From astrid_emde at osgeo.org Wed Apr 14 12:56:12 2021 From: astrid_emde at osgeo.org (Astrid Emde (OSGeo)) Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2021 21:56:12 +0200 Subject: [OSGeo-Announce] 2021 OSGeo UN Committee Educational Challenge Message-ID: <4db44da10c497a3d20ecb658828e53b1@posteo.de> See news item https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/2021-osgeo-un-committee-educational-challenge/ [1] Proposals are invited for developing open geospatial educational material for two challenges with a prize money of USD 3,000 each, sponsored by OSGeo. Winners will be guided by mentors from the UN Open GIS Initiative [2] and OSGeo [3] to ensure that the material meets the requirements of the target audience. Winning material should be published on the OSGeo Wiki site. The challenge supports the objectives of the OSGeo UN Committee, i.e. promoting the development and use of open source software that meets UN needs and supports the aims of the UN. In the last few years, the Committee has mainly worked on the UN Open GIS Initiative, a project "._.. to identify and develop an Open Source GIS bundle that meets the requirements of UN operations, taking full advantage of the expertise of mission partners (partner nations, technology contributing countries, international organizations, academia, NGOs, private sector). The strategic approach shall be developed with best and shared principles, standards and ownership, in a prioritized manner that addresses capability gaps and needs without duplicating efforts of other Member States or entities. The UN Open GIS Initiative strategy shall collaboratively and cooperatively develop, validate, assess, migrate, and implement sound technical capabilities with all the appropriate documentation and training that in the end provides a united effort to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of utilizing Open Source GIS around the world._" The challenge is also a career development opportunity for early career scientists and practitioners in the open geospatial industry. CHALLENGE 1: TRAINING ON SATELLITE DATA ANALYSIS AND MACHINE LEARNING WITH QGIS (SATELLITE_QGIS) Satellite imagery is becoming fundamental in all processing workflows related to generating geospatial information due to the growing availability of many open data sources (for instance the Copernicus/Landsat products). The aim of this challenge is to prepare a tutorial about the new functionalities made available in the QGIS [4] platform, extended by its plugins for processing satellite data. Among all the core and dedicated raster and satellite processing functionalities, QGIS supports various machine learning ones that were recently developed. The training material has to provide exercises based also on these machine learning and satellite data processing tools. The training material is meant as an advanced one and therefore basic QGIS procedures are not required to be explained. _Requirements: _To be considered for the Satellite_QGIS challenge, applicants have to: * Demonstrate experience in using QGIS * Demonstrate experience in Satellite Data Processing * Demonstrate experience in using QGIS plugins and expanding QGIS with Image Processing functionalities (e.g.: SCP, dzetsaka, GEE Timeseries Explorer, Google Earth Engine Data Catalog, PolSAR tools, ENMAP-Box3, DeepLearning Tools, FORCE4Q, SAGA interface etc.) For applying to this challenge, you have to submit a proposal to create a new tutorial with guided exercises related to the topic of the challenge. Keep in mind that it is a tutorial that can be used to teach oneself, therefore extensive details are important. The tutorial must be developed in Sphinx [5]. _Target audience_: QGIS and Earth Observation users. _Mentors_: Maria A. Brovelli (Politecnico di Milano); Cristina Vrinceanu (University of Nottingham); Cung Thang (UN); Zhongxin Chen (UN FAO). CHALLENGE 2: WORKSHOP MATERIAL FOR PGROUTING The United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) involve many topics, including no hunger, clean water and sanitation, decent work and economic growth. All 17 goals are worth mentioning, and all are equally important. OSGeo, as an organization of open source projects for geospatial, indirectly provides tools for people around the world to search for a decent work in a geospatial context. pgRouting [6] is growing faster than the development of the official workshop material. pgRouting is not only useful for routing cars and other vehicles on roads, it can also be used to analyse