** 3D data and how to import or create them

* nviz: 3D navigation and fly throughs
 1. how it works
 2. examples

* nviz: working with 3D vector points with multiple attributes
 1. new symbols
 2. added features
 3. examples

* surfaces (2D raster)
* nviz: working with multiple surfaces
* nviz: create dynamic surfaces using file sequencing tool


*** 3D-vectors in GIS GRASS

* v.in.ascii,
* nviz and vectors,
* v.trees3d,
* v.extrude &&  v.drape


*** 3D data and how to export them to VTK

* Short introduction
 1. What is VTK
 2. Why VTK and GRASS
 3. Paraview

* Export of raster maps to VTK
 1. The difference between cell and point data (hint -> almost the same in
r3.out.vtk)
 2. Elevation maps
 3. RGB maps (hint -> same in r3.out.vtk)

* Export of raster3d maps to VTK
 1. Elevation maps
 2. Vector maps (hint -> same in r.out.vtk)
 3. Combination of volumes and top/bottom surfaces

* Export of vector maps to VTK
 1. How to export points, lines, areas, centorids and faces separately or
 together

* Sophisticated visualisation with Paraview
 1. Contour filter (raster and raster3d maps)
 2. Cutting and clipping filter (vector, raster and raster3d maps)
 3. glyph3d and streamline filter (vector, raster and raster3d maps)
 4. Tube filter (vector)
 5. Threshold filter

A review of the PostGIS spatial database system.  The theory of operation, spatial
database concepts, installation, 
tuning, examples of use and applicatations will be covered.  A good workshop for
beginners and new users 
wanting to learn more about spatial databases in general and PostGIS in particular.

This workshop starts with installation of the PostGIS spatial database extension,
then moves on to topics like 
geometry representation, indexing, loading data, accessing data, and indexing.

Basic principles of operation, like spatial SQL functions, index usage, and
performance issues will be covered.  
Using PostGIS with the Mapserver internet mapping application will also be covered,
including examples of 
simple and more advanced spatial database queries in Mapserver.

In addition to providing a step-by-step walk through a large number of PostGIS and
Mapserver configurations, 
this workshop provides a jumping off point for a number of other topics that students
can follow-up on 
independantly, such as advanced SQL, database tuning, and database client
applications in general.

The goal of this workshop is to present the new MapGuide Open Source.  Topics will
include installation, 
configuration, using the Site Administrator, using Studio Open Source to create and
manage layers and maps, 
and some coverage of developing applications based on MapGuide Open Source using the
development APIs

A workshop and/or presentation on OSSIM - Open Source Software Image Map - pronounced
"awesome".  The OSSIM distribution provides an advanced C++ framework for remote
sensing, image processing, and advanced geo-spatial processing.  The ImageLinker
application allows the user to perform precision terrain correction,
ortho-rectification, and very large cross sensor mosaics and fusions.  All map
projectiona and datum transformations are performed automatically by the program
transforming arbitrary input to user specified views or output.  Additionally, there
will be an overview of the osgPlanet application which provides advanced 3D
geospatial visualization of data sets through OSSIM and OGC WMS interfaces.

The OSSIM distribution is centered around  a C++ object oriented software library. 
Key functionality is implemented in the library for use in command line tools, GUI
applications, and web based services.  The software distribution includes utility
programs, image viewers, and sophisticated custom production applications.  As
improvements are made to the core library all applications and services that use the
library benefit.

OSSIM can load and process a wide range of geo-spatial and image formats.  It
supports rigorous sensor models, map projected products, and Residual Polynomial
Coefficient (RPC) mechanisms.  Most government and commercial formats are supported
by OSSIM.

When geo-spatial data is loaded the associated meta-data is typically processed to
correctly map project and provide precision terrain correction over elevation data
where appropriate.  OSSIM understands and handles all of the map projection and datum
transformations and resampling to arbitrary resolutions.

Dynamic Image Chains

Basic to OSSIM is the support of Dynamic Image Chains.  Loaders, Combiners, Filters,
and Outputs can be dynamically connected to each other within a running program by
the user.  This building block approach allows complex image processing flows to be
interactively constructed and modified.  Each object or image unit in the chain may
have its own controls and adjustable parameters.  The entire state of the chain,
including adjusted parameters, can be easily saved and retrieved for OSSIM enabled
programs.

Using GRASS in combination with R, the cross-platform data analysis and statistics
programming environment, is often useful, starting with running R within GRASS, then
encapsulating R within GRASS for standardised tasks. R contributed packages also use
other FOSS4G software extensively, including GDAL, OGR, PROJ.4, Terralib, and others:

    *  proposed topics:
          o Installing R for FOSS4G/GRASS - task view and packages
          o Spatial classes in R
          o GRASS6/R interface
          o Other FOSS4G/R interfaces (rgdal, aRT, ...)
          o Using the interface to do geostatistics and interpolation
          o Customising FOSS4G/GRASS-side scripts
    *  teacher:
          o Roger Bivand

This workshop will take the attendees through the process of building a Chameleon
(http://chameleon.maptools.org) widget from scratch.  The end result will be a widget
that works in JSAPI mode and that uses AJAX techniques (Asynchronous JavaScript and
XML) for manipulating and retrieving data.  

To get the most out of the workshop, participants should be familiar with some basic
Chameleon concepts.

CartoWeb (http://www.cartoweb.org) is both a comprehensive and ready-to-use 
 Web-GIS and a convenient framework for building customized applications. It is 
 based on Mapserver.
 
 In this workshop, we'll assume some familiarity with the architecture and 
 configuration of CartoWeb and directly go to some advanced features:
 - Making layers editable
 - Using routing module (Pgdijkstra)
 - Adding new functionalities: step by step minimal plugin writing

 To attend this workshop, a basic working knowledge of 
 CartoWeb and PHP5 OO is a pre-requisite.

GeOxygene (http://oxygene-project.sourceforge.net) aims at providing an open
framework which implements OGC/ISO specifications for the development and deployment
of geospatial (GIS) applications. It is a open source contribution of the COGIT
laboratory at the IGN (Institut Géographique National), the French National Mapping
Agency. It is released under the terms of the LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public
License) license.

GeOxygene is based on Java and open source technologies and provides users with an
extensible object data model (geographic features, geometry, topology and metadata)
which implements OGC specifications and ISO standards in the geographic information
domain. 

Data are stored in a relational DBMS (RDBMS) to ensure a rapid and reliable access to
the system but users do not have to worry about any SQL statements: they model their
applications in UML and code in Java. Mapping between object and relational
environments is performed with open source software. At present, OJB is supported and
the mapping files for the storage of geographic information in Oracle or PostGIS are
provided to users.

The workshop will provide an opportunity for participants to familiarize themselves
with the technology and the requirements for the implementation of interoperable
geospatial applications based on the GeOxygene framework. Experiments will be
performed on the version 1.1 of GeOxygene, which has been released on June 12, 2006.

* teachers:
          o Otto Dassau (dassau@gdf-hannover.de)
          o Stephan Holl (holl@gdf-hannover.de)
          o Marco Hugentobler (marco.hugentobler@karto.baug.ethz.ch)

    * topics:
          o getting started with Quantum GIS
          o working with vector data
          o working with raster data
          o working with projections
          o creating maps with Map Composer
          o using Plugins (GRASS, GPS, ...)

Camptocamp SA, DM Solution Group, Tydac AG

Perhaps no recent technological development has been more influential in the open
source geospatial community than Google Earth. This amazing tool has had an
energizing effect on developers with its "Cartographer's Eye Candy." Google Earth's
open APIs have opened the developer community's eyes to the possibilities of working
with even more robust code, such as the mapping open source code available today
which could allow developers to host and publish compelling applications and have
more control over their data.

With open source code at its fingertips, the mapping development community is on the
verge of explosive growth. Everything from map coordinates to electrical grid
schematics will be on demand to project stakeholders in dynamic, easy to understand,
and highly accurate images. In doing so, geospatial technology will continue to build
off the amazing foundation laid by Google Earth and reach ever higher planes of
innovation.

Gary Lang, Vice President of Engineering, Infrastructure Solutions Division 
Autodesk, Inc.

Gary Lang, the Vice President of Engineering for the Infrastructure Solutions
Division of Autodesk, first joined the company as a programmer in 1989.  After
serving in a variety of roles including Director of Internet Technology, he left in
1996 to co-found a management consulting firm that focused on strategic consulting,
product development, and business development.  

As a principal of the firm, Gary consulted with numerous technology companies
including Intuit, Iomega, Giftcertificates.com, Thomson Financial Services and
General Magic, helping to manage and fine tune their engineering and product
development organizations.  During this time Gary managed the start up of three
companies as Vice President of Engineering.

In 2003 Gary rejoined Autodesk in his current role in which he leads the engineering,
quality assurance, technical publications, and product design teams for the
Infrastructure Solutions Division.  

Most recently, Gary became a driving force behind Autodesk’s first open source
product offering, MapGuide Open Source, and he is a founder and board member of the
Open Source Geospatial Foundation.

Gary has a Bachelors Degree in Computer Science from the University of California at
Santa Cruz.

This course is an introduction to recent international standards in the
Geomatics/Geographic Information field. They address different aspects of geomatics,
from data acquisition to their distribution and increase the interoperability between
systems and data. This course focuses on the two principal sets of international
standards in the field: the ISO 19100 series (TC 211) and the Open Geospatial
Consortium (OGC) specifications. These standards are of great interest for both
industry and governmental agencies that are trying to adapt their current processes
according to these new standards.

This tutorial presents the basic concepts on geographic information standards
(introduction on standards and more specifically the ISO/TC211 Geomatics standards).
This course is intended for people who want to get a general knowledge of
international standards in geographic information, understanding their use and the
aspects they cover.

Some general knowledge issues, prior to the comprehension of standards (e.g. UML),
are examined in order to provide participants with a sufficient background, allowing
them to pursue their study of standards beyond the course.

At the end of this course, participants will understand the general structure of the
ISO/TC 211 and OGC standards as well as their relations and understand the role and
the underlying general concepts of each of the ISO/TC 211 and OGC standards.

This session is a part of a larger course program (see: http://geosoa.scg.ulaval.ca)
on International Standards developped by Natural Resources Canada and University
Laval with the contribution of Centre de recherche de la Défense-Valcartier, Réseau
GEOIDE, Pêches et Océans Canada, Centre de développement de la géomatique.

A similar tutorial has already been held during the ISO/TC 211 21st Plenary and
associated meetings on September 12, 2005 in Montreal, Canada.

Territorium Online GmbH develops a native, standalone TCP/IP server running as NT
service or daemon on Microsoft Windows and Linux, respectively, which interfaces to
UMN Mapserver. The application accepts map and query requests in XML form based on a
schema close to ArcXML with adaptations to Mapserver's business logic and without
some of the unnecessary overhead of the ESRI counterpart. Using Mapserver's C API it
produces map images and query results and shapefile extracts out of the requested
options. Includes support for on-the-fly adding of "acetate"/annotation layers,
renderers and much more. Significant effort has been put into investigating
Mapserver's threading support and exploring possible optimizations, resulting in a
multithreaded, performance oriented but stable and resource efficient server
application. The idea is to introduce in the application and discuss possible
improvements (including a standalone WMS/WFS server based on Mapserver) and the use
of such a technique for the community.

uDig is an open source desktop framework for developing rich GIS applications.  uDig
aims to be a "User friendly Desktop Internet GIS", and support features like
on-the-fly reprojection, editing of shape, PostGIS and WFS layers, WMS client
support, a multi-threaded rendering engine, printing, and more.

    

    

      
 The Application of MapServer/MapScript to Map
and Depict Murals in the City of Winnipeg  
      
BRUCE Bob
    
    

      
 Native,
standalone Image Map Server project based on UMN Mapserver as possible
ArcIMS replacement 
      
Mr. ALBARELLO Andreas
    
    

      
 A
web based GIS solution to capturing everyday "fuzzy" geography.
      
