[UN] Follow up from the UN openGIS initiative

[Massimiliano Cannata]

Dear UN committee members,
as you may know in the past three days Maria and I participated on the
behalf of OSGeo to the "GeoSHAPE/Arbiter & OpenGDS Workshop" for UN OpenGIS
initiative.

This was the result of a collaboration between UN and OSGeo which started
in Seoul during the FOSS4G where the OSGeo board took the commitment of
participating in the UN OpenGIS initiative.


Brief of the workshop
-----------------------------

The workshop was attended by about 30 representatives from UN , member
states, OSGeo, GeoSHAPE [1] (USA project) and OpenGDS [2] (Korean project)
community.

This initiative intends to develop an effective and flexible open source
solution to support the UN field missions around the globe.

The location of the workshop were Brindisi where the UN data center hosts
the geospatial infrastructure to provide required services (currently based
on proprietary solutions).

While the first two days were dedicated to the presentation of the selected
open source software technologies ([1] & [2]), the third and fourth days
were dedicated to define a strategy and to better understand the UN needs.
The last day was dedicated to sum-up and workshop closing works.

During this workshop I had the opportunity to present OSGeo with its
strategy, its community, its committees and its projects while Maria
presented the Geo4All committee and its outreach activities.

During the meeting UN decided to adopt a spiral approach which encompass
the development of pilot applications

The first spiral will be implemented by using the selected technologies
which were "offered" by USA and Korea and will implement two case studies:
- geoportal
- data analysis

UN recognize the need to prioritize the first implementation (spiral) that
will be strategic to further develop the initiative but at the same time
the initiative want to be inclusive and new opportunity are appropriately
taken into consideration.

To make it clear, unless not declared, UN is not supporting this initiative
economically, so the participants provides their commitment on voluntary
basis or funded by their nation.

The work will continue in the next months by analyzing the UN requirements
and possible technical solutions.

The contributions they expect from OSGeo are:
- expertise on open source software
- access to the incubation process
- bridge / connection with the private sector
- connection with OSGeo projects
- connection with Geo4All labs
- support in education, research and training

Both Maria and I were included as member in the technical committee of the
new initiative which is named UNOGeo (United Nation Open Geospatial).

I believe this is a great opportunity for OSGeo to better understand the UN
requirements so that OSGeo projects can better implement / support UN
mission and have in the future larger role. Moreover i think it is also
beneficiary for the whole movement to see also the UN rely on FOSS4G, and
on OSGeo projects as they are behind the currently selected technologies.


Best Regards,
Massimiliano


--------------
[1] http://geoshape.org/
[2] https://github.com/ODTBuilder/Builder





-- 
*Massimiliano Cannata*

Professore SUPSI in ingegneria Geomatica

Responsabile settore Geomatica


Istituto scienze della Terra

Dipartimento ambiente costruzione e design

Scuola universitaria professionale della Svizzera italiana

Campus Trevano, CH - 6952 Canobbio

Tel. +41 (0)58 666 62 14

Fax +41 (0)58 666 62 09

massimiliano.cannata at supsi.ch

*www.supsi.ch/ist <http://www.supsi.ch/ist>*
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