EU funded project PublicaMundi has set out to enhance CKAN, the well known, widely used data catalogue, with advanced geospatial capabilities. Several leading FOSS geospatial tools and libraries are extended and integrated in CKAN, slowly making open geospatial data first-class citizens. The collective effort of the FOSS GIS community is the driving force behind PublicaMundi.

Now PublicaMundi has decided to have their next project meeting aligned with FOSS4G-Europe, (July 21-22 in Bremen) and become a proud sponsor of FOSS4G-Europe.

For two PublicaMundi collaborators this is particularly convenient: Gerald Fenoy and Peter Baumann both are on the organizing committee board of FOSS4G-Europe. Increasingly, FOSS4G-Europe is becoming a focal point for European events, and even beyond Europe. For the entire PublicaMundi consortium, FOSS4G-Europe will be a great opportunity to collect feedback from developers, gauge interest, explore collaborations, and showcase our work. Come and meet us at our stand!

FOSS4G-Europe is the annual gathering of European Open Source Geospatial Developers, Users and Leaders – at Jacobs University Bremen in the heart of Europe, 15th to 17th of July. A free and open source conference and exhibition that offers geospatial communities, research groups and businesses a place to meet, share ideas and have fun.

This year’s conference is under the motto “Independent Innovation for INSPIRE and Big Data“, characterizing the independence of the Free and Open Source movement from commercial product interest, and the power of innovation which the worldwide networks of FOSS enthusiasts unleashes. This energy is essential for mastering the challenges we are facing. Among the many ones ahead of us two stand out in particular.

Stay tuned, more news under FOSS4G-Europe.

Conquering Big Data means: get the code to the data. The Big Data Analytics engine of PublicaMundi, rasdaman, now has been selected to drive this to the extreme. It will be installed on board a satellite so that geo analytics can be performed right when the images are acquired.

On the 16th of January the European Space Agency (ESA) has confirmed selection of a Big Data engine, developed at Jacobs University Bremen in collaboration with a small hi-tech company, to go on board of a satellite. Goal is to demonstrate how satellites can process data on board and participate in planet-wide analytics networks.

Satellite imagery is indispensable for rapid response to disasters such as floods and wildfires, but also for everyday’s governmental tasks, like land use monitoring: who is farming what and how much? However, data from a satellite take a long journey: when the satellite is flying over a ground station, it attempts to download as much of the imagery taken as possible. That is passed on to some data center which undertakes a lot of processing, puts the resulting products into its archive, and eventually publishes them. Not always is it easy for users to find the needle, that is: those data they are interested in, from the resulting haystack of data.

Researchers at Jacobs University want to change this now, allowing regular users to get data directly from the source. To this end, this image source, the satellite, will be instrumented to allow flexible processing and filtering of data on board. This is accomplished by the rasdaman system (“raster data manager”), an innovative analytics engine specialized on science and engineering data which is already in operation internationally, among others at NASA Ames and ESA. This effort is not just a one-time endeavour: insights gained can help to save substantial amounts of electrical energy in computers on the planet in future.

In ESA’s OPS-SAT project, a so-called CubeSat will be launched into an earth orbit. A CubeSat is a small, low-cost satellite which can be quickly and flexibly assembled for different configurations and tasks. CubeSats have been invented by US universities to overcome the high costs and time it takes to launch satellites, effectively hindering them from doing space research. While traditional remote sensing satellites cost hundreds of millions of Euros and have development times of a decade and more, CubeSats can be flexibly adapted to new experiments and launched with moderate costs. Today, the final specification of the satellite has been released for review by the Jacobs software engineers. Launch of OPS-SAT is foreseen for early 2016.

The OPS-SAT model hosts a Linux PC, camera, and GPS so that images and their position on earth can be recorded, processed, and transmitted to earth. Accessing the satellite will be done through open standards well known by geo service providers on Earth, so that no special programs are needed; any regular Web browser is sufficient. Therefore, the researchers see this as a contribution towards democratizing data access: on principle will allow anybody to access such a service via Internet – neither expensive receiving stations, nor huge data centers will be needed.

PublicaMundi is an FP7 project with the aim to democratize open geospatial data publishing and reuse, making easier for data publishers to share and for developers to discover and reuse data. And to accomplish this goal, we need your help!

The PublicaMundi GeoDataCamp is an invitational event focused on developers and data publishers:

• Developers. Please join us if you develop web/mobile applications with open geospatial data. We will present you early versions of our tools, open data APIs and mapping framework. You will be able to experiment, learn, and give us your honest feedback and insights.

• Data Publishers. If you work in the public sector and are involved in open data publishing, come and see how we will make your work easier. We will train you in open geospatial data publishing, and guide you in publishing your own data.

As seats are limited, we are looking for committed participants, willing to spend quality time with the PublicaMundi team! If you are interested, please register below. We will notify you by 15thof May, with the final schedule and venue details.

Remember to bring your own laptop – we will take care of the coffee! Also, if you are a data publisher, why don’t you bring your own data!

PublicaMundi GeoDataCamp is organized under the premises of INNOVATHENS, the Cluster of Innovation and Entrepreneurship established by the City of Athens.

Facts

• When: Friday, 30th May 2014, 18:00 – 21:00

• Where: Technopolis of the City of Athens, Building INNOVATHENS (Aeriofulakio 2), Pireos 100, Gazi

• Programme

PublicaMundi aims to make open geospatial data easier to publish, view, and reuse. Regardless of how you are involved in the open data life-cycle, we would like to hear your thoughts.

Your responses, ideas, and insights can help us devise faster, more efficient ways to use and reuse open geospatial data.

There are three surveys available for you to complete, depending on your role:

• Users of open data (you are using open data or you are interested in open knowledge)

• Publishers of open data (you are publishing open data or operate an open data catalogue)

• Developers (you develop applications – with or without open data)

Remember that if you have more than one role (e.g. publisher and developer) you can always complete more than one survey.

Thank you for your time!