[Ica-osgeo-labs] Ideas for GIS Curriculum update to include Student tutorials for Missing Maps project

[Suchith Anand]

Hi Richard,

Thank you for your email and information. MapAction is also doing great work and the Field guide to  Humanitarian Mapping is a very useful resource. Good to see the work your student Mathias Leidig has done.  I am also ccing  our GeoforAll colleagues so that we can start thinking ideas for collaboration with your RSPSoc Special Interest Group for Disaster Management to plan ideas to get staff and students in GIS programs in UK and worldwide to contribute to the Missing Maps project of Humanitarian Open Street Map Team  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Missing_Maps_Project  .  It can be a hands on exercise (one session minimum) as part of the GIS curriculum. If all universities start doing this, it will not only give practical experience to the students but also help building  uptodate maps for Humanitarian Open Street Map Team.

We can also make use of the work done by colleagues at GeoAcademy in the United States who have  developed the introductory curriculum (lecture materials, tutorials etc) which is also free for all to share and share alike under the Creative Commons BY 3.0 license to customise the tutorials. Please find all the materials at GitHub repository at https://github.com/FOSS4GAcademy

All ideas/inputs welcome and let us work together on this.

Best wishes,

Suchith

________________________________________
From: Richard Teeuw [richard.teeuw at port.ac.uk]
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2015 10:02 PM
To: Suchith Anand
Subject: Re: Nepal earthquakes - wake up call for action to support building geocapacity globally

Hi Suchith,

Nepal has been very unfortunate in being hit twice by major earthquakes within less than a month. However, it has been good to see geoinformatics been rapidly put to good use in assessing the damage and assisting the disaster responders. It is also good to see that you are encouraging geoinformattic FOSS users to become more involved with disaster risk reduction applications.

To that end, the attached catalog might be of use, produced by Portsmouth postgrad Mathias Leidig. There's also MapAction's Field Guide to Humanitarian Mapping, which largely uses FOSS GIS, compiled by another Portsmouth student, Naomi Morris. ( http://www.mapaction.org.uk/resources/fieldguide.html )

On the remote sensing side, RSPSoc has a Special Interest Group for Disaster Management ( http://rspsoc.org.uk/index.php/special-interest-groups/disaster-management.html ). However the DM SIG has not been very active, mainly because it has never had the "critical mass" of more than a handful of practitioners who were will ing to take on committee roles - hopefully that might change with the growing interest in geoinformatics applied to disaster risk reduction and disaster response.

Regards,

Richard


On 14 May 2015 at 20:52, Suchith Anand <Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk>> wrote:
Colleagues,

It is really sad to see  two earthquakes (in less than a fortnight) hitting Nepal . I thank all colleagues who have been contributing to the Humanitarian Open Street Map's http://hotosm.org/  relief efforts for this. The Humanitarian Open Street Map Team applies the principles of open source and open data sharing for humanitarian response and economic development. These efforts are greatly helping relief efforts in Nepal  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32603870

I am especially grateful for the work and relief efforts being done by our colleagues in Open Source Geospatial Lab at Kathmandu University  in these challenging circumstances and may God help them to help others in need.

https://sites.google.com/a/ku.edu.np/opensourcegeospatial/
https://geospatiallab.wordpress.com

Two earthquakes in just over a fortnight in Nepal is a time for all of us to think on how we all can contribute to better capacity building in national/regional/local levels globally to help with not only relief efforts but also be better prepared for  combating natural disasters from earthquakes to flooding to landslides . Especially there is very limited capacity in geospatial technologies  in developing countries as many of the developing countries do not even have local capacity  or ability to buy expensive properitory GIS software tools needed. That is why is it very important that there is local capacity build in all countries using free and open technologies and principles. So making geospatial education opportunities assessible to all is key long term aim that we all should work together.

Preparedness is key for managing these kind of disasters and capacity building at  national, regional and local level is important and we need to more engage with United Nations community for this. In 2012 and 2014 we have organised hands on  workshop "Open Source GIS & WebMapping for UN staff" in Vienna, Austria . It was organized on behalf of the Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies of the International Cartographic Association (ICA). Barend Kobben  (University of Twente) was the course organisor for this.

http://kartoweb.itc.nl/kobben/SOMAP-OSGEO-workshop/  (2014 Workshop )
http://kartoweb.itc.nl/kobben/SOMAP-OSGEO-workshop/report2012.html  (2012 Workshop )

So i suggest as a community we plan the following actions:

1. We will need to expand these Open GIS and Open Data training programs for UN staff globally. We should  build upon ideas from   International Map Year (IMY) http://internationalmapyear.org activities led by the International Cartographic Association (ICA) and supported by the United Nations  with the aim to provide opportunities to  making and using maps and geographic information to actually focus on this aspect of capacity building also. It is important the capacity building is there at the local level to make this effective.

2.  Planning ideas of getting students doing GIS programs in universities worldwide to contribute to the Missing Maps projects of Humanitarian Open Street Map Team  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Missing_Maps_Project  to help map the most vulnerable places in the developing world, in order that international and local NGOs, and individuals can use the maps and data to better respond to crises affecting the areas. It can be a hands on exercise (one session minimum) as part of the GIS curriculum.

I got so many emails from lot of faculty worldwide who contributed to the Nepal mapping efforts. A lecturer in Southern Methodist University, USA (Jessie Zarazaga) emailed "Thank you  for sharing the opportunity to participate. It pushed me into action, and we held a very successful Map-In on Friday at the school of engineering.My students were proud to be able to do even something small to help.And next time they will be even better positioned to play their part."

Thank you Jessie Zarazaga for your mail . Your mail has inspired me to think of actions for the long term and to ensure that we will be able to train and develop  a new generation of cartographers and geographic information scientists with the skills needed to take action globally.

All colleagues and volunteers who have contributed for the Humanitarian Open Street Map Team's efforts are our "Geo for All" Heros.

Best wishes,

Suchith






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