      
Mr. WATERS Tim
    
    

      
 Geospatial
Virtual Appliance - MapSnack 
      
Dr. SUMBERA Stanislav
    
    

      
 EduCal
2 
      
Mr. LEAHY Michael, Mr.
NATHAN Engler, Dr. HALL Brent
    
    

      
 Spatial
Statistics in C# using Open Source Tools 
      
Mr. LEAHY Michael
    
    

      
 EO1
GeoBliki : OGC Sensor Web Enabled Data Node 
      
Mr. CAPPELAERE Patrice
    
    

      
 Flash
Mapping Applications Utilizing Open Source Web Services: Two Examples 
      
Mr. CRAWFORD Stephen
    
    

      
 GeoTracing 
      
Mr. VAN DEN BROECKE Just
    
    

      
 CampusMapper
: a light-weight internet mapping tool using MySQL, Tomcat and SVG 
      
Mr. KöBBEN Barend
    
    

      
 FIONA : SDI with PostgreSQL/PostGIS,
GeoServer, UMN MapServer and Mapbender 
      
Ms. EMDE Astrid
    
    

      
 Mapbender : an introduction to the Mapbender
project
      
Ms. EMDE Astrid
    
    

      
 Enabling
Users to Produce personalized Geodata 
      
Mr. TURNER Andrew
    
    

      
 GeoServer/GeoTools
projects 
      
Mr. HOLMES Chris
    
    

      
 uDig
Demo 
      
Mr. GARNETT Jody
    
    

      
 GeoNetwork
opensource 
      
Mr. TICHELER Jeroen
    
  

Interoperability is increasingly becoming a focus point for organizations that
distribute and share data over the Internet. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
focuses on the development of publicly available geospatial web standards. MapServer
currently supports numerous OGC specifications, allowing users to publish their data
services in an interoperable manner. This workshop will review the OGC specs
supported in MapServer as well as provide information on implementation options and
issues, as well as what the future holds for OGC support in MapServer.

Notes:
 
You MUST be familiar with basic MapServer concepts to do this workshop. This
workshop assumes you are comfortable with:

  - Writing and working with mapfiles
  - Connecting various data types
  - Working with templates, fonts, symbols, legends, scalebars, etc.

The open source MapWindow GIS project (http://www.MapWindow.org) is a relative
newcomer to the FOSS4G arena, filling a critical niche need for open source GIS
development tools specifically intended for the Windows operating system and
developers using the Microsoft .NET Framework.  

With about 2,500 downloads per month and several thousand registered users since
becoming open source in January 2005, MapWindow GIS is rapidly becoming adapted
throughout the world to uses in academia, government, and business where there is a
need for simple, open source GIS developer tools.  

This workshop will focus on the development of plug-ins for the MapWindow GIS
application using Visual Studio 2005 (C# and VB.NET languages) and will also explore
use of the MapWinGIS ActiveX component in custom applications. Members of the core
MapWindow GIS Open Source Team will present the workshop and participation is welcome
from any and all current and future MapWindow GIS users.  

If you would like to help with the presentation of the workshop, please contact the
MapWindow GIS developer team at http://www.MapWindow.org/contact.php.

A little bit more about MapWindow GIS:

The open source MapWindow GIS application is a free, extensible, geographic
information system (GIS) that can be used in many ways:

    * As an alternative desktop GIS
    * To distribute data to others
    * To develop and distribute custom spatial data analyses

At the core of the MapWindow GIS application is the MapWinGIS ActiveX control. Using
this control, you can program custom mapping functionality directly into your own
software. The MapWinGIS ActiveX control has the following features:

    * Open source component (free distribution)
    * Complete GIS API for shapefile and grid data
    * Many built in GIS functions

MapWindow GIS is free to use and redistribute to your clients and other end users
either as the full MapWindow GIS application or as a custom application that uses the
MapWinGIS ActiveX control.

The MapWindow GIS application is more than just a data viewer, it is an extensible
geographic information system. This means that you can write plug-ins to add
additional functionality (models, special viewers, hot-link handlers, data editors,
etc.) and pass these along to any number of your clients and end users.

MapWindow includes standard GIS data visualization features as well as DBF attribute
table editing, shapefile editing, and grid importing and conversion.

MapWinGIS ActiveX includes a GIS API for shapefile and grid data with many built in
GIS functions.

MapWinGIS ActiveX can be redistributed royalty-free.

This workshop will walk through setting up GeoServer for standards based
collaboration around geospatial data.  The WFS-Transactional specification of the OGC
provides a way for users to not only share data, but to work together to build and
maintain geospatial data sets.  GeoServer is working to make the WFS-T specification
more useable, to truly enable public participation GIS and open source processes of
development around geospatial data.  This workshop will introduce how GeoServer makes
such things easier, and participants will walk away with concrete knowledge of how to
set up their own service to enable diverse users to work together on geospatial
information.  Part of the workshop will include a brainstorm session on future
'geocollaboration' that will feed in to the design goals of GeoServer for The Open
Planning Project.

The workshop will discuss and demonstrate with practical exercises the dual role of
gvSIG, the Open Source GIS application developed by the Generalitat Valenciana
(autonomous regional goverment of Valencia, Spain) and the IVER company. On one hand,
we will see with examples how to use the functionality that makes gvSIG a powerful
GIS application: data import and export, management of local and remote feature and
raster data sources -including OGC services-, feature geometry and attribute editing,
feature analysis and map production. 

On the other hand, gvSIG has been an instrumental piece in the implementation of
OGC-compliant Spatial Data Infrastructures guided by the INSPIRE initiative. The
workshop will provide attendants with examples of how gvSIG can be used to author OGC
web services in combination with other FOSS packages.

The workshop will offer the software, data samples and guidelines with which
attendants can practice the following package features:

* Basic functionality: loading and displaying feature and raster data.
* Using data from OGC services: WMS, WFS, WCS.
* Searching data using catalogue services
* Feature editing and analysis
* Authoring a mini-SDI. Publishing of services with the help of other FOSS packages. 

Duration of the workshop is two hours.

The PublicGeodata.org wiki and petition was started in early 2006 by Benjamin Henrion
and Jo Walsh, with the support of the Open Knowledge Foundation, in an attempt to
raise awareness among the open geospatial community about the INSPIRE directive and
the political forces shaping the debate about open access to state-collected
information across Europe. The European Parliament and the Commission are both
strongly in favour of open access to geodata; the Council, conducting its business
behind closed doors, subject to national-level lobbies, has been pushing for
increased restrictions on the rights of European citizens to gain access to the data
that describes the world around them, in disregard of the economic evidence
supporting open access. Working together, European geospatial software developers and
users may still have a chance of influencing INSPIRE policy in a positive direction;
this is a discussion about how this may be achieved.

RésEau is a demonstration of a new way of accessing water information from many
jurisdictions across Canada.  RésEau offers a vision of providing water information
to Canadians in an easy, transparent way.  RésEau equips you with modern search
tools, interactive mapping, and downloadable applications - all accessible in one place.

The ResEau website is built upon technical and architectural principles which allow
for open interfaces using OGC specifications, and implemented using FOSS4G principles.

This presentation will discuss implementation issues, benefits and lessons learned in
combining FOSS4G and OGC.

“A data publisher for community collaboration around geo-spatial data”

The first instantiation of a GeoBliki is the EO-1 Sensor Web Enabled (SWE) Data Node
to be part of the Open Geo-Spatial Consortium OWS-4 interoperability demonstration in
December 2006 which will include more than 38 organizations.  The focus is centered
on a Homeland Defense scenario featuring sensors/products discovery, chem/bio
detection, satellite tasking, flood/fire image processing using service chains…

A GeoBliki is an Open Source Ruby-on-Rails application that integrates many other
open source components including Community MapBuilder and supports many of the OGC
web services: WFS, SAS, WNS, SPS, WPS...

A GeoBliki is a sensor-data node publisher.  Data can be published in various forms,
which can be made accessible to local or remote users for free or for a fee.  Users
can register to existing subscriptions around areas of interest and be notified via
email/IM or GeoRSS feeds when new data, comments/annotations on the existing data
become available.  

Local users can access the data blog and/or the geo-wiki.  The blog gives a
chronological perspective of the data while the geo-wiki allows for hierarchical
views based on user-driven topics or specific geographic features of interest.  Users
are encouraged to interact with the data and/or other users about the data.  Chat and
forums are built-in.  Map/data annotations will be coming very soon.

Remote users or aggregators can rely on OGC services to query the database, and even
task the EO-1 satellite using the Sensor Planning Service.  Identity Management
becomes a must for those capabilities.  Satellite tasking could be provided at no
cost for emergency response teams for instance while for a fee to other users.  OGC
GeoDRM and license management capabilities will be quickly integrated to support
these various requirements.

It is envisioned, in a very near future, that GeoBliki data nodes will be part of
larger clusters of consumers and providers within a federated and distributed
architecture of trusted nodes using standard protocols to exchange geospatial data
and build new social communities.

The aim of this research is to demonstrate how watershed management can be achieved
by using Free and Open Source Software for Geomatic (FOSS4G) through hydrological
modelling.
This work was carried on in the frame of an interreg IIIA project between Italy and
Switzerland named “Sviluppo di un sistema di gestione dei rischi idrogeologici
nell’area del lago Maggiore” (“Development of a management system for the
hydro-geological risk in the Lake Maggiore area”) partially funded by the Europe Union.
For this purpose a new hydrological model called “HydroFOSS” was developed. 
HydroFOSS is:
a)distributed – the hydrological variables are continuously described in the space.
b)Physically based – all the involved variables have a physical meaning.
c)Continuous – operates over an extended period of time, determining flow rates and
conditions during both runoff periods and periods of no surface runoff.
d)Modular – is a combination of different modules describing the processes involved
in the rainfall-runoff process.
e)GIS embedded – is fully developed into a GIS system by using the GIS's commands and
library functions.
f)Open Source – developed by using exclusively Free and Open Source Software.
Due to the specific area of study (the Lake Maggiore is situated across  Italy and
Switzerland, in the Alpine region) the processes considered in the hydrological model
development are the solar radiation, the evapotranspiration, the snowmelt and
accumulation, the canopy interception, and the runoff.
The heterogeneity of the needed data, in terms of formats, topology, coordinate
systems, and time-spatial resolutions bring us to the development of a geodatabase
that considers the time component. For this task a methodology to handle raster
series has been developed.
Once the data have been organized in the geodatabase, the further required step is
the data processing for model input generation. This task involves either the
spatialization of numerous variables and the validation of different data, two cases
were  deeply investigated (the validation of the meteorological radar rainfall
observations, and the best interpolation technique for temperature meteorological
station observations) while, due to time restrictions, a standard approach has been
followed in other cases.
The chosen processes were then simulated by developing specific new commands in the
GIS GRASS and the overall model was setted up by means of a general script that
automatically executes all the required operations.
Finally a link between the HydroFOSS model and the automatic inverse calibration
model UCODE-2005 (Poeter et al., 2005) was generated and a case study application was
successfully carried on.

This solution has shown how a fully open access, both in term of cost and in term of
control, to all the modelled processes and data can be achieved by using Open Source
Software and a modular approach. Moreover the usage of a GIS allows the management of
heterogeneous data and helps models integration because of its intrinsic data
exchange, analysis and visualization capabilities.

MapBuilder is an OSGeo project allowing you to easily add interactive and dynamic
maps to your web site.  This presentation will provide a high-level introduction to
MapBuilder explaining some of the design concepts, configuration file and how to use
it in your web site.  Live demos of MapBuilder in action will also be shown.

Using MapBuilder, web designers can concentrate on the presentation and usability in
HTML with additional presentation information provided using CSS and XSL.  The
content and style of the maps themselves are typically defined using Web Map Context
documents, with maps served via WMS, however the modular design framework allows
MapBuilder to work with many other document types (GeoRSS, Google, other OGC web
services, etc.).  MapBuilder also supports rendering of vector graphics (WFS, GML)
and transactional WFS.

MapBuilder implements a framework for dynamic web page content from XML documents
using AJAX.  MapBuilder consists of a JavaScript library that implements the
Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern.  These objects (the model, the view and
the controller) are configured using the MapBuilder configuration file.

A set of three case studies, showing how PostGIS is used in high-performance
production situations by private companies and government.

PostGIS is an open source  spatial data extension to the PostgreSQL relational
database management system.  Like Oracle Spatial, PostGIS provides extra spatial
objects, functions and indexes to the underlying RDBMS, allowing powerful GIS
storage, analysis and retrieval to be carried out at the server tier of enterprise IT
infrastructures.

The PostGIS spatial database has been publicly available for over five years, and
global uptake of the software has been tremendous.  In addition to near-universal
support from open source tools, PostGIS is increasingly supported by proprietary
tools as well.

All this interconnectivity means that PostGIS is being built into more and more
operational data centres, serving large volumes of data for clients with high
performance and reliability requirements.  This session will review three
case-studies showing PostGIS being used in the government and private sector as an
operational spatial database.

