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

[Jorge Sanz]

We are pleased to welcome the GIScience Research Group [1] at the
University of Heidelberg to the GeoForAll initiative and network as an
Open Source Geospatial Laboratory and Research Center.

GIScience Heidelberg is supporting free and open GI software, open GI
standards (OGC), open Geo-Data (e.g. OpenStreetMap and other VGI),
open access publication and GIS education in many ways.This is
demonstrated already in numerous examples, such as the development and
provision of free GI services and open source tools as well as the
usage, improvement and advocating of open spatial data in education
and through development and research as well as through the
organization of related workshops and events (e.g. OSM mappathons).
Further detailed information about available services, tools,
publications and open data related activities and teaching can be
found on http://uni-heidelberg.de/gis/

Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial Applications has now made
it possible for a large number of private and government agencies and
academics in both developed and developing countries to make use of
geospatial software for applications in GIS, spatial database
management, and remote sensing in many application domains. GIS
without spatial data is not useful. Therefore we do advocate and
support the availability of free and open Geographical Information
from different sources, including Volunteered Geographic Information
(VGI) [2] such as OpenStreetMap (OSM) [3] in multiple ways through
education and research, as well as the development of relevant tools
and services.

The Lab is very active in many fields, as you can see from their
website http://uni-heidelberg.de/gis  . Moreover they are going to add
and improve further related info (e.g. https://github.com/GIScience
and further open source developments such as XNavigator etc. ),
therefore be tuned.

The points of contact for the Lab are Prof. Alexander Zipf and Prof.
Bernhard Hofle.

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://uni-heidelberg.de/gis
[2] http://k1z.blog.uni-heidelberg.de/tag/vgi/
[3] http://k1z.blog.uni-heidelberg.de/tag/osm/