[Ica-osgeo-labs] Season's greetings and "Geo for All" expansion ideas for 2015

[Suchith Anand]

Dear All, 

As 2014 is nearly over, let me take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you for your support and contributions which helped to build up the "Geo for All" http://www.geoforall.org/ initiative. It has been amazing to see our humble initiative grow rapidly and this has been due to the dedication of all of you and I would like to thank you for your continued contribution. 
This week we also  approved application from  the University of Queensland, Australia for establishing the latest Open Source Geospatial Lab there. We are looking forward to working with colleagues there for the establishment of  the new ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS lab   there and expand future research and teaching collaborations. The timing of this is good as is also one year since the 3rd European Union- Australia Research Infrastructure meeting in Canberra which i was fortunate to be part of where both Australia and the EU acknowledged the importance of large collaborative infrastructures in enabling research that focuses on global scale challenges and opportunities. Details at http://ec.europa.eu/research/infrastructures/pdf/Third%20European%20Australian%20Workshop%20on%20Research%20Infrastructure%20Communique.pdf
My focus for that meeting was on the Sustainable Cities theme where one of the agreed outcomes of the Sustainable Cities theme was to establish open source sustainability cities research lab at the University of Melbourne (led by Dr Chris Pettit) with linked laboratories in key universities in Australia.
In 2015, i suggest that for "Geo for All" we expand this idea to focus on using the Open Geospatial Labs that we are building in universities worldwide to expand research by bringing together colleagues from other departments in your universities for expanding in  three key areas where there is Big Data focus in research and development.
   
   - Urban Data Science    

   - Transport Science & Applications    

   - Environment and Climate Science    


This will help  expand our established research labs and to establish new research labs in  universities worldwide in Urban Science , Transport, Environment themes building on Open Principles (Open Data, Open Software, Open standards, Open Access to Research publications etc).  I look forward to your ideas/suggestions for the next phase of our global expansion plans. For new universities who wish to establish Open Geospatial Labs, details at http://www.geoforall.org/how_to_join/
Thank you to all of you, we have now put strong foundations for our "Geo for All" initiative from Australia to Uruguay and i am looking forward to working with you all in 2015 to rapidly build upon this.
I wish you and your families very happy holidays and Happy New Year 2015. 
Best wishes, 
Suchith
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