Our goal is to allow end-user to easily create, visualize, analyze and share web
based thematics maps of its own arbitrary geographical business data.  In order to
achieve this, we developped a system centered on a XML description of data resources,
thematic maps contructions and representation options. 
This system provides the end user a set of nested base maps (e.g. city, districts,
regions boundaries), which are the foundation of the user defined thematic maps as
part of a join with user data.  Each registered user has its own data space in which
he can describe and upload data and construct thematic maps.  Technically speaking,
the XML resource representation is accessed by PHP routines and XSL stylesheets for
web pages construction,  Cartoweb+Mapserver configuration files and
PostgreSQL/PostGIS database queries. 

It is important to notice that the XML representation we developped for this
application is independant of implementation choices (Mapserver, PostgreSQL,
Cartoweb) and can be used as an API by any application to produce easy webmapping.

Kalypso is a modeling and simulation platform for GML-based models. It is primarly
developed to be a user friendly tool for the simulation of hydrological and hydraulic
numerical models. Thanks to Kalypso's underlying generic approachs of the GML
implementation, one can use the platform to handle GML models of arbitrary nature.

Kalypso consists of a Rich Client application which lets the user visualize and edit
GML data in a generic way (both GML 2 and 3 versions are supported) and is also a
client for several OGC Webservices (WMS, WFS, SOS). On the other hand, Kalypso brings
a set of artifacts for a service oriented architecture in order to support gml
processing.

Kalypso parses GML application schemas including depending ones such as the GML base
schemas itself into a strong feature- and property-typed system by building on top of
standard XML techniques such as SAX and Java API for XML-Binding.

Kalypso is LGPL open source and among others it is based on the Eclipse Platform and
deegree. Please see http://www.kalypso.wb.tu-harburg.de.

Introduction
------------
Kalypso is a modeling and simulation platform for GML-based models. It is primarly
developed to be a user friendly tool for the simulation of hydrological and hydraulic
numerical models. Thanks to Kalypso's underlying generic approachs of the GML
implementation, one can use the platform to handle GML models of arbitrary nature.


Kalypso Rich Client Application
-------------------------------
Kalypso consists of a Rich Client application which lets the user visualize and edit
GML data in a generic way (both GML 2 and 3 versions are supported). Beneath generic
GML views and editors such as a map view, table view and tree view, other views can
be registered to Kalypso via a plugin-interface for named feature types. This enables
Kalypso for example to support GML-based modeling of river profiles (aka
cross-sections) via a registered Observation-profile editor for a river-profile feature.

In order to achieve a strong (feature-)type system, Kalypso parses GML application
schemas including depending ones such as the GML base schemas itself into a strong
feature- and property-typed system by building on top of standard XML techniques such
as SAX and Java API for XML-Binding. Kalypso's schema parser supports a wide range of
XML features such as complex types, groups, includes, imports and substitution
groups. Higher level GML types such as Observations and Measurements are supported as
well in a generic way.

At the same time, Kalypso is a client for several OGC WebServices? such as WMS and
WFS. The development of an SOS client is being undertaken as well.


Kalypso-Services
----------------
Kalypso brings a set of artifacts for a service oriented architecture. It consists of
server applications whith generic support for gml processing. On top of this
infrastructure, special numerical models have been implemented. Legacy modeling
applications have been integrated into Kalypso's Model Plugin architecture,
suppressing the presence of heterogenous GUI front-ends and distributed
installations. Further GML based processes are in construction and an adoption of the
OGC Web Processing Service interface is under consideration.


Kalypso-API
-----------
Kalypso is LGPL open source and among others it is based on the Eclipse Platform and
deegree. The sources and a developer portal are available at
http://www.kalypso.wb.tu-harburg.de. For a benefit of semantic interoperability we
want to encourace developers and model designers to use strong typed GML application
schemas and applications. As the sources are structured in a modular way, the source
code for GML-processing can be used also separetely from the GUI-part.

Kalypso is under active development and currently provides user interfaces for
several numerical (hydrological and hydraulic) models for various river basins in
Germany. Furthermore three different Decision Support Systems with a strong accent on
ecological information management are based on Kalypso's API.

This presentation will show the solution to represent the information about the
Brazilian Ministry for Social Development and Fight Against Hunger Actions, such as
the amount of investments and beneficiaries of the Social Programs. There are more
than twenty actions all over the country with more than eight million beneficiaries
under the Ministry programs. Our challenges were to develop a way to show all this
information in an easy way to the society and to the managers of the programs. To
solve that we used an open source technology to develop a centralized data warehouse
and than a GIS tool to show the results.  The MAPServer and PHP Script were the best
tools that we found to perform all the activities required, such as gathering the
data all over our ministry as well as from other ministries (sites), analyzing and
loading the information to the Data Warehouse and showing up the queries results in
spreadsheet, maps and graphics form. 
The GIS framework accepts all kind of data, because it does not depend on the Data
Warehouse structure to update the results. The solution shows the maps without
changing any element, being shape file, legend information or map file. The framework
can analyze the database tables and show the maps and graphics. 
The solution is based in a set of shape files stored in PosgreSQL/PostGis database,
and there is another database that stores all information about the Social Program
Investments and Actions. There are shape files about the Brazilian states, cities and
detailed information about some cities counties. The framework retrieves the themes
from a special structure that carries the SQL statement that shows the map
information, map title, units of the information and the SQL statement that shows the
graphics. The software developed calculates the values to build the legend sharing
the frequency of the distribution in quartile. It is possible to get the information
about the geographic area (state or city) that the user can select with a mouse click
over the map. The detailed information about the geographic area can be the value of
the variable or the indicator of a chosen theme. It is also possible to show the
graphic of this variable or indicator throughout the year depending on the social
program. The map themes are stored in SQL statement form, so when the database is
updated the map is automatically updated too. 
For some social programs it is possible to show the beneficiaries addresses in a map.
Our solution can retrieve the information about the families and about the county in
order to compare the distribution of the investment with the social status of the county.
We built a tool to assemble some special areas formed by cities, such as the cities
influenced by Sao Francisco river or Indian communities, and the framework shows the
variables or indicators over these areas.

Because of the basic requirement to offer good communication quality, the mobile phone system providers 
are constantly siting base stations as needed in order to provide enough signal coverage and strength.

This paper first discusses those issues related to siting mobile phone base stations, such as the location, the 
quantity, the radio signal coverage, the channel capacity of each base station, etc. It then uses GRASS, 
combined with location and allocation theory, to analyze the current issues of siting mobile phone base 
stations and develop a heuristic solution based on the line-of-sight analysis.

Finally a small town in Taiwan is used as the study area to examine the effectiveness of the developed 
solution.

TerraCost addresses the problem of computing
multiple-source weighted least-cost-path surfaces for
grid terrains. Currently, this functionality is 
provided by the GRASS module r.cost. Our approach, 
implemented in GRASS as r.terracost, expands this
functionality such as to allow massive terrains 
to be processed efficiently. We obtain this 
efficiency by combine memory- and disk-based 
techniques, and, as a by-product of the algorithm's 
modular design, we can actually benefit from
cluster-connected computing resources (if available).
Experiments show that TerraCost’s algorithms perform 
well in practice: Our implementation outperforms 
standard solutions as dataset size increases relative 
to available memory and our distributed solver obtains 
near-linear speedup when preprocessing large terrains 
for iterated computations with varying parameters.

All the actors of the water domain in France organized on a common protocol since
1993, have adopted in 2005 common rules to improve the access to water data. The
application of these rules will progressively lead to a more efficient data
dissemination process. One example is the geoportal of the Sandre
http://sandre.eaufrance.fr/.
Since 1993, a community on the water domain in France has been organizing the access
to water data. Covering marine water, groundwater and surface water, all partners
have agreed on a common protocol. One of the main goal is to achieve to communicate
between partners using a common language for water named "Sandre". First design on a
common semantic (codification, data models, dictionnaries, ...), the Water
Information System for France has extended this interoperability to technical issues
(protocols, webservices, ...). In 2005 was published the guideline for the Water
Information System for France architecture taking into account all on-going
initiatives at EU level like WISE or INSPIRE and at international level like OGC,
W3C, OASIS, ... 

On this step by step approach, progress to access to the data on a distributed way
will be improved based on existing system, adoption of a SOA, promoting use of
opensource software, delivering free public access to water data in France in a
consistent way.
 
Following 2 years of prototyping and analysis of systems, different projects are
implementing these rules today. One example is the geoportal for water data of the
Sandre. This webmapping application is using Mapserver/Cartoweb and only webservices
to display, query and export data to provide access to water data references (river
network, monitoring stations, infrastructures, ...). The interface use WMS and WFS
services to connect to the data publish by producers. The long term objectivs is to
avoid the manual data collection process.

A state of affairs with respect to OpenGIS standards, i.e. standards of the Open
Geospatial Consortium (OGC), in open source software. How good do the different
projects communicate through OpenGIS standards? Several open source projects (among
others Mapserver, Geoserver, MapGuide Open Source, Mapbuilder, Chameleon, uDIG) will
be  evaluated with respect to their implementation of OpenGIS specifications (for
instance WMS, SLD-WMS, WFS, WMC). Do they talk well out of the box, or does it need
specific tips and tricks to get things running? Do the clients (Chameleon, uDIG,
Mapbuilder) communicate well with proprietary systems like ESRI's ArcIMS or Ionic Red
Spider?

This approach of the SWE Working Group (part of the 52°North Open Source initiative
(http://www.52n.org)) proposes a software framework named the OGC Web Service Access
Framework (OX-Framework) which is able to integrate all kinds of OGC Web Services and
thereafter to visualize and process the queried data. It is a generic solution
offering developers a customizable and extendable system of cooperating classes
supplying a reusable design. It can be used on the level of business logic in
different client AND server applications.

A demo client has been developed, which is build upon the proposed framework. This
client is a Java-Swing application which has the primary aim to visualize observed
sensor data provided by SensorObservationServices (SOS). You can see screenshots
& videos of the client here:
https://www.incubator52n.de/twiki/bin/view/Sensornet/OxFramework#Videos.
The videos show the client exploring gauge heights in North Rhine-Westphalia
(Germany) or checking out weather data (provided by a SOS) in South Africa.

As nowadays different types of geospatial data are available on different sources
through OGC Web Services the interest to integrate them is demanding. This is due to
the fact that to carry out reliable decisions different types of data from various
sources are required. Thus a generic framework is needed, which enables integration
of these Web Services. Though a number of approaches are available to support users
on a rather abstract level (most of the GI-software providers offer so called suites
or portal solutions), support for software developers is hard to find. Tillman &
Garnett (2006) support this integrative notion of OGC Web Services, but only by
focussing on client applications. As the integration of Web Services on service side
is also demanding especially in the context of sophisticated web processing and
service chaining (Kiehle et al. 2006), we propose an integrative approach for both
environments. Such an extended approach towards service applications would support
the development of sophisticated service chains and decrease the complexity of
OGC-based software development.
However until now only specific frameworks are available, either as pure client
solutions, such as uDig (http://udig.refractions.net), or as pure service solutions,
e.g. deegree (http://deegree.sourceforge.net/). A generic solution is still missing.
The proposed framework described below offers developers a customizable and
extendable system of cooperating classes supplying a reusable design which is
applicable for client and server applications. Looking from the perspective of the
Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) initiative (Sliwinski 2005), different sensors and other
support data are required to extract reliable information. This case was the driving
force for the SWE Working Group within the 52°North Open Source initiative
(http://www.52n.org; Kraak et al. 2005) to come up with an integrated framework named
the OGC Web Service Access Framework (OXFramework). It is the aim of the OX-Framework
to provide an integrative view to access all kinds of OGC Web Services and thereafter
to visualize and process the queried data. The variety of different services and data
encodings makes it necessary to build up a flexible architecture.

The OX-Framework supports flexibility by applying three concepts:
• Layer-Architecture
• Plugin-Concept
• Listener-Concept

The Layer-Architecture reduces the complexity of the OX-Framework by structuring it
into three layers: Service-Adapters, Core and Utilities. The Service-Adapters layer
contains realizations of adapters for specific OGC Web Services (e.g. SOS, WMS or
WCS). These adapters provide common facilities to the Core for service access in the
form of Service-Connectors, data visualization engines (Renderers) and feature
marshalling (Feature-Stores). The Service-Connector initializes the Common
Capabilities Model of the particular service type and is able to trigger its
operations. The Renderer converts the received data to a graphical representation.
The Feature-Store provides marshalling facilities for received feature data to the
Cores Feature Model. All the Service-Adapters communicate with each other through the
Core. This communication is enabled by common data models, which reflect the
integrative approach of the OX-Framework. In detail the Core incorporates a
three-folded data model: The Common Capabilities Model implements the OWS Common
Specification (Whiteside 2005) and introduces thereby the integrative view on service
access to the architecture. The Feature Model provides a basis for accessing,
visualizing and processing of vector data based on (Reynolds 2005; Kottman 1999). The
Context Model enables persistence and exchange functionality for client projects. It
maps a user session – so called “Context” - to an XML-encoding compliant to the Web
Map Context Documents specification (Humblet 2003). The Utilities provide
functionality for specific UI-frameworks (e.g. Struts or Swing). Those components
help the user of the OX-framework to build up a client application or a new service
using the framework for servicechaining. The Plugin-Concept enables the developer to
customize and extend the framework with the required Service-Adapters in a dynamic
way. Hence it is possible to build up client- and service-oriented applications with
the OX-Framework.

