Submission for papers in the Academic Track of FOSS4G is now open

The FOSS4G Academic Track is bringing together researchers, developers, users and practitioners carrying out research and development in the geospatial and the free and open source fields.

With the Academic Track motto “Science for Open Source, Open Source for Science”, we aim to attract academic papers describing:

• The use of open source geospatial software and data, in and for scientific research
• Academic endeavours to conceptualize, create, assess, and teach open source geospatial software and data.

Based on these categories, to promote a strong connection between the Academic Track and the other elements of FOSS4G, we hope for contributions within the following themes:

• Data Quality, Software Quality and Service Quality
• Community Building
• Doing more for less: Assessment of costs and benefits of open source applications and open source business models
• Use of Open Data to inform public services
• FOSS and FOSS4g: Is spatial special?
• Architectures and frameworks for open source software and data
• Teaching Geospatial Sciences with open source solutions
• Open Source GIS application use cases: Government, Participatory GIS, Location based services, Health, Energy, Water, Climate change, etc.
• Human Computer Interfaces and Usability in and around Open GI systems

We invite academics and researchers to submit full papers in English, of maximum 6,000 words, before the deadline of 1 February. Templates for submissions in a variety of formats can be found here, and detailed requirements, regarding layout, formatting and the submission process, can be found on the FOSS4G 2103 Academic Track submission pages

Your contributions will be reviewed (double-blind) by a diverse reviewing committee of experts in the field, who will be asked to assess the papers on originality and academic rigour, as well as interest for the wider FOSS4G community. We expect to select 20-25 papers for presentation and publication. From this selection, a maximum of 8-10 papers will be given the opportunity for inclusion in a special issue of the renowned international journal Transactions in GIS [1]. The remaining papers will be published in the online OSGEO Journal [2].

We would like to specifically invite “early stage researchers” (PhD students, PostDocs) to use this opportunity to aim for a high-ranking publication.

Authors of all selected papers will be expected to present their work in detail in a separate Academic Track (with 20-30 minute slots), and will also be given the opportunity to pitch the central theme of their paper in short ‘lightning’ talks to the larger community, to generate attention and cross-pollenate with industry, developers and users.

Important Dates:

NOW: Submission open
1 February: Deadline for submission of full papers
1 April: Reviewing decisions
1 May: Paper revision deadline
15 September: publication of selected papers
8-10 papers in Early View (on-line) Transactions in GIS
others in on-line OSGEO Journal
17-21 September: FOSS4G Conference
early: printed issue Transactions in GIS
For questions, comments and remarks, do not hesitate to contact the Academic Track co-chairs:

Franz-Josef Behr (Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences):
Barend Köbben (ITC-University of Twente):
[1]: Transactions in GIS. Published by Wiley; included in ISI, with an impact factor of 0.54; edited by John P. Wilson, David O’Sullivan and Alexander Zipf. Print ISSN: 1361-1682 Online ISSN: 1467-9671.

[2]: OSGEO Journal, the official Journal of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation;

- MrSID export ability available with Geographic Imager 4.1 -

Toronto, ON, January 7, - Avenza Systems Inc., producers of MAPublisher® cartographic software for Adobe Illustrator® and PDF Maps for Apple iOS and LizardTech, a provider of software solutions for managing and distributing geospatial content, today announced the integration of LizardTech® GeoExpress® 8.5 and the ability to produce MrSID format files into the latest release of Geographic Imager 4.1 for Adobe Photoshop.

LizardTech, based in Seattle, WA, specializes in developing the MrSID format, which handles high-resolution geospatial data. Previous versions of Geographic Imager have already provided read capability for raster and LiDAR MrSID via the integration of LizardTech MG4 Decode Software Development Kit (DSDK). With the current release, Avenza customers can take advantage of the ability to write to MrSID format directly from Adobe Photoshop provided they have the current version of LizardTech GeoExpress installed. This ability expands the number of supported file formats Geographic Imager can write and increases workflow options when working with high-resolution imagery.

