Ica-osgeo-isprs award

ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS Awards for Open Geospatial Science
It is important that OSGeo has strong strategic focus in education and this Student Awards initiative is aimed at further expanding our education objectives. It also builds upon the strong collaborations in place with ICA ,ISPRS and OSGeo through the Geo for All initiative.

The ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS Awards for Open Geospatial Science is awarded to students who have demonstrated contributions to FOSS4G. The aim of the awards is to recognise the excellent contributions from students worldwide not only to FOSS4G but also  acknowledge their contributions to open knowledge and being good global citizens by helping spread the benefits of education to all. Also by giving certificates with the backing of three great geo organisations (ICA, OSGeo and ISPRS) will be a great moral boost for the students. This recognition is much much bigger than the monetary award .The awards will be given at selected conferences/ events worldwide to ensure geographic distribution and participation.

= Background =

Thanks to contributions from ICA (500 Euros) and ISPRS (500 Euros) for the NASA Europa Challenge 2015 student prize, and confirmation from GeoCat to support student award at FOSS4G 2015 at Seoul, we are in a position to start the process of initiating ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS Student Awards in Open Geospatial Science. Georg Gartner (ICA President) will be there at FOSS4G-Europe to deliver keynote and to present the award.

But we want to make sure there is a system and process setup in place, so that it is long term and hence have setup an Award committee and now now working to setup proceduces and process to put this on a firm footing. So all ideas/suggestions welcome

Hence we request OSGeo Board to allocate 10k USD from the OSGeo budget for initiating the  ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS Student Awards scheme. This a seed amount to start the initiative. This will be administered by the OSGeo Treasurer and this Award Committee with Charlie Schweik as chair will be responsible for approving which conference/events/competitions to fund the awards. Also we will invite other interested organisations who wish to support this Award initiative to directly send their funding to OSGeo and the OSGeo treasurer will administer this for us. It is important that a system and structure is setup in place so that it builds upon for the future.

Award Committee :
 * Prof. Georg Gartner (President, ICA)
 * Jeff McKenna (President, OSGeo)
 * Chen Jun (President, ISPRS)
 * Prof. Charlie Schweik (USA) - Committee Chair
 * Prof. Maria Antonia Brovelli ( Italy)
 * Dr. Xinyue Ye (USA)
 * Dr. Luciene Delazari ( Brazil)
 * Dr. Tuong-Thuy Vu ( Malaysia)
 * Prof. Venkatesh Raghavan ( Japan/India)
 * Prof. Ivana Ivánová (Brazil)
 * Jeroen Ticheler (The Netherlands)
 * Dr. Serena Coetzee (South Africa)
 * Prof. Helena Mitasova ( USA)
 * Anne Ghisla (Germany)
 * Patrick Hogan (USA)
 * Dr Suchith Anand (UK/India)

= Process =

From 2016 we aim to
 * Send out a 'Call for Student Awards scheme widely on appropriate mailing lists (osgeo discuss, etc) and also in the website of "Geo for All"
 * Only LOC of established GIS conferences including FOSS4G local conferences worlwide can apply
 * Interested LOCs to send their applications to the chair of the Award Committee with details of their selection procedures
 * Committee selects which events/conferences to fund the student award based on a set of criteria (to be developed by Charlie in consultation with all members)
 * Prepare certificates and tokens of appreciation
 * Make arrangements for presenting award in coordination with LOC