Additionally the Listener-Concept is an important feature of the OXframework because
it affords a high degree of extensibility and transparency which endows the developer
with the absolute control over the framework.

The OX-Framework is just evolving within 52°North’s SWE Working Group and provides a
valid basis for OGC-related software development as demonstrated by the concepts and
the implementation at 52°North. Now the framework has to show that it can stand the
test in coming sensor web projects. The further development will extend its
functionality in sense of web processing, coverage handling and additional
Service-Adapter realizations.


REFERENCES

Humblet, J.-P. (2003). Web Map Context Documents. OGC Implementation Specification.
OGC Document Number: 03-036r2.

Kiehle, C., K. Greve & C. Heier (2006). Standardized Geoprocessing - Taking Spatial
Data Infrastructures one Step Further. Proceedings AGILE 2006. 9th AGILE
International Conference on Geographic Information Science: 273–282. Visegrad, Hungary.

Kottman, C. (1999). The OpenGIS™ Abstract Specification Topic 5: Features (Version
4). OGC Abstract Specification. OGC Document Number: 99-105r2

Kraak, M.-J., A. Sliwinski & A. Wytzisk (2005). What happens at 52N? An Open source
approach to education and research. Joint ICA commission seminar 6.-8. July 2005,
part of the 22nd ICA conference, ICC 2005: Mapping approaches into a changing world,
2005, 16-20.

Reynolds, G. (2005). GO-1 Application Objects. OGC Implementation Specification. OGC
Document Number: 03-064r10.

Sliwinski, A., I. Simonis et al. (2005). Boosting the OGC Sensor Web Enablement
Initiative by Open Source Web Services – The Case of 52°North. AGIT 2005, July 6 - 8,
2005.

Tillman, S. & J. Garnett. (2006). OWS Integrated Client Architecture, Design, and
Experience. OGC Discussion Paper. OGC Document Number: 05-116.

Whiteside, A. (2005). OGC Web Services Common Specification. OGC Implementation
Specification. OGC Document Number: 05-008.

In the era of the globalization, the GIS technology together with Internet 
Technology seems to be indispensable in many aspects, for example, disaster 
management and decision support systems. To integrate with other powerful 
technologies, however, high performance and user friendly tools are required. 
Realizing this need, Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development, has been 
developing a Web Map Engine based necessity on the Asynchronous JavaScript and XML 
(AJAX), so-called GISTDA WMS AJAX Engine. This paper has described techniques of 
the utilization of AJAX technology and its architecture. The connection of web map 
server and web map client has been established using the library module sets 
including MapScript, MapControl, MapTOC, and Utility class library. Based on these 
modules, GISTDA WMS AJAX Engine can generate self legends, support “on the fly” 
projection, show layer zoom by preloading, and display layer styles. Result showed 
that the AJAX technology played an important role when requesting and responding to 
satellite imageries and other related spatial data. It can be summarized that, this 
engine can significantly improve the performance of WMS web client.

The system developed here integrates AJAX technology into the browser based dynamic 
WMS web client in order to establish the WMS scripts and class modules which can 
work with WMS from different providers. The results of this case can increase 
efficiency indifferent aspects as follows:
- Able to connect web map servers developed by various vendors, request self-
capabilities of service by generating parameters, and create a map.
- Automatically request legend graphics of each layer, create table of 
content to manage visibility of layers. 
- Support asynchronous preloading image map and other components for better 
visualization and performance.
- Support “on the fly” map projection for client side.
- Support a developer to simply integrate the system future with web 
applications as a set of separate objects that interact to each others.
- Able to change the user interface by skin set such as frame border, toolbar 
button, font format and etc.

An overview of PostGIS future developments: topology, networks, long
transactions and rasters.  Concepts, benefits and development state of
each topic will be discussed.

The PostGIS spatial extension for PostgreSQL is in wide use by the
Free and Open Source GIS community, providing a common service for most
architectures both in the C or Java worlds.  The advantage of using an
ORDBMS for storage of features data is a unified access method from a
wide range of programming environments.

While PostGIS in its current status provides the OGC-defined "Simple
Features" model and operations, lack of support for other models or
services forces applications developers to implement them in a custom,
thus not-reusable, fashion.

Future development plans are aimed at filling this gap by providing
standard ways to threat more complex models and commonly required
services.

Introduction -- OpenGIS Simple Features Access (SFA, also called ISO 19125) defines a
standard set of geometry types along with SQL functions on those types. An increasing
number of relational database management systems (RDMBS) implement this OGC
specification. Geographic information systems (GIS) that use such an open spatial
database as datastore take advantage of both the spatial capabilities and the
seamless integration with non-spatial data in the RDBMS.

Sun's JDO specification provides a technology for transparently persisting Java
objects (POJOs). This standardized, object-oriented API promises high usability and
performance. For practical reasons the specification only demands mandatory support
for a very limited set of basic Java types, because a persistence solution can never
know how to persist all possible types. As a result of this, support for spatial data
types in current JDO implementations is sparse. However, most implementations provide
plug-in mechanisms to add support for user defined data types.

JPOX-Spatial extends JPOX, which is an open source and fully compliant JDO
implementation that was chosen by SUN as reference implementation for the JDO 2.0
specification. JPOX allows application developers to define their own types.
Developers may also extend the query language with user defined methods.

Results -- JPOX-Spatial allows the use of JPOX as persistence layer for geospatial
applications in an environment that supports the OGC SFA specification. It defines
type mappings to let JPOX know how to persist the Java geometry types from the JTS
topology suite as well as those from the PostGIS project. On the datastore side,
PostgreSQL with PostGIS or MySQL may be used as spatial database. The JDO query
language (JDOQL) was extended with over forty functions to query spatial data. These
functions follow the definitions in OGC SFA and are translated into appropriate SQL
statements, provided the underlying database system implements the functions and the
geometry object model accordingly.

Future Work -- There is still a lot of room for improvement in JPOX-Spatial. A major
task will be to implement support for additional RDBMSs (that conform to OGC SFA).
Work is already under way to implement support for Oracle and IBM DB2, because to
attract a broad user base it is crucial to support as many RDBMSs as possible.
Another task will be to analyse more open source GIS projects, like GeoTools or
OpenMap, and evaluate whether a JPOX mapping for their geometry models is possible
and useful.

Geostatistics and thematic maps is now a major field of interest of webmapping. This
conference will present an interactive lightweight plugin-free thematic webmapping
system. This weservice oriented solution allows to make highly customized maps with
choropleth, pie, histogram and proportionnal symbols.

GeoTools is the library to use for working with standards; and getting
standards to work. GeoTools is the brains behind the popular GeoServer and uDig
projects … will yours be next? Attend this talk and find out how to make it happen.

GeoTools is the library to use for working with standards; and getting
standards to work.

This presentation will cover the use of GeoTools to create maps, hack
databases and files, and update content on a Web Feature Server. Want
more? Create beautiful displays using the Style Layer Descriptor
standard and grab content from around the globe using our excellent Web
Map Server client code. Have enough information now? Combine it all
smoothly using our fantabulous reprojection support.

And that is just what comes as part of the core library. Did you know
that a series of extensions are also available?  These extensions build
up and outward, providing transaction safe validation checks across data
sources; and a full graphing API that is so simple you can find your way
home. Then we get into the downright nifty – an SLD generator that makes
your data look great (with enough color research that you will never
have to worry about the difference between a projector and a photocopier
again). Bet you wish the last presentation you were in used GeoTools.

GeoTools is part of the initial charge of Open Source Geospatial
Foundation projects. The library is available in a free and
business-friendly LGPL license.

We have reached the, gasp, ten year mark and represent mature working
solution to your server or client programming needs. GeoTools is the
brains behind the popular GeoServer and uDig projects … will yours be
next? Attend this talk and find out how to make it happen.

Disclaimer: Some standards were harmed in the making of this library. If
you see GML tell him he can come home now, that validation thing was
just a joke.

Jody Garnett is a representative of GeoTools Project Management
Committee and has been actively involved since 2003.  Also seen
enthusiastically involved with uDig, GeoServer and GeoAPI.

An overview of uDig, an Eclipse-based open source desktop GIS platform.  Basic
features of the software, design philosophy, technology and case studies of
organisations that have implemented open source solutions using uDig.

uDig is an open source desktop GIS platform, that combines broad support for OpenGIS
and de facto industry standards with an interactive desktop paradigm.  uDig ships
with a standard “GIS application” user interface, but is also designed to be
extremely extendable and customizable.

uDig is built in Java on top of the Eclipse Rich Client Platform using open source
modelling and application frameworks from IBM and Sun Microsystems.  As such, it is
an excellent example of a real-life application framework built with the latest Java
development tools and techniques.

The first half of this session will cover uDig basics.  The design philosophy,
standard user interface, connecting to data sources (PostGIS, WMS, WFS, Shape Files,
Images, Catalogues), feature styling, printing, coordinate re-projection, data
editing, customization examples, and more.

The second half of this session will examine the real-world implementation of open
source solutions with uDig.  Case studies will be examined, in government, the
private sector and NGOs.  How are people using uDig, and in what application
categories?  What have their development experiences been?  What customisations have
they created?

A huge database carrying forestry data is being create by the Italian national ISAFA
(Istituto Sperimentale per l'Assestamento Forestale e per l'Alpicoltura) research
institute. This database will become the official database for forest management of
the majority of the Italian regions. It combines a huge quantity of alphanumeric and
cartographic data and provides custom interfaces as well as database consistency
check. Originally the system was built using Microsoft Access Data Base in connection
to ESRI Arcview.
This approach carries some shortcomings, due in particular to the local database
management that implies the installation of the DB management and GIS software on the
PC of each user and, more important, poses a huge problem for consistency and
updates. In fact, data must downloaded on local computer, modified and then uploaded
to server.
A new solution, built on top of FOSS systems, has been proposed, solving the issues
above and allowing more flexibility and performance at the same time. 
This new solution uses a client-server approach with a central DBMS providing access
to different classes of clients. This approach provides several advantages: 
centralised, scalable and optimised DB management with access control, background
consistency checking and no need for specific software on the client.
The DB management is done by a PostgreSQL server with PostGIS extension, allowing the
complete management of both semantic and geographic data in one database. This
database is accessible from a Mapserver interface as well as from phpPgAdmin,
replicating the MS Access interface using php.
The existing Access has been semi automatically transferred into a PostgreSQL
database, while the the cartographic data has added to the database from the ESRI
shapefiles.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a framework supporting information exchange by
means of services. Some elements in the sense of SOA are already realized as part of
the Federal Spatial Data Infrastructure in Switzerland, others are still under
investigation or in the phase of planning / realization.

OpenGIS Web Map Service (WMS) implementation specification does not currently cover
security aspect to control access to data based on layers, attribute or geometry
criteria. Due to political aspect regarding geodata, such features are often required
in europe. Some vendors have implemented access control but it doesn't usually work
with plain WMS client.

This conference will present a simple solution to control access to WMS data, which
works transparently with any existing WMS compliant client, with a SSL tunneling
system between server and client.

Current OGC  work to extend secured OGC services will also be discussed and compared
with this approach.

