[OSGeo-Announce] Open Source Geospatial Laboratory established at ETH Zurich, Switzerland

[Anne Ghisla]

We are pleased to announce the establishment of ICA-OSGeo Open Source
Geospatial Laboratory (OSGL, see [0]) at ETH Zurich, Switzerland [1].
The OSGL at ETH Zurich is part is part of the Institute of Cartography
and Geoinformation, chair of Cartography [2]. The preceding Institute
of Cartography was founded in 1925 by Professor Eduard Imhof, one of
the main founders of modern academic cartography. It is therefore the
oldest university institute in cartography world-wide. In 2011, with
the establishment of the new chair of Geoinformation Engineering, the
scope of activities of the institute was expanded and its name was
adapted. In cartography, the institute strives to maintain its leading
position in topographic cartography (relief representation), thematic
cartography, and atlas cartography (school atlases, national atlases)
by exploiting and further developing cartographic knowledge and
adapting it to new interactive technologies and application domains.
Geoinformation Engineering aims at analyzing, representing, modelling,
and visualizing spatio-temporal decision processes and integrates such
models in mobile geoinformation services and spatial information
technologies.

The OSGL at ETH Zurich will be actively implementing the Memorandum of
Understanding signed between the International Cartographic Association
(ICA) and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), with the
vision to support the development of open-source geospatial software
technologies, training and expertise. It also aims to provide support
for increasing the number and quality of open source teaching and
training materials for Cartography and GIS. As a proud member of the
ICA-OSGeo Network [3], the ETH Zurich OSGL is focusing on Education,
Open Geodata and on Cartographic and Geospatial Research. Additionally
the laboratory is participating in the ICA Commission on Open Source
Geospatial Technologies [4] and through the Institute of Cartography
and Geoinformation [5] as an associate member in Open Geospatial
Consortium (OGC) [6].

The lab starts with expertise in several OSGeo projects such as Quantum
GIS, OpenLayers, PostGIS and GDAL/OGR. A special attention will be
given to QGIS Server, since it was conceived as a research project at
the Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation [2]. Furthermore the
lab is proud to have joined a collaboration in the areas of Education
and Research with the industry partner Sourcepole [7].

The ETH Zurich OSGL will be led by Dr. Ionuț Iosifescu [8] with support
from several members of the Institute of Cartography and
Geoinformation. Please check the lab webpage for the full list of team
members and the assigned areas of responsibility, as well as for the
upcoming training possibilities [9].


OSGeo is a not-for-profit organisation founded in 2006 whose mission is
to support and promote the collaborative development of open source
geospatial technologies and data.

ICA is the world authoritative body for cartography and Geographic
Information Science.

[0] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/MOU_ICA
[1] http://karlinapp.ethz.ch/osgl/index.html
[2] http://www.ikg.ethz.ch/karto/index_EN
[3] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Edu_current_initiatives
[4] http://opensourcegeospatial.icaci.org/
[5] http://www.ikg.ethz.ch/index_EN
[6] http://www.opengeospatial.org
[7] http://www.sourcepole.ch
[8] http://www.ikg.ethz.ch/people/staff/iionut/index_EN
[9] http://karlinapp.ethz.ch/osgl/Training.html
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