river flows, the connectivity of an electricity network or to determine where to add a new street to connect two unconnected locations. The aim of this challenge is to expand the pgRouting workshop to cover at least three UN SDGs. _Requirements: _To be considered for the pgRouting challenge, applicants have to: * Demonstrate experience using PostgreSQL, PostGIS and pgRouting * Demonstrate that the complete workshop for FOSS4G Bucharest was practiced and understood. * Demonstrate understanding of the OpenStreetMap tags, and the relation with osm2pgrouting to be able to obtain information other than streets * Demonstrate research skills by finding information about the following: * the UN SDGs * the pgRouting's Bucharest workshop * the pgRouting's documentation pages * the pgRouting workshop repository Instructions for how and where evidence of the above have to be demonstrated is available at https://github.com/pgRouting/pgrouting/wiki/UN-challenge-2021 [7]. For applying to this challenge, you have to submit a proposal to expand the pgRouting workshop for Bucharest to include the following: * A link to a page with evidence that you completed the pgRouting application requirements at https://github.com/pgRouting/pgrouting/wiki/UN-challenge-2021 [7]. * Learning objectives involving three SDGs and a proposed example to use pgRouting for each SDG. * Each example should be added in the form of a chapter(s) and it will work with fixed data, i.e. it will not depend on data provided in OSGeoLive. * If the solution for an example involves more than one function, it can be broken into several chapters. * Explain how a new target objective for the "advanced" sections will be provided, to understand that pgRouting can help in applications other than "routing cars or vehicles", to foment social awareness and in particular, to focus on the UN SDGs. Keep in mind that this tutorial or workshop can be used to teach oneself, therefore details are important. Also remember that pgRouting provides results in tables in the database, and people expect to visualize what they are doing. QGIS can be used for a quick visualization. The tutorial must be developed in Sphinx [5], and you will also have to use github [8]. _Target audience: _The pgRouting workshop is aimed at a target audience of people who have some knowledge of PostGIS and PostgreSQL, and want to teach themselves how to use pgRouting. _Mentors: _Vicky Vergara (pgRouting), Rajat Shinde (pgRouting), Timur Obukhov (UN) and Serena Coetzee (University of Pretoria) PROPOSALS Proposals (in English) must be submitted in the 2021 UN OSGeo Challenge Application Form (ODT in ZIP file [9] or PDF [10]). You can submit proposals for more than one challenge. However, one proposal should be for one challenge only. Only proposals by individuals will be accepted (no proposals by teams). Examples of educational material developed by winners of previous challenges can be found on the OSGeo wiki site, for example, a tutorial to show how one can use QGIS and OpenStreetMap to calculate the Rural Access Index for Tabora county in Tanzania [1] [11] and training material for using QField to collect geospatial data in the field [2 [12]]. EVALUATION Criteria for evaluation: * Proposer is an OSGeo Charter Member: 10 (max) * Proposer's documented experience in education and training: 20 (max) * Proposer's age (20 if <= 40 years old; 0 if >40 years old): 20 (max) * Experience with respect to what is proposed by the specific challenge: 10 (max) * Proposal: 40 (max) Proposals will be evaluated by the OSGeo UN Committee Educational Challenge Judging Panel comprising representatives from OSGeo and UN Open GIS. The proposal will be shortlisted and its content reviewed only if the sum of the first four criteria is at least 25. Evaluation criteria for the content include the suitability of the proposed material for the target audience and requirements, feasibility of the proposal, as well as the gender, relevant experience, qualifications and language proficiency of the proposer. IMPORTANT DATES * 14 April 2021: Announcement of the OSGeo Educational Challenge * 14 June 2021: Deadline for submission of proposals * 12 July 2021: Announcement of the winners * 14 July 2021: Winners receive first third (USD 1,000) of the prize money * 13 September 2021: Submission of educational material by the winners * 18 October 2021: Evaluation of the educational material by mentors Subsequent to a positive evaluation, winners receive the remaining prize money (USD 2,000). Prize money