“As the leading GIS vendor to support both viewing and writing of MrSID files in Adobe Photoshop, we're excited at the opportunity to partner with LizardTech to provide our users with access to MrSID technology,” said Ted Florence, President of Avenza. “With this integration, customers on both sides will be able to use MrSID images with the entire Geographic Imager toolset without compromise. The capability of tools in Geographic Imager and Adobe Photoshop with the ability to export to MrSID format is an invaluable workflow and shows how committed we are at bringing formats to the platform that may have never been thought possible.” he added.

Jon Skiffington, director of product management at LizardTech, notes, “We're thrilled at the opportunity to work with Avenza Systems to expand the reach of MrSID technology into viable platforms like Geographic Imager for Adobe Photoshop for the benefit of our mutual users.” Additionally, Jeff Young, business development manager at LizardTech, commented, “Collaboration with Avenza allows for more effective support of the Avenza/LizardTech world-wide user community with smoother workflows and more transparent data exchanges.

More information about MrSID support in Geographic Imager is available/geographic-imager/lizardtech-mrsid.

More about Geographic Imager for Adobe Photoshop

Geographic Imager is software for Adobe Photoshop that leverages the superior image editing capabilities of raster-based image editing software and transforms it into a powerful geospatial imagery editing tool. Work with satellite imagery, aerial photography, orthophotos, and DEMs in GeoTIFF and other major GIS image formats using Adobe Photoshop features such as transparencies, filters, and image adjustments while maintaining georeferencing and support for hundreds of coordinate systems and projections.

Geographic Imager 4.1 is immediately available free of charge to all Geographic Imager Maintenance Program members and at prices starting at US$319 for non-maintenance members. Academic and volume license pricing are also available. Geographic Imager 4.1 is available for Adobe Photoshop CS5, CS5.1 and CS6. LizardTech GeoExpress licenses and data cartridges are also available through Avenza Systems.

More about Avenza Systems Inc.

Avenza Systems Inc. is an award-winning, privately held corporation that provides cartographers and GIS professionals with powerful software tools for making better maps and for working with spatial imagery. In addition to software offerings for Mac, Windows and Apple mobile device users, Avenza offers value-added data sets, product training and consulting services.

More about LizardTech

Since 1992, LizardTech has delivered state-of-the-art software products for managing and distributing massive, high-resolution geospatial data such as aerial and satellite imagery and LiDAR data. LizardTech pioneered the MrSID technology, a powerful wavelet-based image encoder, viewer, and file format. LizardTech has offices in Seattle, Denver, London, and Tokyo.

Frisco, TX – ThinkGeo has launched their new Map Suite GIS Editor application, designed for Geographic Information System professionals who need an easy way to create, visualize, edit and analyze spatial data.  The GIS Editor, now available to the public as a free download, makes GIS more accessible to a broader range of users with varying degrees of experience, and does so at a lower cost than competing products.  It allows users to create and edit maps using a wide variety of spatial data in industry-standard formats, making it a valuable tool in an increasing number of industries and market segments.

When developing the Map Suite GIS Editor, ThinkGeo focused on a wide array of common GIS features and sought to provide them in an easy-to-use way.  The centerpieces of the application are the familiar ribbon bar, the ability to create multiple maps inside of one project, and the unique Style Builder which makes crafting professional-looking maps easier than ever.   The GIS Editor’s intuitive user interface provides quick access to a wide variety of tools without burdening the user with cryptic menus or stacks of mosaic-like toolbars.  The result is that GIS users of nearly any skill or experience level can find their way around the GIS Editor with ease.

For the end user, ThinkGeo has provided the GIS Editor Wiki, a growing source of documentation, walkthrough videos and sample projects aimed at helping new users get started quickly.  Numerous support channels are also available, including an online discussion forum monitored by ThinkGeo’s staff.

ThinkGeo is offering the Map Suite GIS Editor as subscription-based software, providing a significantly lower cost of entry and enabling occasional users to pay only for the time they need to use the application.  A free, fully-functional 14 day evaluation is offered to all users, who can then sign up to continue using the GIS Editor for as little as $49.95 per month or $495.00 per year.  Subscriptions can be canceled at any time and with no questions asked, simply by visiting a web site.  Bulk licenses will also be made available for businesses and multi-user organizations.