Rising energy prices and increasing pressures on natural resources make sustainable
development a necessity rather than a matter of choice.
Major advacement in adaptation of sustainable development principles has been
achieved by introduction of the LEED rating (US Green Building Council Leadership in Environmental
and Energy Design) that provides tools to quantify success in sustainability.
The role of landscape in sustainable development has been recently recognized by introduction of a new
national standard for neighborhood design LEED-ND that incorporates important categories
with geospatial components, such as location efficiency, land conservation,
protection of habitats, runoff and erosion control, transportation, and others.
Ready access to geospatial information and interactive, easy-to-use modeling environment
can substantially improve exploration of various alternatives and optimize
the proposed design for the best environmental and energy performance.
The draft LEED-ND rating currently includes over 70 prerequisites and credits with
important spatial components in all of its four categories: 1. Location efficiency,
2. Environmental preservation, 3. Compact and connected neighborhoods, 4. Resource efficiency.
We outline a concept for the development of GRASS4LEED methodology that will take advatage of the
wide range of geospatial analysis and modeling tools that are already available in GRASS
and can be used to build the following subsystems: 1.  Geospatial Sustainability Analyst
for analysis of pre-construction landscape and the initial site plan;
2. Geospatial Designer for modification of the site plan, such as
incorporation of best management practices (BMP) and green site development principles,
and evaluation of the effectiveness of modifications; and 3. Geospatial Sustainability Evaluator
for self rating the final design and evaluation of its effectiveness using predictive modeling
and environmental-economic trade-off analysis.
To facilitate face-to-face collaboration during the design process, we explore the
possibilities to use Tangible GIS that integrates landscape representation and control within
a physical tangible model coupled with its virtual digital representation.
We provide examples of tools and applications developed for GRASS that can be used as components
for the proposed system, such as terrain analysis, 3D visualization, surface water flow
and erosion simulation, solar radiation and photovoltaic evaluation, BMP design,
and linking GRASS with Tangible GIS.

The project “Habitat improvements for wildlife”, sponsored by the Toscana Regional 
and the Pisa Provincial administrations and realized by Faunalia, is heavily geared 
towards geographical information. For every aspect of data management and analysis 
Faunalia is using exclusively free software:
data are stored in PostgreSQL/PostGIS
different database clients (geographic and alphanumerical) are used for 
administrations: psql, phpPgAdmin, PgAdminIII, OpenOffice, QGIS, UMN MapServer, 
p.mapper
analyses are run through PostGIS, GRASS and R
QGIS is also used for data visualization and checking, and printing for field 
surveys and dissemination of results
most data are available in real time for wider dissemination of results through a 
p.mapper web interface
Main analyses are:
home range size, overlap and localization of radio-tracked pheasants and other 
species
population density of pheasants, hares and passeriformes
habitat preferences for the same species
land use and landscape analysis
previsional models of habitat use
The use of a complete, powerful, well integrated suite of programs allowed us to 
create a multi-user (>12 professionals, students and volunteers, of very varied 
technical computer background and skills) environment, without data duplication. 
Thanks to interoperability, occasional functional limitations of single software 
packages are easily overcome by having several alternatives at hand.
It would have been infeasible to implement a similar infrastructure using 
proprietary software, because the budget of the project is of the same order of 
magnitude of the cost of licences needed.

Oracle Database 10g Express Edition (Oracle Database XE) is an entry-level, small-
footprint spatial database that's free to develop, deploy, and distribute; fast to 
download; and simple to administer. Oracle Locator is a feature of Oracle XE that 
provides core geospatial functionality needed to deploy location-based services 
(LBS) and GIS solutions, from business intelligence web portals and CRM to 
utilities, transportation, and land management applications.  Locator is supported 
by the leading commercial and open source GIS and LBS technologies, including 
MapServer, MapGuide, GeoServer, GeoTools, GRASS, GDAL, and Deegree.  With Oracle 
Database XE, developers, ISVs, DBAs, and students can now develop and deploy 
geospatial applications with a powerful, proven, industry-leading infrastructure 
that has been adopted by 80-90% of medium to large organizations using spatial 
database management systems, such as state and local government portals, national 
cadasters, and insurance companies. This paper highlights the value propositions 
for using this free database for developing robust geospatial applications:  easy, 
open access to location assets across users, departments, organizations; and 
secure, manageable, performant data management.  It also provides an overview of 
the Locator capabilities in Oracle Database XE, including an open spatial data 
type; SQL-based location queries and analysis such as proximity, nearest neighbor, 
and distance; and compliance with the OGC Simple Features for SQL, ISO, and SQL/MM 
specifications.

GeoTracing (www.geotracing.com) is an extensible client/server framework for
GPS-based mobile tracklogging/media/feature entry and real-time tracing. LBS
functionality is planned. GeoTracing is geared at providing a foundation framework
for "Locative Media" applications, sports, games and dedicated applications like
animal field observation. Geotagged media has a prominent role in the framework.
Client/server interaction uses XML and Web 2.0 technologies like AJAX. The browser
currently uses Google Maps (with some WMS hacks). GeoTracing is in the process of
going Open Source (at geotracing.codehaus.org).

GeoTracing applications allow users to track and share their movement through the
landscape. While moving a user can enter impressions/annotations in the form of media
and features like Points of Interest. All data is archived/managed in a CMS.
Currently a mobile (smart)phone with Bluetooth GPS is used for entry. Through a
web-browser tracks/annotations can be viewed in real-time on a Google Map. GeoTracing
attempts to provide a foundation framework for specific applications. Several
applications have been realized or are under development. Examples are GeoSkating
(www.geoskating.com), Sense of the City (www.senseofthecity.nl), geodrawing
(www.n8spel.nl). See www.geotracing.com for more
applications.  GeoTracing builds on other Open Source frameworks like KeyWorx
(www.keyworx.org developed by Waag Society) and Pushlets (www.pushlets.com developed
by the author). The server uses Java (J2EE), the mobile client (MobiTracer)  is
implemented in Java (J2ME). The browser uses AJAX and Google Maps. All client/server
communication uses XML (Pushlets and KeyWorx extension protocols). Compliance with
OGC-protocols and the use of OSS Geo-software like MapBuilder is under study.

This technical session will introduce and demonstrate the new functionality added for
the 1.0 version of gvSIG, the open source desktop GIS, which will be released around
FOSS4G. The new extensions include graphical and command-line editing tools, raster
georeferencing tools and feature geoprocessing tools. The session will also describe
other improvements in the customization mechanisms of gvSIG, like the capability to
add tools with associated scripting.

In addition, the session will present a road map for the developments that will be
occuring in a one-year time frame. These include raster reprojection, raster
analysis, network analysis, advanced symbology, animation, 3D visualization and SDI
authoring tools. The presenters will also discuss the collaboration opportunities in
the project.

gvSIG is a GPL-licensed GIS project that started in 2003, promoted by the Regional
Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport and developed by the IVER company. In a
first phase, it aimed at covering the visual analysis needs of the Ministry users,
and then became a very complete SDI client with its user-friendly support of
connections with standard OGC web services.

In a second phase gvSIG has completed its functionality to become a powerful editor
following -and in some cases improving over- both GIS and CAD editing environments
with powerful capabilities such as command-line control and command history. Tools
have also been added to allow common data preparation and analysis funcions such as
raster georeferencing and standard feature geoprocessing operations. This new set of
functions, together with improvements in the mechanisms for customization and
expansion of the modular system, is released with the version 1.0 of gvSIG.

gvSIG is an ambitious and well-funded project whith has attracted many contributors
and now aims farther and wider than its original scope. Some of the extensions
planned to be developed in this third phase include:

  * Raster analysis tools, ported from the SEXTANTE environment
  * Network creation and analysis tools
  * Advanced symbology and labelling
  * Animation and video generation
  * Global 3D visualization
  * SDI authoring tools

The Conservation GeoPortal (http://www.conservationmaps.org) is a new collaborative
effort to build, share, and communicate geospatial information for biodiversity
conservation. This work supports the principles and objectives of the Conservation
Commons and is the first phase of developing a World Conservation Basemap and World
Atlas of Conservation. The GeoPortal is primarily an Internet-based metadata catalog
with a map viewer, intended to provide a comprehensive listing of GIS data sets and
map services relevant to biodiversity conservation. This presentation will describe
the process and framework used to develop the Conservation GeoPortal and will suggest
ways that the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) can benefit and contribute.

An accurate description is coming...

For a reservoir watershed management project in Taiwan a spatial database has been
established. The database contains information about landslides, soil samples, and
also stores geo-referenced air photographs and other geographic information. The UMN
Mapserver solution enables viewing, zooming and querying of spatial information in
different GIS formats in a web browser. The web based application was developed to
enable easy access to the different  spatial information layers needed for integrated
watershed management.

The Watershed GIS Mapserver solution is based on a combination of Apache Web Server
and the UMN Mapserver. The flexible Mapserver solution was used in this case to
display and enable querying of spatial information that was collected for an almost
700km2 large watershed in Taiwan. Supported vector formats are: ESRI shapefiles,
PostGIS, ESRI ArcSDE and many others via OGR. Raster formats supported: TIFF/GeoTIFF,
EPPL7 and many others via GDAL. Vector data is used for sub watershed boundaries,
streams, roads, sample points and landslides. While raster data is used to display
digital elevation model data in GRASS raster format, land use maps and air
photographs in GeoTIFF format.
When querying sample points, attribute information is shown in a template providing
details about caesium-137 (137Cs) activity in soil samples, date of sampling,
coordinates and elevation and when present also the number of erosion pins. In the
near future the calculated and actual erosion rate for each sample location will be
added. Photographs taken during the sampling can be viewed as well as a graph showing
the depth distribution of 137Cs activity in profile samples. For landslides the
landslide area is shown in the template. In the future the web-based spatial
watershed database will show variation in erosion rates across the watershed. A
training will be given to watershed managers to instruct office personnel how to use
the system. The author believes the use of FOSS GIS software enables flexible and
cost-effective implementation of this and other GIS applications in government and
non-profit organizations.

In 2000 forest ministers of Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial governments 
initiated the development of Canada’s National Forest Information System (NFIS 
Canada) to respond to national and international reporting commitments on 
sustainable forest management.  

The development and application of open source software has allowed NFIS Canada to 
deploy a Canada wide web-based Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) compliant 
distributed interoperable infrastructure at a very modest cost.  The adoption of 
open source solutions as one of its business models was driven by the requirement 
that NFIS Canada (1) be based on international standards, (2) be vendor neutral, (3) 
minimize licensing costs, (4) minimize impact on partner business practices and (5) 
support common services delivered over a common interoperable distributed 
infrastructure.  In support of its open source business model NFIS Canada has been a 
participant in the development of the OGC compliant version of University of 
Minnesota (UMN) MapServer and Chameleon.  NFIS is cooperating with Canada’s National 
Land and Water Information Service (NLWIS) in the specifications and development of 
Geolinked Data Access Service (GDAS) and a web based generalized statistical summary 
reporting system (GSSRS).  NFIS has led the development of the data domain service 
(DDS), the distributed spatial analysis architecture (DSAA), the distributed access 
control system (DACS) and is currently working on a number of services that will be 
open sourced.  In addition NFIS Canada is using PostGIS, Postgress, Ka-Map, WikiCalc 
and other open source products and it is distributing an open source OGC 
compliant  “SDI-in-a-Box” based on MapServer and Chameleon. 

NFIS currently supports an infrastructure serving 14 jurisdictions and comprised of 
20 nodes located in 16 cities located across Canada with 2 enterprise level 
computing arrays, 2 help centres and 5 development teams. The continued expansion of 
the infrastructure will be primarily based on open source solutions.

This presentation is concerned with the demonstration of specification and modelling 
techniques for the representation of geographic data. We will demonstrate two 
approaches to spatial modelling using freely available tools. We will use an 
extension to the Unified Modelling Language (UML) called ArgoCASEGEO[1] together 
with an OCL tool called USE[2]. Together these represent the object oriented 
paradigm. In contrast we also use an executable specification language called CafeOBJ
[3]. Both of these techniques allow us to build executable prototypes. 
Heterogeneous geographic information consists of metric, topological, and thematic 
data. All this information is time varying. Further it is required that such 
information be stored, queried and updated, which entails the specification of a 
database schema. Geographic information has important economic, social, and legal 
roles which demand high quality data and high quality systems to maintain that 
data.  We feel that modelling this data can contribute to our understanding of its 
inherent complexity.  Given the complexity and diversity involved in modelling 
spatial and temporal data, it is entirely appropriate to tackle small sections of 
the overall problem one at a time using the most appropriate techniques. Equally, in 
order to present a coherent model it is important to combine the various models into 
a meaningful coherent whole. These tasks present a significant modelling challenge. 
In order to make our ideas more concrete we will present a motivating example, which 
consists of a simple map and two executable prototypes, which captures some 
of the complexity present even in a simple map.