will be transferred in one of two ways: * Winners provide their IBAN/Swift info and OSGeo deposits the money directly into their bank account via Wire Transfer. * Winners provide their PayPal info and OSGeo transfers the money into their PayPal account. QUERIES Any queries can be addressed to un.osgeo at gmail.com. Links: ------ [1] https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/2021-osgeo-un-committee-educational-challenge/ [2] http://unopengis.org/unopengis/main/main.php [3] https://www.osgeo.org/ [4] https://qgis.org/en/site/ [5] https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/quickstart.html [6] https://pgrouting.org/ [7] https://github.com/pgRouting/pgrouting/wiki/UN-challenge-2021 [8] https://github.com/pgRouting [9] https://www.osgeo.org/wp-content/uploads/2021-Challenge_Form.odt.zip [10] https://www.osgeo.org/wp-content/uploads/2021-Challenge_Form.pdf [11] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Training_Material_for_UN_Open_GIS_OpenData [12] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Training_Material_for_2019_UN_Open_GIS_Challenge_2_-_Open_geospatial_data_and_software_for_UN_SDG_16,_Peace_justice_and_open_institutions -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From astrid_emde at osgeo.org Tue Apr 20 11:04:00 2021 From: astrid_emde at osgeo.org (Astrid Emde (OSGeo)) Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2021 18:04:00 +0000 Subject: [OSGeo-Announce] Opportunity: Be an OSGeo expert in the Data Help Desk of the virtual European Geoscience Union General Assembly 2021 Message-ID: <719e2089497d9a9a39d5e20a8963136d@posteo.de> News item: https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/opportunity-be-an-osgeo-expert-in-the-data-help-desk-of-the-virtual-european-geoscience-union-general-assembly-2021-and-share-your-knowledge/ Dear OSGeo communities, as of today, the annual European Geoscience General Assembly (EGU) has started, including the second annual Data Help Desk (DHD). The DHD welcomes also questions concerning Free and Open Source Geospatial tools. Over 50% of the attendees of the virtual EGU GA are early career scientists. So this is a great opportunity for all OSGeo communities to help to answer questions from the next generations of scientists and to get them involved in OSGeo-related work: -- snip -- No mandatory time commitment - answer data or software questions and/or share a recorded demo or one-pager related to making data or software more open and FAIR and we will promote it during the event. Volunteer to be a data or software expert for the upcoming Virtual Data Help Desk to be hosted during the first week of the 2021 European Geosciences Union General Assembly (#vEGU21: Gather Online; 19-23 April 2021). The Data Help Desk, which is a program of ESIP, the European Geosciences Union (EGU), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), and their partners, connects researchers with informatics experts familiar with their scientific domain to learn about skills and techniques that will help further their research and make their data and software more open and FAIR. You can volunteer to take part in the following ways: Answer earth science data (and software) questions (monitor platform and answer where you can); Share a recorded demo (share a brief recorded demo of a tool or resource, ideally <5 min); Share a one-pager about your tool or resource. To volunteer, please complete this brief form as soon as possible by 5 April 2021. More details on how you can contribute are provided in the Volunteer Guidelines. NOTE: You do not have to be attending vEGU21 to take part in this event. The Data Help Desk is happening virtually again after several successful virtual and in-person events at society meetings over the last few years at the AGU Fall Meeting, EGU General Assembly, ESA Annual Meeting, Ocean Sciences Meeting, and more. Don't miss this chance to help others with data-related questions and to demo your tool or platform! Questions? Contact megancarter at esipfed.org. -- snap -- More details on the DHD website: https://www.esipfed.org/data-help-desk-at-egu-2021 See you at the virtual Data Help Desk ! Best, Peter From astrid_emde at osgeo.org Wed Apr 21 13:18:59 2021 From: astrid_emde at osgeo.org (Astrid Emde (OSGeo)) Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2021 20:18:59 +0000 Subject: [OSGeo-Announce] FOSS4G 2021 - Collaboration with Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Message-ID: <5993b89a906ea49097d2bf255552a28a@posteo.de> News item: