[OSGeo-Announce] Welcome to the University of Trento to GeoForAll

[Jorge Sanz]

We are pleased to welcome University of Trento, in Italy to the
GeoForAll initiative  as an Open Source Geospatial Laboratory and
Research Center.

The UTn-FOSS Lab was born from the synergy of two existing labs at the
Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering of the
University of Trento i.e  Geodesy and Geomatics [1] and Ecology [2]
which have been working togheter since 1993 on various FOSS4G research
and education projects, especially with the GRASS GIS software.

The point of contact for the lab is '''Clara Tattoni'''.

Below the description of the main activities.

=== RESEARCH: ===

The Geodesy and Geomatics lab investigates innovative positioning and
survey systems, such as GPS, laser scanning techniques and digital
photogrammetry, which are nowadays pivotal for the description of the
environment as well as for proactive mobility management. Geographic
Information Systems represent a further researches topic, especially
with reference to geometric  and topologic, 2D and 3D, modelling and
to the development, test and implementation of innovative techniques
for data processing and analysis.

The Ecology lab research areas are the ecology and planning of forests
with special attention to the mountain areas and the issues arisen in
the last decades due both to the abandonment of the traditional
agricultural, woodland and shepherd activities and to the tourism
development at high altitude sites.

The group works on the development and validation of research
methodologies for land analysis and on the identification of new
strategies for the sustainable management of the mountain territory.

=== EDUCATION: ===

Beside their research topics, all carried out in  FOSS4G environment
the group devoted a lot of effort in education by developing and
updating self training tutorials in the Italian and English languages.
Details at
 http://www.ing.unitn.it/~grass/documents.html  for GRASS and QGIS and
by training student and professional with specific courses.

At the University of Trento the following courses are based on FOSS4G software:

* Numerical carthography and GIS (III year under graduate)
* Land survey (III year under graduate)
* Applied Ecology, 6 European credits, 60 hours Master degree course
* Doctoral course Environmental data management and analysis
* Doctoral School in Environmental Engineering

Plus the '''International Summer School on "Tropical Rainforest
Biodiversity modelling and mapping"''' organised in cooperation with
the Science Museum of Trento (Italy) and the Danish Natural History
Museum and Tanzania National Park. Details at
http://www.muse.it/it/la-ricerca/biodiversita-tropicale/proposte-formative/pagine/summer-school-2015.aspx


=== CONFERENCES AND MISCELLANEA:===

They organized the first Open Source Free Software GIS - GRASS users
conference in September 2002, in Trento.

Some of the people in this group are active within the OSGEO Education
committee and they held workshops at various FOSS4G conferences

Various scripts and gass modules http://www.ing.unitn.it/~grass/software.html

'''Recent FOSS4G related projects include:'''

PRIN "Interoperability and cooperative management of geographic,
dynamic, multidimentional and distributed data with Free and Open
Source GIS"

European project Recharge GREEN http://www.recharge-green.eu/


We are warmly welcoming more universities  to join us and expand
research and teaching collaborations in Geospatial Science. Please
contact our Regional chairs  for more details
http://www.geoforall.org/how_to_join/


Prof. Maria Brovelli  and Dr. Peter Mooney
GeoForAll Europe Chairs
http://www.geoforall.org/


[1] http://web.unitn.it/en/dicam/7801/geodesy-and-geomatics
[2] http://web.unitn.it/en/dicam/7795/forest-ecology-presentation