[1]ArgoCASEGEO:t http://www.dpi.ufv.br/projetos/argocasegeo/
[2]A UML-based Specification Environment: 
        http://www.db.informatik.uni-bremen.de/projects/USE/
[3]CafeOBJ: http://www.ldl.jaist.ac.jp/cafeobj/

In December 2005 the third West Asian Games took place in the emirate of Qatar
located on the Persian Gulf. The games' organizing committee asked the german
technical inspection agency TUEV to develop a mobile, real-time, web based system to
monitor and maintain safety standards with respect to health, environment, hygiene
and food safety in locations related to the games.

The monitoring system was jointly developed by terrestris and TUEV and is able to
relay safety test-data as well as photos to a central database via GSM (global system
for mobile communication). This data can then be accessed online by organizing
committee staff through a web based geographic information system (WebGIS). 

The auditors of the TUV used a PDA for identifying objects like toilets, kitchens,
cafeterias or spectators places, e.g., performing various health and safety tests,
optionally took photos and sent the results categorised as green, orange or red via
email to a centralized database. 
The members of the organisation committee had a web-GIS based frontend, where orange
and red tests appeared in a certain frame. Clicking on theses "flags" the map zoomed
to the CAD-drawings of the surrounding area of the tested object and opened a tab
with the results of the test, optionally also with the attached photographs.

The whole system was mainly implemented using Open Source software and standards of
the OGC. The presentation is mainly a live demo of the project.

Carthema (www.carthema.ch) is an application for thematic mapping, born in Lausanne
University at the Geography Institute. Initially developped for old MacOS platform
in Pascal language, JCarThema will be the Java version of CarThema. The main
advantage of this migration will be platform independency. Carthema offers a wide
range of thematic mapping representations. JCarthema will inheritate these
functionnalities and by adopting the terms of opensource licensing, provide an
application dedicated to thematic mapping to the FOSS4G community. The project is at
its start, and one main question appears : with the usual idea in mind "not
reinventing the wheel", what toolkit/framework is appropriate ? Should we start from
scratch, use Geotools, create a plugin for uDig, OpenJUMP or gvSIG ? Therefore, this
presentation will not give you answers, but rather ask the good questions.

A webgis is a system to manage and deploy spatial data and associated
attributes on the web.  Usually, the data are static on the
client-side: a standard webgis application doesn't manage dynamic
information.  In this article we illustrate a dynamic webgis: a system
architecture that is able to automatically collect, manage and display
dynamic geographic information.  In this way one can monitor in real
time on the map the state of time-evolving entities.  Possible
applications are fleet tracking, environmental control, surveillance.
Actually the system is being applied to fleet tracking.

In a standard webgis, once the client has requested and received data,
these data can change on the client, if and only if, the client send a
new request to the server (common HTTP protocol behavior).  The main
drawback of this kind of architecture is that every time the user
wants to change or interrogate the map, the server has to update the
view and send it to the user.  This can create an impression of poor
interactivity, but this architecture is not able to show the state of
an entity after it is changed.

It is our opinion, that in a dynamic architecture, the changes should
be visible, to the user, in real-time.  We mean, for dynamic webgis,
an environment where the entity state can change many times.  If one
has to monitor the state of an entity (eg. temperature or alarm sensor
in a building), there is the need of managing dynamic information, in
a more responsive way.  Our aim, here, is the proposal of a dynamic
architecture consisting into a real-time webgis where the user can
observe changes over the map as the corresponding information is
available and updated from external sources, without explicit requests
by the user.
	 
The developed system, termed USAlov, is based on Alov /
TimeMap. TimeMap is developed in J2EE technology and it is very
flexible and easily extensible. USAlov is a J2EE / J2ME application
developed to track locations of remote mobile devices storing their
positions on a relational database.  It can be used to view real-time
locations of mobile devices.

Our mission has been the integration and development of new features
in Alov / TimeMap. We have added a tracking server, and a mobile
component, while the applet has been extended with modules for monitor
the state of targets.

Tracking server is a new server-side component, that manages dynamic
information about mobile devices.  It stores this data into a MySQL
database, and stores in memory the information about active devices.
We have developed a mobile component that runs on mobile devices and
communicate, by the bluetooth protocol, with common GPS receivers,
and, by GSM network, with the tracking server.  Last, we have extended
the basic TMJava applet, used to view static GIS data, with the
capability to communicate with tracking server and show dynamic
information.  The extended applet allows to dynamically query the
tracking server, to get the position of the mobile devices

The mobile device, J2ME enabled (eg.  mobile phone), communicates with
a GPS receiver, and it sends information about its location to a web
server.  Thanks to GPRS / UMTS connection and short size (few bytes)
messages it is possible to use this application in a not expensive
way.
  
The server stores the messages from mobile devices into a database and
in an active structure that resides in the server.  A thread is
responsible to load information about monitored targets in memory.

The client is based upon Sun Java applet technology, which allows to
view the whereabouts of an entire fleet from a desktop.  The applet
provides a tracking panel used to configure the request to send at
tracking server.  After query, the client runs a thread that updates
the requested data at configurable intervals time.  Indeed, the applet
is in a continuous polling to the server with HTTP requests.

While the open source geospatial community has made large strides to write software
that competes with with the major vendors, we as a community have yet to do anything
truly new or innovative.  The most exciting potential area for me is bringing the
open source process to geospatial data, creating 'architectures of participation'
around the creation and maintenance of geo-information.  

We as a community are ideally suited to tackle such problems, since it is not simply
a technical issue, but also a social one of getting a group of diverse volunteers to
contribute to a shared resource that benefits all.  The social problems will likely
be similar to the ones we already tackle in our own communities, and the technical
solutions are best built on top of the existing software we are already working on.  

While OpenStreetMap has taken a great early lead, especially in the social aspect, I
believe that a diverse ecosystem of open geodata projects will have a greater chance
for success in the long run.  This will allow for experimentation and innovation with
both the social (licenses of data, commit rights, value propositions) and technical
(standards, user interfaces, scalability, interoperability, ect.) aspects of creating
a successful environment around furthering the creation of open geodata.  A technical
architecture allowing maximum re-use of existing open source software in
collaboration will be proposed, along with conjecture on different forms of social
organizing around architectures of participation for geospatial data.  I hope to make
the session an interactive discussion, to get ideas flowing on how the Open Source
GeoSpatial community can take a lead role in bringing the open source process to geodata.

The goal of many FOSS4G deployments, and indeed development efforts, are the creation
of Spatial Data Infrastructures. SDIs are intended to be hierarchical - with activity
devolved down to the lowest level, and the "whole being greater than the sum of the
parts". In practive this is largely unrealised, and the tools are not yet good enough
to achieve it. This paper examines the fundamental requirements for SDIs to
interoperate, and focusses on the emerging methodologies for creating data standards
so that SDI components are worth connecting. Implemented examples using the Geoserver
platform will be provided, and an introduction will be provided to activities
developing data standards support within Geoserver and Geotools. Finally, a series of
guidelines and ideas for turning the "OpenSDI software stack" into a genuine SDI
toolkit will be explored, in advance of detailed requirements analysis to be expected
from an emerging alignment of global SDI architectures.

MapServer is an ideal mapping component for large and complex web-based geospatial
information systems. Its stability, scalability, platform independence and
variety of access methods allow for easy application integration and deployment.  
MapServer support for Open Standards and support for all major commercial and open
source database and GIS software.  This presentation will provide an overview of a
wide range of Army Corps of Engineer applications using MapServer for visualization,
and provide guidance and insight into succesful approaches to applying  open source,
standards based mapping in a large organization.

OGC's Web Processing Service draft paper 05-007r4 is defining the way, geoprocessing
operations should be offered over networks using Web Services. This paper introduce
one of this implemetation. The target of PyWPS (Python Web Processing Service) is to
offer GIS tools over web interface. PyWPS offers the user environment for writing own
parts of WPS - Processes, bringing funktionality of GIS GRASS and other geoprocessing
tools should be as easy as possible.

This project investigates the use of triangulations (TINs) to represent and compute
on very large terrains in GIS. While rasters are very popular and widely available
and supported, both in theory and in practice, TINs are not as well represented in
GIS packages, and in particular in GRASS. However, because the resolution of TINs is
not fixed, but adapts to the terrain, TINs have the potential of being more (space)
efficient than rasters, especially for very large terrains. 

We study the problem of finding a scalable approach for simplifying a raster into a
TIN that approximates it within a specified error threshold. By scalable here we mean
that the algorithm should work well as the size of the input raster becomes very
large, exceeding the amount of main memory available on the machine. Our module,
r.refine, is implemented in GRASS for use and experimentation by the GRASS community.
The approach can be extended to simplifying arbitrary point-data and thus could be
useful for processing LIDAR data. 

We present experimental results of r.refine showing that TINs of desired accuracy can
be obtained efficiently from (very large) rasters; and, despite all the overhead of
storing the topology, TINs are much more space-efficient than rasters of comparable
accuracy. For example, for error thresholds of 0.01%, a grid of xxx MB can be
represented as a TIN of xxx MB, which is a xxx reduction in size. Thus a raster of
xxGB can be represented as a TIN of XXMB. This space reduction of TINs is a reason to
believe that terrain analysis modules that operate on TINs would be much faster than
their counterparts on rasters.

OpenLayers is a BSD-licensed, pure JavaScript API for building map applications on
the Web. OpenLayers offers the ability to display a number of different types of data
(e.g. WMS, WFS, point data) in a dynamic, AJAX-driven, "slippy" mapping interface. We
will look at how to view data from OGC web services, GeoRSS feeds, ka-Map caches,
Google Maps, KML, and more in OpenLayers. We will also examine how the OpenLayers API
makes it easy to build new and slick mapping apps.

Two examples of web maps that use postgreSQL-PostGIS-Geoserver as the backend.

While the open source community has developed many powerful server-side tools for
distributing geographic data and maps on the web, many client interfaces are often
lacking, which can sour a user’s experience and interfere with the presentation of
the data.  In some cases the client interfaces offer too little functionality to
allow exploration of the data; in other cases there is so much functionality that the
user is overwhelmed.   Other concerns relate to the adoption of certain technologies.
 Will a user take the time to find and install the SVG plug-in?  Is JavaScript
enabled?   Does the user have Java on their machine?

Adobe Flash is one of the technologies a designer can choose to deliver geographic
data and maps.  Through the Flash scripting language, a high level of interactivity
can be combined with attractive graphics to provide a rich user experience.  Flash
can communicate with open source web map services via XML and display the requested
geographic data in both raster (WMS) and vector (WFS) formats.  The Flash “player”
plug-in is on 97% of internet-enabled computers worldwide.

We have used Flash for many web mapping tools; here we present two examples that use
PostGIS and Geoserver, both of which are open source, as the backend.  The
Pennsylvania Cancer Atlas displays choropleth maps, cumulative frequency plots, and
tables showing the rates of various cancers for the counties of Pennsylvania.  The
maps, plots, and tables are all dynamically linked.  The Soil Extent Mapping tool
shows the acreages and geographic extent of over 22,000 soil series in the United
States, and allows searches by series name and soil taxonomy.

We have developed a web application that allows people to sample a variety of
predefined spatial data sets at points specified by the user.  Data are available for
the 48 contiguous states and for Alaska.  The application uses PHP Mapscript,
PostGIS, and GDAL, among other tools.

Volunteer Life Saving organisations play a significant role in promoting community
awareness of water safety issues, and in the provision of patrolled areas featuring
rescue facilities and services at many beach locations. 

As noted with Armed Forces and Emergency Services Organisations, the use of GIS and
Command & Control software provides a most useful service for Real-Time and
Post-Event analysis and decision support. Commercial vendors offer a wide range of
software products to fulfil these service requirements, however, due to the mission
criticality addressed by their use, these software products typically attract
significant purchase and maintenance costs.  

The challenge of this project was to design and implement a software solution to
address Life Saving Victoria’s (LSV) core requirements in this application space
using Open Source Software (OSS).  

The base objective was to provide a “proof of concept” software platform to record
and collate State-wide incident and hazard information from Life Saving Clubs (LSCs),
regardless of location, into a centralised repository.  The subsequent objective is
to make the data available in a GIS style visual environment featuring supporting
context spatial information such as satellite imagery, vector GIS data, and Real-Time
weather information streamed by Bureau of Meteorology (BOM). 

The objective of distributing this supplementary feature rich information to each LSC
is to enhance corporate and local decision making, regardless of location or
computational resource. In addition to near real-time decision support, the
systematic collection of spatialised data is highly desirable at a corporate level
for Post-Event analysis with the ultimate business objective of optimising service
quality based on iterative learning.  

