[Portugal] Fwd: OpenCitySmart - The Open platform for Smart Cities

[Artur Gil]

----- Mensagem encaminhada -----


De: Suchith Anand <Suchith.Anand  NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK>
Enviadas: Domingo, 31 de Janeiro de 2016 9:25
Assunto: OpenCitySmart - The Open platform for Smart Cities


Dear colleagues,

Inspite of all the technological advancements, it is a sad fact that
majority of the world's poorest living in urban areas do not still
have access to basic facilities (clean water, proper sanitation and
hygiene facilities , good quality education opportunities etc).  In
order to achieve UN Millennium Development Goals it is essential to
develop infrastructure facilities, strengthen the muncipal authorities
and local city government organisations ( reduce corruption etc) in
the developing world for helping improving the living standards of the
people.

GIS is fundamental technology in infrastructure development and high
cost proprietary GIS is unaffordable to governments, town planners and
local authorities in developing and economically poor countries. With
the availability of free and open source GIS technologies it now
offers a great opportunity for governments and municipal authorities
in developing countries also to implement GIS tools for their decision
making and implementation needs (without having to pay huge licencing
costs to proprietary GIS vendors) and help improving the lives of some
of the most poorest people and by giving the geospatial tools to the
municipal authorities for their decision making and implementation
needs will help in improving the living standards of the people. We
need to empower people and communities (NOT enslaving them by
continuing forcing them to pay high licencing costs) to make sure our
future generations are fully empowered .

Thanks to our Geo4All colleagues globally, we have already seen many
examples  of the potential of Geo technologies in empowering
communities and helping improving the lives of some of the most
poorest people . By capacity building staff and students and by
providing the geospatial tools to the municipal authorities for their
infrastructure upgradation programs etc ( which in the long term will
result in providing clean water, proper sanitation and hygiene
facilities, electricity etc)  will help in improving the living
standards of the people.

It is with these aims that the Geo4All community decided to work on
OpenCitySmart - The Open platform for Smart Cities. Thanks to the
leadership shown by Patrick Hogan (NASA) and Prof.Chris Pettit
(University of South Wales) and our amazing team of volunteers, we are
now rapidly expanding this in collaborations with universities,
government organisations and industry.

Open City Smart builds and uses open solutions to build richer
toolboxes that empower organisations and people all around the globe
to handle spatial (and non-spatial) data.This will create innovation
opportunities globally and locally. For example, the startup community
is especially open to the use of open software and data avoiding huge
licensing costs and restrictions which may impact on their business
plans, raise early start-up costs and restrict their ability to
innovate and it frees them of the need to use proprietary software and
data allowing them greater branding freedom and product flexibility.
If you look through our Geo4All labs lists, you will see there is
already good examples of cross fertilisation of activities from
universities/industry happening. For example, the Open Source
Geospatial Laboratory at ETH Zurich [1] is linked with SourcePole [2]
and more university labs are working to expand collaborations with
industry and also help their students to create more startups in the
future. If you look at OSGeo UK Chapter and there are now many SMEs in
the UK (generating hundreds of highly skilled jobs) who are service
providers [3] and doing training [4] etc in this and we need to think
of ways to expand more opportunities and help create more new highly
skilled jobs locally and globally .

GeoforAll have at our disposal all the most advanced and powerful
geospatial software from the Open Source Geospatial Foundation, NASA's
World Wind, AURIN's What if and many more open solutions (build on
open standards and open data) to build richer toolboxes that empower
people all around the globe to handle spatial (and non-spatial) data
for Open City Smart. We also have dedicated global infrastructure
through over 100 ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS research labs now established across
the planet in the top research universities (mostly in USA and Europe
but we are rapidly expanding in Asia and globally) and more importanly
we have the amazing, dedicated and talented people power making this
happen.

So we warmly welcome you to join us and expand collaborations through
joint research projects and bids that our colleagues are actively
working on. If you and your research group have the expertise in urban
science, smart cities, and wish to be part of these collaborations,
please make you add your details and expertise to our list at
https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Opencitysmart  and we will contact those
with needed expertise for our various bids (to H2020, NSF and other
national research funding organisations) that we are working on.


We also welcome active participation from universities and SMEs for
our NASA Europa CitySmart Challenge . Details at
http://eurochallenge.como.polimi.it  (Thanks to Prof. Maria Brovelli
and Patrick Hogan for thier help)

We will have a dedicated session on OpenCitySmart at the GeoBigData
workshop organised by the Geospatial IG of the Research Data Alliance
https://rd-alliance.org/groups/geospatial-ig.html  on 8th June 2016 at
University of Nottingham (coinciding with RDA Chairs meeting which
will be hosted jointly by the University of Nottingham and British
Geological Survey in Nottingham).

You can view overview of OpenCitySmart at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWuMfMMPfPw  (This was presented at
European Space Agency's Earth Observation Science 2.0 conference at
ESRIN, Frascati, Italy) . Thanks to Ant Beck for the video.

We welcome everyone interested to join synergies and work together to
expand OpenCitySmart opportunities and enable Geo technologies in
empowering communities and helping improving the Quality of Life and
standards of living for everyone. Let us all work together to help
create a world that is more accessible, equitable and full of
innovation and opportunities for everyone.

Best wishes,

Suchith Anand
http://www.geoforall.org/


[1] http://osgl.ethz.ch/osgl/index.html
[2] http://www.sourcepole.com
[3] http://www.osgeo.org/search_profile?SET=1&MUL_COUNTRY%5B%5D=00002
[4] http://www.osgeo.org/uk/training_providers