Philippines Chapter Report 2012

OSGeo Philippines Activity Report 2012

• Period covered by report: September 2011 - Dec 2012
• Contact name: Maning Sambale (emmanuel.sambale at gmail.com). No formal nomination for Maning within the Chapter.
• OSGeo-PH Local Chapter is currently under in-formation stage. The first meeting was initiated last quarter of 2011 and the current mailinglist membership is 14 subscribers.

Key Accomplishments

Events

• PhilGEOS 2012 and FOSS4G Workshops - OSGEO Philippines, the University of Philippines Department of Geodetic Engineering (UPD-GE), OpenStreetMap Philippines (OSM-PH) and the Environmental Science for Social Change (ESSC) organized a series of pre-symposium workshops showcasing free and open source technologies at the PhilGEOS 2012 last November 23-24, 2012 at the University of the Philippines, Diliman. Over 60 participants joined 8 workshops and 3 lightning talks. The OSGeo Live project was also presented in one of the parallel technical sessions in the main conference. Likewise, an exhibit booth was installed during the PhilGEOS conference for OSGeo and OpenStreetMap. Over ~50 OSGeo Live DVDs were handed out to conference participants. Event details

Meetings

• Small meetups with various groups and FOSS4G enthusiasts during the last quarter of 2011 (2011-09-23, 2011-10-01, 2011-12-03).

Education and Research

• Two institutions are in the process of establishing Open Geospatial Labs in the the country under the ICA-OSGeo MoU Partnership. These are the National College of Public Administration and Governance (NCPAG), University of the Philippines and Environmental Science for Social Change (ESSC).

Member Activities

• Maning Sambale
  • Regular training and workshops on FOSS4G applications conducted to ESSC's local partners and research collaborators.
  • Participated and organized a QGIS workshop at the the AGSE 2012 and FOSS4G Southeast Asia (AGSE 2012 website).

• Jay-ar Ragub
  • Promoted the usage of FOSS with local partners in the Provinces of Eastern Visayas and the interest among local mappers is growing (e.g. OSM, Quantum GIS).
  • Participated and organized the 2012 International GIS Day locally together with the Department of Agriculture - Regional Field Office 8 (DA-RFU 8), the Region 8 GIS Network, and Regional Environmental Information System, University of the Philippnes Visayas Tacloban College with the local theme "GIS in Aid to Disaster Risk Reduction and Management". One key topic that was discussed was using crowd mapping tools (e.g. Ushahidi) and the importance of an updated road/infrastructure (POIs) within an online map (e.g. OSM) (News on the event).

Others

• A exhibition pack starter kit was purchased through the Marketing Committee's funding support. The kit is used for conference booths and related activities of the chapter

Areas for Improvement

• There is very little activity in mailinglist and very few community activities done for the year. This is due to the small number of active members. However, participation to many geospatial related events reveal that the use FOSS4G technologies is very active specifically in the desktop (QGIS, GRASS GIS) and web (GeoServer, OpenLayers).
• Open data initiatives (lead mostly by the OpenStreetMap Philippines community) are emerging throughout the country. A collaborative partnership with this community can broaden the use of FOSS4G technologies.
• A recurring demand for newbie users of FOSS4G is the lack of learning materials that is customized for the Philippines, there is great opportunity for service providers to design learning materials and provide training.

Outlook for 2013

• There are several geospatial events scheduled for the year, OSGeo PH is being invited on these events as speakers and workshop leads.

• Training workshops on the usage of FOSS GIS in the Provinces of Eastern Visayas, Philippines.