Due to the lack of standardised IT infrastructure at LSCs outside of LSV’s corporate
office, a server based solution interfaced using a Web client was considered to be
the most effective method of providing a functional service accessible by participant
clubs. It is therefore significant to note that the service is required to be
functional using heterogeneous, potentially obsolete, residential quality compute
infrastructure and a dial-up Internet services. 

The software platform constructed uses a three-tiered architecture consisting of a
spatialised database, a web service and a web application.  

The communication between the components is through Web Map Service (WMS) and
Transactional Web Feature Service (WFS-T) protocols, open standards set by the Open
Geospatial Consortium (OGC).  The data passed back and forth between the server and
the client is encoded as Geographic Markup Language (GML) which supports the
representation of complex geometries as well as point data. 

The middle tier web service is highly scalable as it is partly implemented as a J2EE
web-service.  This allows for the application to be deployed in multiple instances
for increased performance.  The application can make use of a wide variety of data
including satellite imagery, aerial photography, live weather information streamed as
a WFS, and vector GIS data.   

It is notable that the access to spatial databases is via WFS-T, since this
facilitates the insertion, deletion and updating of spatial data across the web in a
highly interoperable manner. Operationally this means that multiple users can
concurrently access the application from anywhere using a web client. By making use
of transactional operations in conjunction with a spatial database, new features can
be added via the web interface allowing the recording of incident and hazard
information from remote locations. 

All of the components deployed in this solution are Open Source Software. The use of
open systems and open standards facilitates simple integration of external data
sources and additional software components.  

The application is currently being trialled by several Victorian and one interstate
Life Saving Clubs.

The challenge of consolidating the Family Health strategy as an organising principle
of the Brazilian health system geared towards Primary Care is that of implementing it
in large urban centres. The Ministry of Health, has therefore, with the financial
backing of the World Bank, launched the Project for Expansion and Consolidation of
Family Health – PROESF in municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants.

With a view to monitoring the attainment of the goals that make up the Project’s
Lines of Action (modernisation of institutions; bringing the network of services up
to standard; strengthening of information systems; and Appraisal and Development of
Human Resources), it has opted for spatial monitoring of the indicators agreed on by
the municipalities, using a map server.

The analysis of the indicators agreed for the Family Health Consolidation Project, by
identifying the social and spatial background in these municipalities, will allow,
for the remote monitoring in real time of information from official data banks,
albeit in a preliminary fashion, as well as for editing or inclusion of additional
information, at the time and place that is nearest to the generation of the register.

The technological proposal of this instrument, administered through an internet site,
allows access to georeferenced information on-line, filtering the information using
thematic and spatial criteria and editing the thematic maps. The digital maps allow
for an overall view of the process of implantation of the project throughout the
national territory, providing evidence of strengths and weaknesses in attainment of
the goals of the PROESF, by bringing together, for example, the supply and production
of services, indicators relating to social vulnerability; low care coverage and so
forth, thereby significantly facilitating access to and interpretation of information
on the project in its geographical context.

C.8. Building the capacity of Public Health to respond to a globalised world.

MONITORAMENTO ESPACIAL DE INDICADORES DE SAÚDE EM GRANDES MUNICÍPIOS - O
GEORREFERENCIAMENTO DO PROESF

O desafio para consolidar a estratégia de Saúde da Família como organizadora do
Sistema de Saúde brasileiro orientado pela Atenção Primaria esta em implementá-la nos
grandes centros urbanos. Para isso, o Ministério da Saúde, com apoio financeiro do
Banco Mundial, lançou o Projeto de Expansão e Consolidação da Saúde da Família –
PROESF em municípios com mais de cem mil habitantes. 

A fim de monitorar o cumprimento das metas que compõe as Linhas de Ação do Projeto:
(Moderrnização Institucional; Adequação da Rede de Serviços; Fortalecimento dos
Sistemas de Informação e Avaliação e Desenvolvimento de Recursos Humanos), optou-se
pelo monitoramento espacial dos indicadores pactuados pelos municípios, através de um
servidor de mapas. 

A análise dos indicadores pactuados para o Projeto de Consolidação da Saúde da
Família identificando o contexto sócio-espacial destes municípios e suas regiões
permite, de forma remota, monitorar, em tempo real, informações dos bancos de dados
oficiais, ainda que preliminares, bem como editar ou incluir informações adicionais,
no momento e lugar mais próximo da geração do registro.

A proposta tecnológica deste instrumento, gerenciada através de um “site”, permite
acessar informações georeferenciadas pela Internet, filtrando-as a partir de
critérios temáticos e espaciais e editando-as em mapas temáticos. Os mapas digitais
permitem uma visão global do processo de implantação do projeto em todo o território
nacional, evidenciando fragilidades ou fortalezas para o cumprimento das metas do
PROESF, ao agregar , por exemplo, oferta  e produção de serviços, indicadores de
vulnerabilidade social; baixas coberturas assistenciais, etc , facilitando
significativamente o acesso e a interpretação das informações do projeto no seu
contexto geográfico.


C.8. Construindo capacidade de resposta da Saúde Pública para um mundo globalizado

Satellite remote sensing is widely used for phytoplankton distribution evaluation. 
For mapping of chlorophyll, multivariate calibration was applied to validate MODIS 
satellite data against automated fluorescence records of chlorophyll. The 
measurements were carried out with a ferrybox system on board the ferry Finnpartner 
with regular route from Travemünde to Helsinki (Alg@line data). The satellite data 
was received in HDF-EOS format. Data for each band was extracted with HDFLook-MODIS 
software and further analyzed together with chlorophyll data with GRASS-GIS versions 
6.1 and 5. Statistical analysis was done with PLS and PCR analysis with the R 
statistical software.
Partial least square (PLS) regression analysis was used to validate chlorophyll 
records against 1 km resolution bands. Satellite data was received from Sodankylä 
Station, Finland and NASA GES Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) Data Pool 
through the Internet. The production of daily maps is automated with shell scripts 
and published in the Internet on www.balticseaportal.fi.

This paper will cover the implementation, features, and applications of GeoPress, and
how it serves the larger purpose of allowing users to create their own geodata.
GeoPress is being developed to demonstrate and promote the GeoRSS standard.

A common problem in the online cartography is that currently available tools do not
provide an easy way for people to quickly and easily produce and consume geodata.
Additionally, blogging is an incredibly increasing means for people to generate
content and attach various metadata. This paper discusses the implementation and use
of a tool that enables bloggers to quickly add geodata to their blog posts. 

GeoPress is a Wordpress plugin that provides address geocoding, GPX track upload, and
a clickable map interface to allow a Wordpress user to mark locations, tracks, and
areas and add this information to a
blog post. Using such a tool, users can quickly create geodata describing trips,
tours, favorite locales, photos, and stories.

Furthermore, by then generating a standardized GeoRSS feed from their blog, users
then enable other services such as Mapufacture or Yahoo!, to consume, map, and
aggregate this geodata. GeoPress itself is also able to consume GeoRSS feeds, which
can then be added to a users blog, or used to mark blog posts. Enabling tools such as
GeoPress will fill the world with freely available geographic information.

The most time consuming, and poorly managed part of any GIS system is still the
management and maintenance of core data sets. This takes valuable time and money away
from analysis activities, reducing the overall productivity of the endeavor. The MIT
Urban Information Systems group is taking a fresh look at the way spatial data is
distributed, updated and shared by developing a middle tier of services on top of the
traditional relational database that explicitly separates end-user modifications from
a core, shared data set.

This enables us to imagine systems where different user communities can use the same
core data set, but create different visions of the "truth" by making local
modifications, without breaking the sharing mechanism. If desired, these
modifications can be shared with others, in whole or in part, and new data sets can
be built upon those changes. All this is very "cheap" to implement, as the system
never breaks the ability for the original data set to be synchronized with its source.

The most time consuming, and poorly managed part of any GIS system is still the
management and maintenance of core data sets. This takes valuable time and money away
from analysis activities, reducing the overall productivity of the endeavor. The MIT
Urban Information Systems group is taking a fresh look at the way spatial data is
distributed, updated and shared by developing a middle tier of services on top of the
traditional relational database that explicitly separates end-user modifications from
a core, shared data set. 

This architecture not only allows the core data set to be updated without affecting
third-party changes, but also opens up new possibilities for fine-grained control of
those modifications. Now we can imagine systems where different user communities can
use the same core data set, but create different visions of the "truth" by making
local modifications, without breaking the sharing mechanism. If desired, these
modifications can be shared with others, in whole or in part, and new data sets can
be built upon those changes. All this is very "cheap" to implement, as the system
never breaks the ability for the original data set to be synchronized with its source. 

The system is being licensed under an open source license, and is built upon PostGIS,
MapServer and PHP.

"The weakness of current cartography is its poor representation of time. The surface
of the earth is treated as a static thing." (Anselm Hook)

As the world accelerates towards an uncertain future, and gathers more and more data
in its past, the tools for visualising space AND time are in short supply. There are
numerous experiments, but little solid support in tools or data structures for
representing the 4th dimension (when we're still getting used to the 3rd dimension in
GIS).

We should be able to rewind continental drift to Pangea, track shifting political
boundaries, monitor rapid environmental change and urban sprawl.

I will survey the current state of support for Time in Geo (from WMS Time Series
Support in Mapbuilder, to GeoRSS time navigation in worldKit, to BBC Interactive Time
Maps, and hacks morphing the London Tube Map to journey duration, to .. research in
progress), sketch out the possibilities, and put forward that the built-in temporal
aspects of GeoRSS may be the key to wider application of Time to GIS.

GRASS GIS has prooven to be a solid system for 
handling and analysis of surface data of features on Earth.
Since GRASS is Free Software, the freedom to use, 
distribute, study and modify it allowed to implement 
it into an efficient working environment for supporting 
planetary science research activities.  The work has been 
focused on the development of procedures to handle reference 
systems used in planetary mapping as well as providing planetary 
bodies' ellipsoidal parameters into GRASS, following
international research institutions conventions and 
recommendations.  The data from planetary science archives 
can then be organized in GRASS maps in their correct 
projection and reference system. 
The practical use of GRASS in planetary mapping is presented
with an analysis of geologic structures of planet Mars, 
using multispectral imagery and topographic data from different NASA 
missions and from ESA's Mars Express.

This study extends the possibilities of a general application model, which has been 
successfully applied to natural complex systems simulation, this model is obtained 
merging elements from evolutionary computing and object-oriented paradigms. The 
extended model, which in before papers was called Object-Oriented Genetic Model 
(OOGM), takes advantage of new features in evolutionary computing modeling. This 
model shows a novel representation method of the objects composing the studied 
system and their evolution rules. These objects become evolvable, in the meaning 
that they possess the ability to depict dynamics or evolutionary processes in the 
system. Besides, it is shown that this integration let us take advantage of the 
holistic and evolutionary paradigms, simulating static and dynamic complexity, 
respectively. Basically it ist shown in this paper the initial phase of a extended 
application of this model for the recognition of geoforms in glacials, mainly 
moraines, with a support of Grass 6.0.2 possibilities. The model allows 
additionally a expansion to others very complex dynamic problems in glaciology 
which are also discussed.

Information plays a basic role in decision making processes. In particular in the
emergency management and SAR (Search and Rescue) operations, it is extremely
important to take into account and use correctly as much information as possible to
maximize the possibility of making the right decisions. Quite often decision makers
do not consider all the available information. Moreover, cognitive biases cause
several errors in the decision making process. These are some of the reasons that
justify the effort for trying to build a decision support system, based on a
normative approach to the decision-making, to manage mountain missing person search.
Since cognitive biases influence the way the rescue squads act, and the environment
affects the way a lost person thinks and moves, it is possible to start the design of
a decision support system by trying to evaluate in a combined way both environmental
and individual variables. The more natural and logical way to manage environmental
information, i.e. geographical data, is to use GIS (Geographic Information Systems),
while the best way to model the behavior of lost people is to study the way they
think and act. The implementation in a GIS allows the integration and the management
of different kind of information.
The maximum speed of a missing subject is evaluated on the base of physiological
variables and terrain features and it is used to evaluate the maximum reachable
extent, thus defining the area the missing person can be found in. A map is built
where isochronous lines are drawn around the last known position, defining the
maximal search area for a given time. The model takes into account the morphological
features of the searching area, the presence of physical obstructions to the lost
person walk as well as preferential paths and some simple physiological parameters.
The morphological parameters used are: height, terrain slope, vegetation density and
the ground unevenness. Age, sex and training level of the subject are considered as
physiological parameters. Visibility is another relevant parameter, accounting for
the influence of light and darkness on the subject motion. Another important
parameter that can strongly influence the lost person path is the presence of
preferential paths or obstacles. It is possible to consider rivers as well as
bridges, roads and mountain paths as elements influencing the velocity the lost
person can or can not achieve.
The available power is evaluated from the physiological parameters and matched
against the energy cost required from the terrain features. In this way it will be
possible to separate the effects of terrain features from missing person's
parameters, making this approach more effective, since a map of the energy required
to travel in an area can be evaluated in advance.
The model has been tuned on the few data available in literature and on walk speed
estimates provided by professional mountain guides and by the “Aiut Alpin Dolomites”
rescue corp. A GPS campaign has been carried out to collect data to verify the
results and the reliability of the model. A sensibility analysis has also been
performed to evaluate the role and the relative influence of the different parameters
of the model.
A GRASS module implementing the model has been built and will be released soon.
Current developments include the development of a full DBMS approach, where all data,
both semantic and cartographic, are stored in a spatial database. A web interface
will be used both to feed the DBMS and run the model and to browse the model output
and the database.

