundry GIS Project
A key activity of 2008 relates to Developing a GIS for Rajahmundry parliamentary constituency, funded by MP Sri V Aruna Kumar.

Wherein Masters students of Geoinformatics of local Adi Kavi Nannya University,　were trained for six months by staff of Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History to produce dissertations on various topics. The details are:
 * V.L.N. Ramalingeswara Rao - An open source gis for Rajahmundry parliamentary  constituency: with special emphasis on flood information system for rajahmundry urban local body
 * P.Symala Gowri - A utility information system for Rajahmundry urban local body
 * K.S.R.C. Murthy - Electricity information system for Rajahmundry urban local body
 * N.Ch.R.V.R Uday Kiran - Water information system for Rajahmundry urban local body
 * M.Sai Siva Kumar - A Health information system for Rajahmundry urban local body
 * K. Manohara Vamsi - Education information system for Rajahmundry urban local body
 * M.Kiran – Crime information system for Rajahmundry urban local body
 * N. Ravi Kumar - A Slum information system for Rajahmundry urban local body.

In addition, a student worked on OSSIM for his dissertation under the guidance of Dr KS Rajan, Treasurer of OSGeo and an Associate professor of International institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H).

Subsequently, using the above data sets, a sample web GIS application was developed with Google maps API both in English (http://www.wetlandsofindia.org/google/sample.htm) as well as in a local language, Telugu ([www.wetlandsofindia.org/google/sample_te.htm www.wetlandsofindia.org/google/sample_te.htm]).

Pune Workshop
The OSGeo-India chapter has conducted 3 day "Open Source Geo-spatial Tools" Workshop in Pune during August 28-30th, 2008. It was also supported by ISG Pune Chapter. The workshop was attended by -30- participants from University Of Pune, Symbiosis Institute of Geoinformatics, CDAC. All the participants were conversant with Proprietary GIS software and were eager to acquaint with FOSS alternatives. The 1st day included the inaugural Address on “NSDI for Development” by Maj. Gen. Dr R.Sivakumar, CEO, NSDI - Chief Guest and later the speeches by G.H.Rao,NRSC, Dr. Ravikumar V,GSI, P.G.Diwakar, ISRO Bangalore on Open Source GIS technology. The afternoon session included demonstration and hands-on practice with OpenJUMP GIS and map composition through Inkscape. The 2nd day was devoted to ILWIS GIS through raster analysis and Web Mapping Applications using Google Maps API and GeoServer. The 3rd day was for using UNM MapServer/ for Web GIS. The participants were shown how one can join the OSGeo as a member and help spread the awareness. The resource persons were from Geological Survey of India, Salim Ali Centre For Ornithology and Natural History (SACON), NRSC, IIIT-H etc.

Ahmedabad Workshop
The OSGeo-India chapter has conducted 1 day "Open Source GIS – Breaking the Barriers" Workshop in XXVIII INCA International Congress for “COLLABORATIVE MAPPING & SPACE TECHNOLOGY” held at Gandhinagar, Gujrat during November 4-6, 2008. The workshop was attended by -10- participants from SAC, ISRO, BISAG, CEPT University and Indian Army. The morning session of the day included demonstration and hands-on practice with OpenJUMP GIS and map composition through Inkscape which was conducted by Dr. K.S. Rajan, IIIT, Hyderabad. The afternoon session of the day was devoted to developing the WebGIS applications using Google Maps Api and Geoserver which was conducted by Santosh Gaikwad, SACON, Hyderabad. The participants were shown how to make use of Open Source GIS tools.

Cochin workshop
A half day workshop was conducted at the National FOSS meeting at Cochin University of Science and Technology on 16 Nov. Dr. S Narendra Prasad, Secretary Osgeo and Ms K Anitha ,Research student presented Open source GIS applications  including web GIS using Open source geospatial tools  for Rajahmundry  and Attapadi respectively. A paper on Engaging Web for better administration  was published in GIS India, Dec 08 issue by S Narendra Prasad, coathoured with Santosh Gaikwad and KS Rajan. For details: http://www.gisdevelopment.net/magazine/global/2008/december/50.htm

OSGeo-India's presentation at FOSS4G2008 Capetown Republic of South Africa
The annual event FOSS4G2008 was held between 29th September 2008 to 3rd October 2008. On behalf of OSGeo India chapter a presentation, 'Modus Operandi of a FOSS GIS project in India', by V. Ravi Kumar, Sreenivas N Rao, Narendra S Prasad was presented on 30th September 2008, by V.Ravi Kumar, Joint Secretary and Co-Chairman Events. Abstract and the presentation are available at http://conference.osgeo.org/index.php/foss4g/2008/paper/view/30

A link to photos at the event --http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/ravivundavalli?feat=email--

Areas for Improvement

 * The participation by geospatial community in use and adoption of Osgeo tools is still in a miniscule proportion. There is a scope for diffusion of these  tools and technologies in various IT related  academia, service sectors of Government and private  agencies
 * Perhaps more involvement of geospatial groups  and associations such as Indian Society of Remote Sensing, Indian Society of Geomatics, Indian National Cartographic Association, will help the cause
 * There is a scope for taking up projects to be funded by various organizations such as Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Information Technology, to broad base adoption and use of these technologies.
 * There is an urgent need to have a dedicated and trained team to serve as resource group to reach out.

Opportunities to help
More participation by Geospatial resource persons is welcome. Can contact osgeo officials at www.osgeo.in

We are planning to have a national level Osgeo event in late 2009. Volunteers can help. Volunteers can contact thru www.osgeo.in

Outlook for 2009
We plan to have four outreach workshops in different areas of the country and for different agencies. We would like to customise various applications developing training manuals using data sets of user interest.

We would like to promote  use  of osgeo tools on Linux  platforms- especially a debian version such as Ubuntu and BOSS, a  Linux version developed by CDAC, India