The Map Suite GIS Editor is currently offered as a beta version, meaning that it is still undergoing fine-tuning and performance tweaks, but that major work on the software has been completed and tested.  Users are encouraged to offer their opinions of the application in the official discussion forum, and to submit specific requests for new features or improvements to the ThinkGeo Enhancement Tracker.

ThinkGeo is an industry leader in Geographic Information Systems and tools for GIS professionals.  With a full suite of GIS applications, software development controls and asset tracking solutions, ThinkGeo provides spatial solutions to clients from a wide base of industries ranging from agriculture to aerospace.

USA, California, December 11, – Open Spatial announced today the official release of Enlighten Business Intelligence version 3.0. Enlighten Bi is a powerful web based GIS and decision support portal enabling seamless integration of engineering, corporate databases, imagery, mapping data, and multimedia. The ability to drill down and drill through corporate data stores from a map is a main strength of the software.

Enlighten Bi 3.0 can be deployed in the cloud or on premise and can include a managed service offering operated to measurable outcomes.

The development center of excellence for Enlighten is located in Sydney, Australia, a region globally renowned for world-class asset management practices. Enlighten is used by customers to view and manage their assets to these high standards. Enlighten Bi 3.0 provides a portal combining CAD, GIS, BIM (building information modeling) and business data from a single point of truth.

Anthony Jahshan, CEO at Open Spatial, commented “Enlighten Bi 3.0 is our most exciting release of Enlighten yet. The software takes advantage of a number of new technologies, placing it miles ahead of any competitive product in its space. A feature coveted by our competitors is printing to scale from a browser in page sizes up to Architectural E.”

Enlighten Bi 3.0 requires no browser plug-ins and zero application software on the desktop. The software provides power user capabilities such as spatial analysis and editing directly from a browser. Template driven maps and report publishing minimizes the need for costly desktop licenses. Corporate applications can embed these maps and reports into their systems through web services.

Customers interested in how they can improve the quality of information delivered to their desktop  by better utilization of existing Autodesk products should send an enquiry.

About Open Spatial
Open Spatial is a multi-national company delivering geospatial engineering solutions based on Oracle and Autodesk technologies. Recognized for delivering applications to government, utilities, campuses, and ports, our solutions are based on internationally accepted open standards and world-class best practices. Open Spatial offers innovative spatial asset infrastructure solutions to managing the process from survey through to design, construction and ongoing spatial data management and city modelling. Our Clients efficiently manage cadastre, roads, water, wastewater, stormwater, electric, telecoms and fiber networks.

Open Spatial, the Open Spatial logo and all brand and product names above are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Open Spatial Australia and in other countries. All other brand names, product name or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Oracle, AutoCAD, Autodesk and Civil 3D are registered trademarks of their respective owners.

© Copyright, Open Spatial Corporation. All rights reserved.

Expand your R skills - learn how to analyze spatial data.  David Unwin’s online course “Spatial Analysis Techniques in R” runs Dec 14 - Jan 18 (one week off for the winter holidays) at Statistics.

Upcoming courses include:

• Dec  7: Smoothing in R
• Dec 14: Spatial Analysis Techniques in R (more below)
• Jan  4: Introduction to R - Statistical Analysis
• Jan 11: Data Mining in R
• Jan 18: Visualization in R with ggplot2
• Jan 25: Advanced Programming in R

“Spatial Analysis Techniques in R” will teach users how to implement spatial statistical analysis procedures using R software. Topics covered include point pattern analysis, identifying clusters, measures of spatial association, geographically weighted regression and surface procession.  The course includes a concise introduction to R, but prior familiarity with R is needed.

Dr. David Unwin is Emeritus Chair of Geography at Birkbeck College and Visiting Professor in the Department of Geomatic Engineering at University College, both in the University of London. He has authored over a hundred academic papers in the field, together with a series of texts, of which the most recent are his Geographic Information Analysis, 2nd edition (with D. O'Sullivan) and a series of edited collections at the interface between geography and computer science in Visualization in GIS (Hearnshaw and Unwin, 1994), Spatial Analytical Perspectives on GIS (Fischer, Scholten and Unwin, 1996), Virtual Reality in Geography (Fisher and Unwin) and, most recently representation issues in Re-presenting GIS (Fisher and Unwin). Participants can ask questions and exchange comments directly with Dr. Unwin via a private discussion board during the course.

