Romanian Chapter Report 2007

Introduction

• Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2007
• Contact name: Vasile Crăciunescu

The idea of starting an Romanian OSGeo Local Chapter came out after FOSS4G2006 but it begin to shape after FOSS4G2007. For the moment, the main vehicle for FOSS & OSGeo promotion is geo-spatial.org. The website (Romanian only at this point) represents a collaborative effort by and for the Romanian community to facilitate the sharing of geospatial knowledge and the discovery and publishing of free geographic datasets and maps. Anyone can make a contribution by submitting articles or datasets for publication, adding comments to the existing articles, join the discussion on the mailing list or user’s forum.

Key Accomplishments

• Visibility at conferences and workshops:
  • 25-27 October 2007: a general presentation of geo-spatial.org, Romanian in formation chapter and OSGeo was done at the 15th GIS Users Conference, in Chisinau (Rep. Moldova).
  • 11 December 2007: a more detailed presentation was done at the second National Spatial Data Infrastructure Conference in Bucharest (http://portal.rosa.ro/index.php?item_id=169, http://earth.unibuc.ro/stiri/conferinta-sdi-2007)
  • 12 December 2007: in the framework of the same conference, we manage to organize a open source geospatial software workshop. Detailed presentations and step by step demonstrations were made for: QGIS, uDig, PostGIS, Geoserver, MapWindow, OpenLayers and VTP.

• Romanian articles and tutorials published on geo-spatial.org:
  • http://earth.unibuc.ro/articole/open-source-gis-I (FOSSGIS applications review: toolkits and libraries)
  • http://earth.unibuc.ro/articole/open-source-gis-II (FOSSGIS applications review: desktop software)
  • http://earth.unibuc.ro/tutoriale/vtp-primii-pasi (VTP tutorial)
  • http://earth.unibuc.ro/tutoriale/wingrass (GRASS Windows installation tutorial)
  • http://earth.unibuc.ro/tutoriale/instalare-grass-macosx (GRASS MacOSX installation tutorial)
  • http://earth.unibuc.ro/tutoriale/bazin-hidrografic-prin-QGIS-GRASS (GRASS+QGIS watershed delineation)
  • http://earth.unibuc.ro/tutoriale/postgresql-postgis-ziggis-arcmap (zigGIS tutorial)
  • http://earth.unibuc.ro/tutoriale/vtocx (VTP vtocx tutorial)
  • http://earth.unibuc.ro/tutoriale/manipulare-date-spatiale-gdal-raster (GDAL tutorial)

• Articles:
  • Free and Open Source Geospatial Software. A Complete Alternative to Propriatary Applications (published in a local journal)
  • Developing an Open Romanian Geoportal (presented as poster at FOSS4G2007 and published in a local journal)

• Work on open geodata:
  • Basic Romanian layers (country border, county border, cities) are available for free as plain download and web services (WMS, WFS): http://earth.unibuc.ro/download/romania-seturi-vectoriale
  • LANDSAT true color clipped after the standard Romanian 1:100k map sheets and reprojected in Stereo70: http://earth.unibuc.ro/download/datele-landsat-etm-in-stereo701
  • SRTM clipped after the standard Romanian 1:100k map sheets and reprojected in Stereo70: http://earth.unibuc.ro/download/datele-srtm90-reproiectate-in-stereo70
  • Corine Land Cover clipped after the standard Romanian 1:100k map sheets and reprojected in Stereo70http://earth.unibuc.ro/download/datele-corine-landcover-reproiectate-in-stereo70
  • Old Austrian maps georeferenced in Stereo70: http://earth.unibuc.ro/download/harile-austriece-1910-reproiectate-in-stereo70

Areas for Improvement

• Get more exposure in media by publishing articles in technical magazines
• Start translation of the OSGeo Homepage to Romanian
• Present the FOSS benefits to companies involved in the geospatial business here in Romania

Opportunities to Help

• Join and express your opinions to our local mailing lists (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/geo-spatial) or forum (http://www.nabble.com/geo-spatial.org-f25985.html)
• Volunteers for translations

Outlook for 2008

• First meeting between geo-spatial.org authors and users to discuss about the Romanian OSGeo Local Chapter already took place in a local pub. 17 people attend. The talks covered the need for a legal entity (something like an NGO), the need for more volunteers for translations, the need for a FOSSGIS local conference. Some pictures can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26994138@N00/sets/72157604006886688/
• Regular meetings during the whole year, at least one to be held in other city than Bucharest
• Create a legal established entity to support the Ro OSGeo Local Chapter
• Become an official local chapter
• Articles and tutorials to be published on geo-spatial.org in the following month:
  • A translation and adaptation of Gary Sherman's "Shuffling Quantum GIS into the Open Source GIS Stack" tutorial (http://earth.unibuc.ro/preview)
  • FOSSGIS applications review: server-side and webmapping applications
  • Mapnik tutorial
  • Two more GDAL/OGR tutorials
  • OpenLayers basic tutorial