User:Kauevestena

Hi, I am Kauê de Moraes Vestena,

I'm a Brazilian Professor at the Federal University of Technology – Paraná (UTFPR), where I work with Geomatics, Geodesy, Photogrammetry, GIS, and geospatial technologies in general.

I've been an enthusiast of FOSS software since a very young age. Open-source tools have been part of basically my entire academic and professional journey, from using Linux and QGIS to building my own tools and contributing to geospatial projects.

During my PhD in Geodetic Sciences, I used a lot of the FOSS4G ecosystem for research, teaching, experimentation, and software development. QGIS, PostGIS, Python, GeoPandas, MapLibre and OpenStreetMap-related tools have all become part of my everyday toolbox.

One of the projects that came out of this is **OSM Sidewalkreator**, a QGIS plugin I developed to help generate and process pedestrian and sidewalk networks from OpenStreetMap data. That work eventually connected with a much broader project of mine, **OpenSidewalkMap**, where I've been exploring pedestrian mapping, accessibility, routing, data quality, visualization, and ways of making sidewalk data more useful and easier to publish.

More recently, I've also been developing **Maplibreum**, a Python library inspired by the simplicity of Folium, but built around MapLibre. A lot of my current interests are somewhere between GIS, web mapping, accessibility, automation, open geospatial data, and experimenting with how modern software development tools can make geospatial development easier.

I also really enjoy teaching this stuff. A big part of what I do nowadays is trying to connect the theoretical side of Geodesy and Geomatics with actual tools, datasets, code, maps, and real-world engineering problems.

And, of course, FOSS4G has been a big part of this journey. I participated in FOSS4G conferences in **2022, 2023, 2024 and 2026**, both as a member of the community and as someone increasingly involved in building and presenting open-source geospatial software.

So, in short: I'm a professor, researcher, mapper, developer, and longtime FOSS enthusiast who enjoys building geospatial things and sharing them with people. :)