Details:

The course takes place online at Statistics in a series of 4 weekly lessons and assignments, and requires about 15 hours/week.  Participate at your own convenience; there are no set times when you are required to be online.

The first gvSIG CE Code sprint took place from Monday October 15th to Friday October 19th in Munich. The cost of this code sprint have been covered by ArchIV, Benjamin Ducke, CSGIS, Cartolab and Geomati.co. It has been a very intensive and productive week:

- integrating GRASS GIS in SEXTANTE 1.0 and discussing about the gvSIG CE release plan. The next release will be a beta release for gvSIG CE 1.0. We plan to release the first beta version of gvSIG CE 1.0 in November and the final version 1.0 before the end of that year. It will feature many bug fixes, user interface improvements, and some new/updated extensions (most importantly, a new version of SEXTANTE, OpenCAD and NavTable).

- examining a possible Integration of Geotools in gvSIG CE. This is a very important task for gvSIG CE because it will improve hugely the development of gvSIG CE. The first results allow us to estimate a roadmap and evaluate next steps. Surely more investigation and testing will be needed.

- accomplishing the best integration of OpenCadTools and Navtable in gvSIG CE

- updating the project documentation and website. A gvSIG CE Quickstart based on OADE Quickstart is now online. An example project with sample data will be part of the next CE 1.0.

The code sprint is a great opportunity to make decisions about the future of the project. It has been a very good experience for all of us. We are looking forward to the next code sprint! If you like to discuss next steps of the project we would like to hear from you (e.g. add a location for the next code sprint: Toulouse, Girona, Berlin, ?). Join our community list or follow us at twitter.

We're grateful to all the developers for their awesome engagement! See you soon and thank you very much to all participants!

The gvSIG CE Team

     There has been recent findings to suggest that a meteor from a serial impact off the dust tail of Comet C/1811 f1 [The great Comet of 1811] was the initial mechanism to cause The New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-1812. Satellite views show a central semi-circular depression in Northeastern Marshall County, Mississippi which every hill in the valley reverberates out from in an obvious shockwave pattern.

     Don't just take a look, study all the evidence that you may find on these events. You will find this site to be a good start: ,or search- "Kalopins Legacy", go to the "wix" site "documents and links", A Few Comments on 1811". Here "A Theory of Cometary Associations with Earthquakes" is where you will find the truths behind the myths...

The first gvSIG CE code sprint is planned for Monday October 15th to October 19th in Munich. gvSIG CE is a community driven GIS project fork of gvSIG that will be bundled with SEXTANTE, GRASS GIS and SAGA.
If you are interested in improving any aspects of gvSIG CE development as a documenter, coder, or tester we'd love to have you here even if you can't attend all days. There's something for everyone at this event.
We're particularly looking forward to talking with folks working on GRASS GIS, SAGA, SEXTANTE and Geotools.
Join the gvSIG CE code sprint and contribute in any way you like. If you are interested in our hack fest, please sign up to our community mailing list. Once there, please introduce yourself and tell us what you are interested in.
More information about this event is available here: GvSIG_CE_Code_Sprint_in_Munich
Please do not hesitate to redistribute this announcement in your respective channels.

SCALGO has released version 1.2 of the software package SCALGO Hydrology, which can be used to perform basic hydrological modeling on massive raster terrain models (containing tens of billions of cells) on a normal desktop computer.

The new version contains a number of new features that make it easier to perform large-area hydrological analysis. These features include handling of massive collections of polygon data, which e.g. allows for easy and efficient "burning" of a large number of features (such as buildings, bridges and culverts) that are important for hydrological modeling into a large-area terrain model. The release also includes functionality that allows for efficient computation of various measures (height, area, volume) of all depressions (including depressions inside other depressions) in massive raster terrain models, which e.g. allows for easy and efficient identification of the depressions and terrain areas most important for hydrological modeling.

