[Geo4All] Geo4All Webinar Series Thursday September 29 5:00 PM GMT; FOSS/FOSS4G in Mexico

Tue Sep 13 19:13:43 PDT 2016

Hi everyone,
Please pass the word and join us.
Please visit http://www.geoforall.org/webinars/
We have our next presentation as part of the geoforall.org webinar series:

September 29 2016 (Thursday) 5:00 PM (GMT) -
State of the use of FOSS and FOSS4G in Mexico.
Manuel Haro, Laboratory for Open Source Software (LABSOL), Government of the State of Zacatecas, Mexico.
This webinar will present an overview of the state of initiatives and use of FOSS and FOSS4G in Mexico. There are several efforts in the country to promote the use of FOSS/FOSS4G in government, education, and private companies. There are several experiences that provide a set of best practices for large FOSS deployments and use such as in the case of the federal ministry for social development SEDESOL that has migrated all their servers to Linux Red Hat. The federally funded INFOTEC research center is working on several FOSS developments and deployments in large federal government agencies and large universities. Mexico City is working on the Smart Cities initiative including the use of FOSS and FOSS4G technologies. The state of Zacatecas in central Mexico created through a legal decree a FOSS Lab (LABSOL) for research, development, and education in the area of FOSS (LABSOL). This lab is part of the government of the state of Zacatecas. The LABSOL has established collaboration agreement with 39 universities around the country to assist them in their FOSS/FOSS4G education, research and development efforts. So far 120 FOSS-based join projects with LABSOL have been carried out by students and faculty from these universities. The LABSOL is developing components of geospatial information systems based on the i3Geo Suite from Brazil. These developments will be demonstrated.

__________________________________________________
Rafael Moreno, Ph.D.
Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences
University of Colorado Denver
Office: North Classroom 3524, Auraria Campus
Campus Box 172
1200 Larimer Street NC 3524
Denver, CO 80204
Phone: 303-352-3762
Fax 303-556-6197
Website: https://clas.ucdenver.edu/directory/faculty-staff/Rafael-Moreno

From: GeoForAll [mailto:geoforall-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Suchith Anand
Sent: Monday, September 12, 2016 3:41 AM
To: discuss at lists.osgeo.org; geoforall at lists.osgeo.org
Cc: manoj.arora at gmail.com
Subject: [Geo4All] Kalpana Chawla Chair on Geospatial Technology and our new OSGeo lab at PEC University of Technology, Chandigarh, India

Dear colleagues,

It is my great pleasure to welcome PEC University of Technology, Chandigarh, India http://www.pec.ac.in/ as our new OSGeo lab. PEC University of Technology, formerly known as Punjab Engineering College, is an engineering institute located in the city of Chandigarh, India. Founded in 1921, it is one of the oldest educational institutes in India. I also really like the motto of PEC (Tamaso Ma Jyotirgamaya) which in Sanskrit the meaning of which is "From darkness (of ignorance) lead us to Light (of Knowledge)"

Prof. Manoj Arora who is heading  as Director (Vice Chancellor), PEC University of Technology Chandigarh and Professor of Civil Engineering, IIT Roorkee (on lien)  where he is working as Professor in Remote Sensing in the department of Civil Engineering is the main force behind the establishment of OSGeo lab at PEC. He has also shared the good news that they now have partnered with Indian Railways to establish Kalpana Chawla Chair on Geospatial Technology at PEC.

Kalpana Chawla [1] was an Indo-American astronaut and the first woman of Indian origin in space. She first flew on Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997 as a mission specialist and primary robotic arm operator. In 2003, Chawla was one of the seven crew members killed in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. She was a true global citizen working for the advancement of science for all, so it is fitting tribute that through PEC , one of our OSGeo labs will have chair in geospatial technologies established in her honour. I thank Dr Manoj Arora  and other colleagues who have worked hard to make this possible and Indian Railways for funding this chair.

OSGeo Lab at PEC shall help the UN 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development for building a better world. This lab shall have following specific objectives:

1. To promote open-source geospatial software, open data, open standards in the nearby geographic locations.

2. To provide training and expertise in the geospatial field.

Manoj has visited Nottingham University twice in recent time (though i couldnt meet him!) (June and Sept 2014 for a day each) as part of delegation from Chandigarh Region Innovation and Knowledge Cluster (CRIKC)  http://crikc.puchd.ac.in      .  CRIKC is a cluster of 15 odd academic institutions and research institutions in Chandigarh with Vice Chancellor, Panjab University, as the Chairman. CRIKC has signed MoU with University of Nottingham to have academic collaboration in many different ways. I can see many research synergies in open geospatial esp. in Opencitysmart research that we will be able to able to explore in the future.

Best wishes,

Suchith

Dr. Suchith Anand

http://www.geoforall.org/

Geo for All - Building and expanding Open Geospatial Science

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalpana_Chawla

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