It is desirable to process 2D square celled raster data with potentially millions of
rows and columns on a modern desktop computer. Grids was developed as a package for
handling the processing of raster data and was based on some early work on GeoTools. 

Keeping track of how much memory is being used is not straightforward in Java.
However, due to the try and catch method for dealing with errors and excpetions,
OutOfMemoryErrors can be caught and handled. In Grids when an OutOfMemoryError is
encountered a reserve memory is used to activate swap operations to free up space
required for the method that failed. Developing methods to process efficiently
requires organising where the failure due to encountering an OutOfMemoryError will be
dealt with.
Grids 1.0 beta was open sourced in March 2005 although various versions were
distributed for research collaborations prior to this date. The library was made
available on the World Wide Web at the following URL:
http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/people/a.turner/src/andyt/java/grids/
Although development has slowed, releases have continued to be made. Many lessons
have been learned in developing this resource. It is useful for what it does, but the
way it operates may have serious implications for other software that incorporates
it. For issues of long term sustainability an effort is needed to open up the
development of the resource. If done well, the capabilities can be maintained and the
various bugs that lie within can be identified and dealt with. Additionally much can
be done to add to this platform. This is about exploring the possibilities, sharing
experiences, learning from each other and future collaboration.

In processing raster data there can be multiple inputs and outputs. The simplest
operations, especially with regard handling OutOfMemoryErrors, affect just one raster
or grid. The OutOfMemoryError handling is more complex when there are multiple inputs
and multiple outputs. This contribution aims to explain some of the data structures
and OutOfMemoryError management. Additionally and perhaps more importantly, it
considers the future of this open source Java library.

GDAL/OGR, libral, and GTK+ libraries were linked on both the level of C code and on
the Perl interface level. The resulting system has been used with other software for
creating web services, developing graphical desktop tools, and writing analytical
scripts. The other software that was used include, e.g., apache, mod_perl, glade-2,
and PDL::NetCDF. The system has been compiled on a Linux/GNU system and on
Windows/MinGW. The system can be further extended and/or linked to other systems
either through the use of C binding code or on the Perl level. There are plans to use
the Cairo 2D graphics library for rendering geospatial data. Some experiments have
been done in creating networks from OGR data using the Graph module available at CPAN.

GDAL is the well-known geospatial data abstraction layer library, which offers
uniform access to most raster data. OGR is a similar library for vector data. Libral
is a fast raster algebra library. Within libral there is also a simple library for
rendering rasters and vectors on a pixel buffer. GTK+ is a multi-platform toolkit for
creating graphical user interfaces. GDAL/OGR, libral, and GTK+ all have an existing
Perl interfaces. Data exchange between these three libraries have been arranged in
the C code. Libral rasters can be created from GDAL datasets and libral vectors can
be created from OGR datasets. The pixel buffer, that libral uses, can be used to
create GDK pixbufs. GDK is the part of GTK, which interfaces to the graphics
subsystem of the host OS. The Geo::GDAL Perl module, which is a part of the GDAL/OGR
distribution, provides basic Perl-based access to geospatial data and to the
functionality in GDAL, OGR, and libraries that have been linked to them like GEOS.
The Perl modules, Geo::Raster and Geo::Vector, add the functionality of libral,
rasterization and vectorization support, and support for using the data in a
graphical user interface. A set of Perl modules in the namespace Gtk2::Ex::Geo
provide basic tools, i.e., widgets and dialog boxes, for building geospatial
graphical applications. The integrated system currently offers a rudimentary platform
for building research and end-user applications besides the simple data viewer that
is provided as a test of the Gtk2::Ex::Geo package.

This contribution will present a new Geographical Exploration System, called 
GRIFINOR, developed at the Center for 3DGI at Aalborg University. Like other GESs 
(Nasa World Wind, Google Earth...) it provides a three-dimensional, interactive 
representation of the Earth, through the Internet. The presentation will focus on 
the original aspects of this open source GES, and on its potential applications. 
GRIFINOR is not currently thought of as an end user product, but more as a platform 
for applications. It uses TIN as a data structure, which can be used for analytical 
applications and geometrical modeling, building the foundations for a true 3D GIS. 
The programming language used (Java) also gives GRIFINOR many interesting features. 
Another main originality of GRIFINOR is its peer-to-peer decentralized structure, 
that allows to share and visualize data over the network without passing though a 
central server. Attendants to this presentation will have the opportunity to see 
the beta version of GRIFINOR, working over the Internet. More information is 
available on www.grifinor.net.

This contribution will present a new Geographical Exploration System, called 
GRIFINOR, developed at the Center for 3DGI at Aalborg University. Like other GESs 
(Nasa World Wind, Google Earth...) it provides a three-dimensional, interactive 
representation of the Earth (a global model-map), through the Internet. The 
presentation will focus on the original aspects of this open source GES, and on its 
potential applications. 
GRIFINOR is not currently thought of as an end user product, but more as a platform 
for applications. It focuses on 3D objects and analytical applications. The data 
referencing is based on a geocentric coordinate system. GRIFINOR's data structure 
is based on a Triangulated Irregular Network, which can be used for analytical 
applications and geometrical modeling. This offers a great potential for GRIFINOR 
to be not only a visualization tool, but also an analytical tool, building the 
foundations for a true 3D GIS. 
GRIFINOR is programmed in Java. It allows to start the viewer directly from a web 
page and to avoid tedious installation and update processes. The GRIFINOR platform 
also takes advantage from the fact that Java is an object-oriented language. Each 
feature in the model-map is treated as an object from a programming point of view. 
This offers a great potential for the communication between the model-map and 
future applications. 
Another main difference with other GESs is that GRIFINOR is a decentralized system. 
The design is such that both client and server components are tightly coupled. This 
means that a GRIFINOR instance can behave as both client and server, which allows 
to build a peer-to-peer network. Any users with a GRIFINOR instance on  their 
computers can use it to visualize their own data, and share their model map over 
the Internet, without passing through a central server. 
This system provides a platform for applications in many different fields, 
including urban planning and development, management for local communities, 
tourism, gaming, environmental management ...
The source code is available under the LGPL license. GRIFINOR is at the moment 
functional on a client-server mode. Attendants to this presentation will have the 
opportunity to see the beta version of GRIFINOR, working over the Internet. More 
information is available on www.grifinor.net.

Introduction
	Recently, making the hazard map, the region community map and etc by collaborative work with 
neighboring residents is popularly practiced as one of the approaches of the anticrime activity and town 
planning in our country. So, various regional information-sharing (neighborhood reputation restaurant, 
historic site spot and etc...) is proceeded. In this case, to support the development of the region information 
collecting and sharing system through the Net will provide effective method for neighboring residents. 
However, it is very difficult for the participation resident to construct the tool of the information management 
combined with map information such as GIS technology. Because, to develop the the mapping  tool such as 
WebGIS require high cost for software purchases and annual maintenance as well as technical expertness and 
know-how.
	
Poupose
	With these points as  background, in this study, we provide commuication tools for collecting and 
sharing various regional information using FOSS WebGIS and DBMS - MapServer and PostgreSQL-.
	
Contents
	Users have access to advanced mapping systems as GIS client on the Net using MapServer. And  the 
digital camera and GPS locator-equipped mobile-phone are combined as a data input and a transmission 
device from the outside. The new POI(Point-Of-Interetst) data as regional information and photographic 
image of current situation that were collected by users with mobile-phone in hand are sent to the database 
server through the e-mail and these data are displayed on the GIS map in real-time.
		
Conclusion
	We can be achieved some merits follow through the development of the communication tools baed on 
FOSS. 1. The neighboring residents collecs the latest information change from day to day , and they can be 
shared on the Net. 2. This communication tools can be expected to lead to the community strengthening in 
the region as one of the new media. 3. GIS software introduce and maintenance cost reduction for users.

Marine biodiversity is responsible in large part for the earth natural wealth. This 
importance can be assured by the fisheries and tourism industries, whilst it 
provide important ecosystems services, such as protection of the coast and 
absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, the marine biodiversity 
has been declining through the centuries mainly due to human activities. Despite 
the global research efforts to understand ocean’s biodiversity, they still lack an 
integrated and systemic approach, resulting in isolated data and perceptions of the 
real impact of human activities. 

The construction of knowledge about biodiversity is a cooperative product. Its 
study and conservation efforts require a multi and interdisciplinary approach 
(CANHOS et al., 2004). Therefore, any attempt to integrated data from different 
sources requires data standards definitions, such as proper metadata to 
characterize the environment, means of data sampling, processing, exchange and 
integration. Besides setting standards, it also requires Information Technology – 
IT tolls to allow virtual integration of distinct data sets and potential analysis 
to build up knowledge. Finally, since it is a cooperative product, distributed 
access is the key issue for setting a strong collaborative network between 
researchers and institutions. In other words, everyone should benefit for sharing 
data and information.

Ongoing international efforts to integrate data from different projects and 
monitoring programs have been focused in the potential benefits from Information 
Technology, especially those based on the World Wide Web. This is the case of UNEP 
World Conservation Monitoring Centre  and its IMAPS (Centre’s Interactive Map 
Service) initiative; OBIS-SEAMAP  (Ocean Biogeographic Information System - Spatial 
Ecological Analysis of Megavertebrate Populations); ReefBASE  (Global Information 
System on Coral Reefs). These three examples embrace global scale, whereas others 
follow country limits, such as BERDS  (Biodiversity and Environmental Resource Data 
System) from Belize).

Despite the significant data and information that has been produced for the past 
thirty years, the efforts towards such IT applications to integrate and visualize 
biodiversity data in Brazil are still shy. The Centro de Referência em Informação 
Ambiental – CRIA  is one of the ongoing initiatives. The Marine Mammals Monitoring 
System (SIMMAM ) is a recent attempt to integrate marine mammals’ data that is well 
fragmented in the hands of institutions and researchers. In addition to the 
official support of the Brazilian Environmental Agency, the project will receive in 
2006 financial resources from PETROBRAS to conduce a thorough review of 
publications and public onboard observers’ registers from sismic operation of oil 
industry. These data will be eventually added to the system.

A few marine conservation projects, such as TAMAR, BALEIA FRANCA, BALEIA JUBARTE, 
and ALBATROZ are investing part of its efforts in the construction of information 
systems to handle the significant amount of data that has been produced in the past 
years. They are conscious of the limitations and risks of having data in separate 
spreadsheet, and the benefits of having a database. The important aspect of it is 
that they already see the perspective of data integration, therefore they are 
seeking solutions that a based in the Web. The TAMAR Project is an example. Its 
DBASE database which holds twenty five years of data sampling will be migrated to a 
web based information systems that include data visualization via WebGIS and web 
services for interoperability. The system will be fully operational by June/2006 .  
Taking the Brazilian scenario as an opportunity, this project proposes the 
development of a framework for an Internet based Brazilian Marine Biodiversity 
Observatory - OBBIM. This objective is supported by SIMMAM project itself, plus 
partners such as TAMAR and BALEIA FRANCA. In a long run it is expected that other 
projects adhere to the Observatory objectives.

In general terms, the observatory should support international standards for 
metadata and data exchange, such as XML, WMS and WFS. It should include access to 
different data sources through web services, integration and geospatial support to 
foster oceanographic research community interaction and data exchange. It also must 
provide open source architecture to reduce maintenance costs.

The Observatory conceptual framework has been constructed upon international 
similar experiences, and will be operational for tests from june 2006.

Panel discussion with Mr. Westervelt, Schuyler, Warmerdam, Ramsey,
Mcilhagga, Tiemann and Mr. Mitchell as moderator