As the previous version, all SCALGO Hydrology 1.2 modules can be run through a standalone graphical user-interface or from within ArcGIS. In SCALGO Hydrology 1.2 the newly released ArcGIS version 10.1 is supported and an ArcGIS viewer has been added that allows for easy visualization of the output of many of the package modules.

The new release also contains updates to the standalone user-interface and to some of the core algorithms, including the utilization of multiple CPU cores. Overall, the most significant updates in SCALGO Hydrology 1.2 include:

• Extension to the Bluespot module so that each bluespot cell contains the measure (height, area or volume) of the depression below the cell.
• New Clip module that clips a raster or a point cloud according to a set of polygons.
• New Burn module that burns elevation values from a set of polygons into a raster or a point cloud.
• New Calculate module that evaluates a function for each cell in a raster.
• New Masks module that generates binary masks from a raster (e.g. useful for post-processing Sea-Levels module output).
• Merge of TIN Conversion, Raster Conversion and Point Conversion into new Convert module.
• Addition of multi-core support in many core algorithms.
• Updated standalone user-interface, including options to monitor CPU, disk and memory use.
• Addition of ArcGIS viewer for visualizing the output from many of the package modules.
• Support for ArcGIS 10.1.

Information about SCALGO technology, products and services can be found. Future information about SCALGO products and services can also be received directly through Twitter and Facebook.

Scalable Algorithmics (SCALGO) was founded in with the mission to bring cutting-edge massive terrain data processing technology to market. The SCALGO technology is based on more than two decades of basic and applied research on I/O-efficient and geometric algorithms at Center for Massive Data Algorithmics (MADALGO) at Aarhus University in Denmark and at Duke University in the US, in collaboration with industry LiDAR and environmental GIS application experts. Software based on the technology can handle much larger terrain data sets on a normal desktop than most current software and thus it eliminates the need for accuracy-decreasing data thinning. The use of novel mathematical and algorithmic techniques also means that the software works provably efficient on all input data sets, delivering a completely specified output without the use of cumbersome workflows such as those introduced by data tiling. SCALGO is involved in multiple research projects and offer special pricing for academic institutions.

Illustration showing the result of computing bluespots using SCALGO Hydrology 1.2, visualized using the SCALGO ArcGIS Viewer. A cell is colored blue if the volume of the depression in the terrain below the cell is at most 3236m³ (as set by the viewer threshold value). Prior to the bluespot computation, the SCALGO Hydrology 1.2 Burn module was used to add buildings and cut bridges in the terrain model covering more than 13000km².

The Nottingham Geospatial Institute (University of Nottingham), Open Source Geospatial Foundation (UK chapter) , ICA Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies and the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories for Europe (AGILE)  are organising the Fourth Open  Source GIS Conference in the UK on 4th - 5th Sep at the University of Nottingham.

We are  pleased to announce the keynote speakers and workshops for OSGIS.

OSGIS Keynote Speakers:

• Prof. David Martin (University of Southampton)
• Steven Feldman (KnowWhere Consulting and FOSS4G Chair)
• Ian James (Chief Architect, Information Systems, Ordnance Survey & Technical Architect, UK Location Programme)

OSGIS Workshops:

Sep 4th

• AM- "GeoNetwork for dummies, or how to setup and use an SDI in 3 hours"-  Geocat (Netherlands) 

• PM- Getting started with GeoServer and INSPIRE services",  GeoSolutions (Italy) 

• All day  "Educational use of OSGeo Live", Ari Jolma, Aalto Uni (Finland)

Sep 5th

• PM - "Advanced GeoNetwork" - Geocat (Netherlands)

• PM-  "OSM-GB services and data"- NGI

The key aims of OSGIS are:

o hear presentations from government, academic, industry and policy makers on open source, open standards and open data geospatial technologies

o To understand current developments in open source GIS

o to act as a focus for open source, open standards, open data GIS research

o To provide platform to network and develop ideas for future collaborative work in open source GIS

Registrations are  open at       Early bird registrations ends on July 25th.  Places for workshops are limited. The provisional agenda for the main conference is also available at the website.

We are look forward to welcoming you to the University of Nottingham for an interesting conference and building future research collaborations in this exciting and rapidly developing research theme.

Best wishes,

OSGIS  Team