On Dec. 10, the ICA-OSGeo Lab Network and MundoGEO will be hosting the third webinar in the “Open Geospatial Science & Applications” series.
This webinar will cover “Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial Applications (FOSS4G): A mature alternative in the geospatial technologies arena” and be presented by Dr. Maria Brovelli of Politecnico di Milano and Dr. Rafael Moreno of the University of Colorado, Denver, in the U.S.
The webinar is free and open to all registered guests. Attendees can send questions and comments to the presenters through a chat system. Registration is available through MundoGeo.
This webinar follows two previous webinars in the series. The first webinar was an Oct. 18 presentation on “OSGeo Live for Education” by Jeremy Morley of the University of Nottingham. A video capture of this webinar is available through MundoGeo.
A second webinar, on Nov. 7, covered “OpenGeoscience: meeting the UK’s geospatial data requirements in geosciences” and was presented by Patrick Bell and Gerry Wildman from the British Geological Survey (BGS).
“While there has been tremendous growth in geospatial technology over the last few decades, the number of universities offering courses in geospatial science has not kept pace,” said Suchith Anand of the University of Nottingham, a founding member of the webinar series.
“The aim of the ‘Open Geospatial Science & Applications’ webinar series is to share experiences and examples of research and teaching on open source geospatial technology to the wider community.”
According to Anand, education in open source geospatial technology is the primary aim of the ICA-OSGeo Lab network: “Over 50 Open Source Geospatial Labs have already been established in universities around the world as part of this initiative in just two year’s time, and we will be establishing over 100 research labs worldwide by September 2014.”
The ICA-OSGeo Lab network is a joint initiative of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) and the International Cartographic Association (ICA).
Anand hopes that the series will introduce more people to various opportunities for geospatial education.
“We hope (the attendees) also become aware of the wider education opportunities by using Open Source Geospatial Software,” Anand said. “Free and open geographic information (GI) software helps make geospatial education available to students from economically poor backgrounds worldwide (removing the need for high cost proprietary GI software). Our key aim is to make it possible for students in developing and poor countries to be also able to get geospatial education.”
More information on this initiative is available at geoforall.org.
The “Open Geospatial Science & Applications” webinar series is due to continue for at least six months.