[UN] Updates on UN Open GIS Initiative

[Maria Antonia Brovelli]

Dear All

I'm just back from the 2nd Workshop of UN Open GIS Initiative, which was organized within a more general Symposium about Technology in Peacekeeping. This choice was excellent because gave  the possibility of presenting OSGeo and GeoForAll to a broader audience.

UN Open GIS proceeds speedily and some pieces of solution were presented both by the Korean and Boundless teams.

Moreover Sanghee Shin, one of our Directors,  has been nominated Chair of the Technical Advisory Group.

In few words, the Workshop was intense, tiring but very positive.

We concluded  with a webinar which will be available within the GeoForAll Series (thanks to Rafael Moreno and David Alvarez from ASPRS).

Below a more detailed report.

Regards,

Maria



Updates on UN Open GIS Initiative
 From 7 to 11 November 2016 the Third International Partnership for
Technology in Peacekeeping Symposium, hosted by the United Nations
Department of Field Support (DFS) in cooperation with the Seoul
Metropolitan Government, was held in Seoul, Republic of Korea at the
Seoul City Hall.
The Symposium brought together a wide range of actors to explore
collaborative partnerships and projects to enhance information and
communications technology (ICT) efforts in the following targeted areas:
   *   Geospatial Information and Situational Awareness
   *   Protection Technologies: Sensors, Surveillance and Reconnaissance
   *   Innovation in Information and Communications Technologies

OSGeo was invited to the Symposium as one of the partners of the project
UN Open GIS. Maria Brovelli attended the meeting on behalf both of the
OSGeo UN Committee and GeoForAll (Educational outreach of OSGeo).

UN Open GIS Initiative is a project aiming at identifying and developing
open source geospatial software and services that meets the requirements
of UN operations, taking full advantage of the expertise of mission
partners including partner nations, technology developed by contributing
countries, international organizations, academia, NGO’s, private sector.

The members of the UN Open GIS Initiative are composed of:

   *   Contributors: any organization who agrees with the objectives of
the UN Open GIS and actively contributes to the UN Open GIS Initiative
in terms of financial, materials, solutions, technologies, or human
resources. The Contributor membership shall be decided by the Strategic
Board.
   *   Observers: any individual person or organization who agree with
the objectives of the UN Open GIS and participate in the UN Open GIS
Initiative activity. The Observer membership shall be granted by the
Strategic Board.

The governance structure of the UN Open GIS Initiative comprises of:

   *   Strategic Board, consisting of representatives from each
contributor where each contributor nominates one representative to the
Strategic Board. OSGeo and GeoForAll are part of the Strategic Board.
Maria Brovelli represents there GeoForAll, OSGeo Educational Outreach
and Massimiliano Cannata the OSGeo UN Committee.
   *   The Strategic Board is responsible for deciding goals, strategic
planning, creation of new Working Groups, called “Spirals”, election of
co-chairs, appointment of technical advisory group members, requirement
advisory group members, and assessment team members.
   *   Three Co-Chairs (one appointed by UN and two elected among the
Strategic Board members: ) and Secretariats
   *   Technical Advisory Group (TAG)
   *   Requirement Advisory Group (RAG)
   *   Assessment Team (AT)

- The Spirals, i.e. the Working Groups, which at the moment are the
following:

   *   Spiral 1 – UN Open Geo-Portal (started March 11, 2016) led by
Anthony Calamito (Boundless)
   *   Spiral 2 – Capacity Building (started May, 2016) led by Maria
Brovelli (OSGeo and GeoForAll)
   *   Spiral 3 – Geo-Analysis (started March 11, 2016) led by Hae Kyong
Kang (Republic of Korea)
   *   Spiral 4 – Data Acquisition (started March 11, 2016) led by
Ki-Joune Li (Republic of Korea)

OSGeo and GeoForAll have been contributing to several aspects of the
projects. The main contribution for sure has been that related to
Capacity Building.
Up to now people of OSGeo and GeoForAll have helped in selecting and
revising already existing training courses about the basic geospatial
tools of interest for the UN Staff supporting the peacekeeping mission,
who are the staff we are in contact with. A survey provided to the UN
staff showed that they are primarily interested in QGIS, PostGIS,
GeoNode, Geoserver and Openlayers.
We are therefore organising self-paced training courses, assisted by
tutors of OSGeo, GeoForAll and other entities, like GeoAcademy and
Boundless, and offered using the e-learning platform of Politecnico di
Milano.
We have been planned 4 editions of QGIS GeoAcademy (we are currently at
the second edition) and 2 editions of PostGIS Boundless (starting from
January, 9 2017).
Totally around 80 staff of UN will be trained in using QGIS and around
30 in PostGIS. Next year we will go ahead with the other software.
Spreading the usage of Open Source software also within organisation as
UN is one important point for OSGeo and that is the reason why the Board
has chosen to put a so great effort on this initiative.
Apart from the Capacity Building OSGeo will willingly work for
incubating the software that will be available under the umbrella of UN
Open GIS. This will ensure its quality and will give sustainability to
the project itself.






----------------------------------------------------
Prof. Maria Antonia Brovelli
Vice Rector for Como Campus and GIS Professor
Politecnico di Milano

ISPRS WG IV/4"Collaborative crowdsourced cloud mapping (C3M)"; OSGeo; ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS Advisory Board; NASA WorldWind Europa Challenge; SIFET
Sol Katz Award 2015

Via Natta, 12/14 - 22100 COMO (ITALY)
Tel. +39-031-3327336 - Mob. +39-328-0023867 - fax. +39-031-3327321
e-mail1: <mailto:maria.brovelli at polimi.it> maria.brovelli at polimi.it
e-mail2: prorettrice at como.polimi.it




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