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On Day 3 at FOSS4G-Asia, different open source projects were presented to the crowd, such as: Geopaparazzi, Tadpole SDM and Policrowd 2.0.

First, Geopaparazzi is an Italian Android project to do field survey, but also tools that can be of great use also to OpenStreetMappers as well as tourists that want to plan their trip.  Some can see Geopaparazzi  as an apps similar to OSMAnd, even if the clients at first were not the same.

Secondly, Tadpole SDM has been shown for the first time at FOSS4G-Asia. It is a web-based UI in Java to manage spatial database based on Tadpole DB. It is at early stage, so it only supports PostGIS for now, but they plan in three years to support Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server and Spatial Lite. It can manage spatial data, work as Saas, draw query geometry quickly, show select row table, display which database objects has spatial data.

Thirdly, Policrowd 2.0 has been recently released and extending its uses. It is a social platform over Nasa WorldWind and Open Data Kit as a GIS participatory web application, allowing users to populate a virtual 3D globe with their personal geospatial information and with OGC compliant service (ex. WMS).

Finally, governments were also part of the development and user process at FOSS4G-Asia, especially in South Korea and Quebec in Canada. South Korea just release its Open Source Geospatial Policy by sharing resource in GIS and find better ways to collaborate. South Korea launch also a government funded R&D program of over 9 million with goals of developing and enhance their GeoEcosystem with github platform, KAOS-G forum, new project architecture based on GeoTools-GeoServer-OpenLayers, process Spatial-Statistics and collaboration with Kazakhstan Government. In Canada, the government of Quebec with its new project called: Open GIS Infrastructure (IGO in French) has also been presented. IGO includes: (like South-Korea) a collaborative platform (Gitlab, Redmine), project governance based on UMN MapServer committee rules and target at sharing expertise, documentation and resource within the government. This IGO project involved 6 organisations in Quebec. It develops WPS spatial analysis tools (based on Zoo Project), security management on layers, an API over OpenLayers, Geoext, MapServer using Phalcon as Integrator model. This project will enable anyone to configure by a simple XML its own web map application including Base Map and WMS/GeoJSON overlays in a layer tree and adding different built-in functionalities (ex. adding WMS server on-demand, share permalink, location tool) to the apps without any lines of javascript. The source code of IGO should be released in as a LGPL licence and the government of Quebec is looking at other public administration (local, regional and national) in Canada or elsewhere to get involve or contribute to the project.

For the last day of FOSS4G-Asia a sprint code was held on Zoo Project to continue enhancing this open WPS platform.

Here’s the recent geonews in batch mode.

On the open source / open data front:

• On Kickstarter now, don’t miss this opportunity to contribute and buy ‘The Book of OpenStreetMap’ by Steve Coast himself, the one that started this avalanche
• From Associated Press, Geomancer is open source tool to help journalists easily mash up data based on shared geography
• And now here’s how to use it, QGIS 2.6 user guide released
• Using OpenStreetMap, Map.me Pro app for free after acquisition

On the Esri front:

• New product, Esri Maps for Salesforce Now Available and Managing your Sales Opportunities using Esri Maps for Salesforce

On the Google front:

• It’s that time of the year already, Race with Rudolph and skydive with Santa in the countdown to December 24
• Includes inside the Sagrada Familia, Viva La Espana: 50 new Street View sights in Spain
• There’s Hong Kong protests visible in Google Earth too
• We already mentioned the nice Chrome extension, it’s really beautiful, A moment of zen: 100 incredible satellite images of planet Earth
• Where’s 3D from Google? New Imagery – November 25th, and 3D imagery map
• Going to the graveyard, Timeline for the end of the Google Earth plugin in Chrome

In the everything else category:

• A new source, SPOT 7 Satellite Commercially Launched
• An informative reminder, Get to Know a Projection: Azimuthal Orthographic and if you’re up to, The Patterson Projection
• Can’t hurt, Microsoft launches traffic predictions in Bing Maps across the globe, related, Nokia’s HERE maps opens a new self-service portal for developers
• Earth at night is beautiful, Nighttime Satellite Maps Show Increasing Flood Risks
• More GNSS in the sky, Russia launches new generation of GLONASS-K satellite into orbit
• Strange and worrying results, Russian Activists Used GPS Devices To Track…. Their Poop
• Location is the answer, Why Uber Has a Canadian Privacy Problem
• Looking for a new career? Apple Hiring Maps Engineer to Work on Improved Community Crowdsourcing, Siri/Passbook Integration
• Why not, The Driverless Future: Buses, Not Taxis
• Robots overlords, Ocean-Going Robot Fleet Completes Fish Tracking Mission
• Ah those humans, Track illigal fishing
• A useful summary, 3D Printers to Watch in and on a similar topic, 3D Printing Topographic Maps Using Lidar
• And what about drones? Drone delivery: Real or fantasy? and a possibility, FAA will require Commercial Drone Operators to Have a License, Fly in Daylight
• If tweets matters to you, Making the most detailed tweet map ever
• BIM might catch up after all? France moving toward mandating BIM for public procurement in and Singapore mandates BIM e-submissions for building projects greater than 5000 square meters
• Light but interesting, After a Year in GIS: Things I Wish I’d known in College