https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/collaboration-with-group-on-earth-observations-geo/ The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) are collaborating around their shared visions of openness. For GEO this means open data, open standards, and open science; for OSGeo this means free and open source software. As such, GEO is pleased to be a key supporter of the largest community gathering of the open source geospatial community, which will take place online as part of FOSS4G 2021 from 27 September to 2 October; the local organizing committee is based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. GEO is supporting FOSS4G with a 3-day dedicated track on ?Open EO?. FOSS4G is the flagship event of OSGeo and serves annually as the best scenario to discover the state of the art in Open Geospatial Technologies. With an annual international gathering, this conference brings together experts and users with interest in Open Geospatial. GEO represents more than 110 countries and the European Commission, working together to advocate, engage and deliver on the value and usefulness of open Earth observations data and information. It recognizes that the societal benefits of Earth observations can only be fully achieved through the sharing of data, information, knowledge, products and services. To achieve this, GEO operates an international work programme with more than 65 activities, many with more than 100 partners per activity. These activities cut across agriculture, biodiversity, climate action, disaster risk reduction, forestry, freshwater, land, ocean, urbanisation and other key global areas of interest. Only by working together can we fully unlock the transformative insights of data and help address some of the world?s most pressing societal challenges. Gilberto Camara, the GEO Secretariat Director states: ?As someone who has developed open source projects for decades I am very pleased that GEO is able to bring together our open Earth observation community together with the open source geospatial community during FOSS4G 2021. There are so many common areas for collaboration in academia, research, policy making and commerce. We are honored to be able to share our ideas and expertise with this community and learn from them as well.? Mar?a Arias de Reyna, the co-chair of FOSS4G 2021 states: ?The collaboration with GEO is a natural and organic relationship that merges the best of our worlds: our software needs good data sources to run and data needs good software to be useful. I am confident this is just another step forward in a beautiful friendship.? Read more about Group on Earth Observations (GEO) https://2021.foss4g.org/sponsor/partner/geo.html FOSS4G 2021 (Online) https://2021.foss4g.org/ From astrid_emde at osgeo.org Mon Apr 26 12:36:44 2021 From: astrid_emde at osgeo.org (Astrid Emde (OSGeo)) Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2021 19:36:44 +0000 Subject: [OSGeo-Announce] Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software - Call for Nominations 2021 Message-ID: News item: https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/sol-katz-award-for-geospatial-free-and-open-source-software-call-for-nominations-2021/ 2021-04-26 The Open Source Geospatial Foundation would like to open nominations for the 2021 Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software. The Sol Katz Award for Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) will be given to individuals who have demonstrated leadership in the FOSS4G community. Recipients of the award will have contributed significantly through their activities to advance open source ideals in the geospatial realm. Sol Katz was an early pioneer of FOSS4G and left behind a large body of work in the form of applications, format specifications, and utilities while at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. This early FOSS4G archive provided both source code and applications freely available to the community. Sol was also a frequent contributor to many geospatial list servers, providing much guidance to the geospatial community at large. Sol unfortunately passed away in 1999 from Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, but his legacy lives on in the open source world. Those interested in making a donation to the American Cancer Society, as per Sol's family's request, can do so at https://donate.cancer.org [1] . Nominations for the Sol Katz Award should be sent to SolKatzAward at osgeo.org with a description of the reasons for this nomination. Nominations will be accepted until end-of-day August 20th Anywhere on Earth. A recipient will be decided from the nomination list by the OSGeo selection committee. The winner of the Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software will be announced virtually during the FOSS4G 2021 event in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The hope is that the award will both acknowledge the work of community members, and pay tribute to one of its founders, for years to come. It should be noted that past awardees and selection committee members are not eligible. PAST AWARDEES [2]: * 2020 [3]: Anita Graser [4] * 2019 [5]: Even Rouault [6] * 2018 [7]: Astrid Emde [8] * 2017: Andrea Aime [9] * 2016 [10]: Jeff McKenna [11] * 2015 [12]: Maria Brovelli [13] * 2014 [14]: Gary Sherman [15] * 2013 [16]: Arnulf Christl [17] * 2012 [18]: Venkatesh Raghavan [19] * 2011: Martin Davis [20] * 2010 [21]: Helena Mitasova [22] * 2009 [23]: Daniel Morissette [24] * 2008 [25]: Paul Ramsey [26] * 2007 [27]: Steve Lime [28] * 2006 [29]: Markus Neteler [30] * 2005: Frank Warmerdam [31] Selection Committee 2021: Jeff McKenna (chair) Frank Warmerdam Markus Neteler Steve Lime Paul Ramsey Sophia Parafina Daniel Morissette Helena Mitasova Martin Davis Venkatesh Raghavan Arnulf Christl Gary Sherman Maria Brovelli Andrea Aime Astrid Emde Even Rouault Anita Graser Links: ------ [1] https://donate.cancer.org [2] https://www.osgeo.org/community/awards/ [3] https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/anita-graser-receives-the-2020-sol-katz-award/ [4] https://www.osgeo.org/member/anita-graser/ [5] https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/even-rouault-receives-the-2019-sol-katz-award/ [6] https://www.osgeo.org/member/even-rouault// [7] https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/astrid-emde-receives-the-2018-sol-katz-award/ [8] https://www.osgeo.org/member/astrid-emde/ [9] https://www.osgeo.org/member/aime/ [10] https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/mr-jeff-mckenna-receives-sol-katz-award/ [11] https://www.osgeo.org/member/jeff-mckenna/ [12] https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/maria-brovelli-receives-sol-katz-award/ [13] https://www.osgeo.org/member/maria-brovelli [14] https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/gary-sherman-receives-sol-katz-award/ [15] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Gary_Sherman [16] https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/arnulf-christl-receives-sol-katz-award/ [17] https://www.osgeo.org/member/arnulf-christl [18] https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/prof-venkatesh-raghavan-receives-sol-katz-award/ [19] https://www.osgeo.org/member/venkatesh-raghavan [20] https://www.osgeo.org/member/davis [21] https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/prof-helena-mitasova-receives-sol-katz-award/ [22] https://www.osgeo.org/member/helena-mitasova [23] https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/daniel-morissette-receives-sol-katz-award/ [24] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Dmorissette [25] https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/paul-ramsey-receives-sol-katz-gfoss-award/ [26] https://www.osgeo.org/member/paul-ramsey [27] https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/steve-lime-wins-sol-katz-gfoss-award/ [28] http://www.osgeo.org/node/446 [29] https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/markus-neteler-wins-sol-katz-gfoss-award/ [30] https://www.osgeo.org/member/markus-neteler [31] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Warmerda -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From astrid_emde at osgeo.org Tue Apr 27 09:39:45 2021 From: astrid_emde at osgeo.org (Astrid Emde (OSGeo)) Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2021 16:39:45 +0000 Subject: [OSGeo-Announce] Malena Libmann Message-ID: Dear OSGeo friends, It is with deep sorrow that I inform of the sudden passing of Malena Libman. Malena was admitted to a healthcare facility last week after having tested positive for COVID-19. Among many other things, Malena was the president of the Argentinian OSGeo Chapter (GeoLibres), chair of the FOSS4G 2021, and worked in the field of Spatial Data Infrastructures. IDERA (the Argentinian SDI) has made a brief announcement at https:// twitter.com/ide_argentina/status/1387054979941240843 I, as well as many of Malena's friends and colleagues, am shocked and at a loss of words. Iv?n S?nchez Ortega