[Ica-osgeo-labs] Present-to-the-Future

[Hogan, Patrick (ARC-PX)]

Dear OSGeo, especially you City Slickers,
          (the Urban Science Analytics folks)

The group of individuals listed here are some very special people,
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/GeoForAll_UrbanScience_CityAnalytics#Who.27s_Here.3F

Thank you for your big heart and hard work! We are here to make a positive difference on a global scale. And as much as we may talk about this, we do more than talk. The world dearly needs what we are intent on delivering, that is the ability to see ourselves, better understand our circumstance and be in a stronger position to do wise things about it. We have some pretty 'hairy' planetary-scale issues that are increasing, without pause. We must to do something grand to facilitate solutions and increase value for life. This is also the title for my keynote at FOSS4G where I very much look forward to being together with many of you.

We are consuming our resources at an entirely unsustainable rate. And if that isn't bad enough, there is a pretty ugly piper-to-be-paid for the massive uncontrolled waste 'poisoning' our biosphere, from carbon to fertilizers. We are trashing our life support system, the only one we've got. Climate change and over-population are already leading to mass-migration, low-level conflict, all-out war, industrial slavery and a future where hope is getting harder to believe in.

Let's take a stand somewhere with FOSS4G, RDA, OSGeo and GeoForAll (FROG, one step for greenness, a great leap for life! Just kidding). Let's agree to do something we all need. The world's population is rapidly moving from rural to urban. This is non-intuitive given our increasing need for good food, especially as climate change makes subsistence farming and industrial scale agriculture a more difficult and very dicey prospect.

We must invest in our present for a better future, and give a 'present' to the future! I am thinking a CitySmart virtual globe app with an API for the menu system. This way academia, entrepreneurs, government, NGOs, essentially everyone, could build functionalities, commercial or free, for a platform we are all advancing together. We spend a lot of time talking about getting data to behave, to be standardized and accessible. This CitySmart platform would be the forcing function to drive that.

Every city needs many of the same tools/functionalities. A CitySmart app is a platform all of us can collectively build and share. If we did this, that event alone, the cities of the world working together and challenging each other to collective greatness, would be the brightest ray of hope for a viable future that has ever occurred. Our present for the future, a planet of people, working together to solve common problems and yet free to use that platform and suite of functionalities to solve any number of unique problems. No more re-inventing the GIS wheel, just a growing suite of functionalities, many of which we will share.

Though we want to do this platform as a web app, the City of Springfield Oregon has shown their leadership for our *present-to-the-future* with a Java app, http://www.nsdinow.org/SDI_Now_02/Technical_Support.html. There must be others. Where are you?

Get onto the mail list, grab hold of this wheel and start steering!
http://lists.osgeo.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geoforall-urbanscience

-Patrick

 Patrick.Hogan at nasa.gov<mailto:Patrick.Hogan at nasa.gov>
 Project Manager
 NASA World Wind
 650.604.5656 (office)
 650.269.2788 (cell)

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