In the maps category:

• Winner of an award, interactive map of The Refugee Project
• Places to avoid, “Vision Zero View” – The Most Dangerous Streets In NYC Mapped
• A big map for a big eclipse, 10-Foot-Long Map Charts Path of America’s Next Total Solar Eclipse, on the same topic, Solar eclipses between 1601-2200 mapped for every place on Earth
• That’s nice I want one, Satellite images turned into… carpet maps
• Winner of an ‘Information is Beautiful’ award, not exactly geospatial, but clearly worth the 7 minutes video: Everything You Need to Know About Planet Earth

Here’s an excellent article on the problems of the Shapefile format and contenders as replacements of this omnipresent format. We mentioned the shapefile format frequently in the past, and while I was/am excited about the GeoPackage format and standard (I work in a world where OGC standards matter), James Fee concludes by anticipating that ‘the shapefile will outlive us all’.

From the entry: “The DBF is only half the problem with the shapefile.  It doesn’t understand topology, only handles simple features (ever try and draw a curve in a shapefile?), puny 2GB file size limitation and not to mention you can’t combine points, polygons and lines in one file (hence every shapefile name has the word point, line or poly in it). Oh and it’s anywhere between 3 and 15ish file types/extensions.”

Amongst the contenders for replacing the Shapefile, according to James:

• Esri’s File Geodatabase (FGDB): “There isn’t anything inherently wrong with Esri taking this path but it means you’re stuck using their software or their APIs to access the file format.  To me this severely limits the FGDB to me an interchange file format and I think that is perfectly fine with Esri as they don’t really care too much if the FGDB doesn’t work with other’s software.”
• GeoPackage: “It is relatively well supported by GIS software (even Esri technically can support it with the help of Safe Software).  Plus it supports all those complex features that the shapefile can’t.  Heck OGC even chose it as the reference implementation for the GeoPackage (assuming people still care about that).  Heck supports rasters too!”
• GML & KML: “Don’t even try and use a different projection.  They have their use in specific cases but the limits of the formats means you’ll never see it being an interchange format.”
• GeoJSON: “It can be many types of projections, it can be points, polygons and lines (with variations of many), it supports topology with the TopoJSON format and it’s JSON so it’s human readable. […] As with the shapefile/KML and unlike SpatiaLite it won’t support curves and other complex geometry or rasters and never will.  Thus it is not well suited as a shapefile replacement.”
• WKT: “But alas, we still don’t support rasters.  It’s a vector format for vector data. SpatiaLite and the File Geodatabase both support rasters.”

The whole article should be read by anyone with interest in geospatial data, probably every Slashgeo reader!

On Day 2 at FOSS4G-Asia, keynote speakers presents the evolution of their overall Open source community (ex. Thailand, Japan). Thailand presents how its annual Open Source Software Festival that is held there since 1999 became the root of its movement and Japan OSGeo show that Chapter funded by companies as a way of sustainable solution to support local OSGeo organisation.

Maria Brovelli from Politecnico di Milano in Italy discussed how Digital Earth projet around the world should look more at the Internet of Places and build more freedom around it with FOSS4G. She was making connections between the Internet of Things to Internet of Places, because of 80% of all big data coming from different sources can be located on a map. She expressed interest to GIS specialist to work on Cartographic Mashup, multiple GeoCatalog links together, processing server-side service  (ex. WPS – Zoo) especially for mobile device and not always start from scratch but build on top of FOSS4G project already in development.

Kazeem Owolabi, from a US NGO called eHealth Africa based in Kano, Nigeria presents the use case of polio eradication project and Ebola response outbreak in Nigeria. His presentation highlight the role GIS plays in the vaccine delivery & routing to remote areas in Northern Nigeria.

To effectively deliver vaccine to those areas and get 80% of the target population to get polio vaccine to young people, mobile application (Open Data Kit, Formhub), Open Data community (OpenStreetMap roads with Humanitarian OSM Team) and many GIS tools such as: OSRM, QGIS (delivery analysis), MapServer & CKAN were used and supports the NGO to achieve its mission. Nigeria as one of third country still having polio might look by the end of to be polio free. With all this achievement using technology for public health purposes proves also that to be useful for Ebola in Nigeria in the recent outbreak and acheiving to stop the spread in the Lagos area:

MapMint was presented this Tuesday in a workhop at FOSS4G-Asia. Gerald Fenoy shows some of MapMint features such as publish web service and produce map applications by using an administration interface without any complex lines of code. This project is built on top of MapServer (using a modified version), MapCache, Zoo Projects (WPS), OpenLayers, JQuery and GDAL-OGR.

It can be used for importing and converting data using a web interface on top of GDAL and OGR, create style by generating a MapServer mapfile from a QGIS style menu, publish an HTML map template of specific layers in OpenLayers and add privileges access as needed. MapMint has specific modules in its Dashboard, such as: Data (define type,  convert, reproject and support 50+ GDAL/OGR formats), Maps (manage layers by drag and drop, layer order, save mapfile) and Apps (template, style, add base maps), but most of the process in this modules are managed by Zoo projects. The source code can be found on github:  as the community version of the project. MapMint is also offered as a professional, enterprise and cloud package service: