Between the Poles

Formation of the Open Web Foundation

Last week at OSCON, David Recordon gave a presentation in which he announced the creation of the Open Web Foundation. The Open Web Foundation appears to be modeled on the Apache Software Foundation, with the objective of  "building a lightweight framework to help communities deal with the legal requirements necessary to create successful and widely adopted specification."

"The foundation is trying to break the trend of creating separate foundations for each specification, coming out of the realization that we could come together and generalize our efforts. The details regarding membership, governance, sponsorship, and intellectual property rights will be posted for public review and feedback in the following weeks."

"As we work out the fine details of the foundation, we invite and encourage individuals to come and join the discussion. To ask questions please visit our Q&A page. You are also invited to join the community and discuss ideas and specifications you would like to see developed within the foundation."

Google Encouraging Governments to Make Geospatial Data Available on Google Earth: Government of BC First In Canada

According to a Vancouver Sun article , British Columbia Agriculture and Lands Minister Stan Hagen announced that GeoBC will provide access to the province’s geographic database on Google so that you can access this database either at the GeoBC web site or from Google Earth.  GeoBC intends to have 200 themes posted by Autumn and 600 themes by early 2009.  Apparently British Columbia is the the first government in Canada to make its data available on Google. 

Making government geospatial data available via Google Earth is a major initiative of Google's.  I chatted with Michael Jones, chief technologist of Google Earth, at a recent government event in Sacramento, and he is encouraging all governments to make their geospatial data available via Google Earth including not just natural and cultural resource data, but property parcel files (cadastres).

Microsoft Becomes Apache Sponsor

The world really is changing.  According to a report in InformationWeek Microsoft has become a sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation .  Microsoft is also planning to make more of its own code available to the open source community including protocols in the Communications Protocol Program.  These are going to put under the Open Specification Promise by which Microsoft guarantees freedom from any patent claims from Microsoft.

Also apparently Microsoft is contributing an ADOdb patch which enables support for SQL Server through a new 'native driver for PHP' built by the MS SQL Server team.

Directions Magazine Podcast on the FDO API: Asset Intelligence and Visualization – The Convergence of CAD and GIS

Directions Magazine has just released a Podcast on the FDO API which includes commentary from David Kingsbury, Pete Southwood, and myself on how FDO, which is open source and available on the FDO OSGEO Web site, helps local governments, utilities, and telecommunications firms to enable a single point of truth, eliminate as-built backlogs, reduce paper flow, and streamline the flow of engineering design information.

GeoWeb:National Critical Infrastructure Data Models, Convergence, and Open Source GIS Servers

Some sessions that some of my colleagues and I are involved with at GeoWeb Wednesday are

Wed 10:45 National Critical Infrastructure Data Models: Implications for Local Government and Utilities
Panel: Paula Rojas, CGDI Content Coordinator, GeoConnections / GéoConnexions; Ed Riegelmann, VP, Global Director, Enterprise Spatial Solutions, CH2M HILL; Carsten Roensdorf, Principal Data Consultant, Ordnance Survey; James Fee, GIS Developer, RSP Architects.; and Clemens Portele, Consultant and Analyst, Interactive Instrumentsb
Moderator: Geoff Zeiss

Federal Governments in the US and Canada are developing data models for the exchange of data about critical infrastructure for emergency planning, security, and first response. Outside of government, organizations such as LandXML.org, Open Geospatial Consortium, International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI), Multispeak.org, and IEC have adopted domain specific open standards for data exchange such as LandXML, GML, IFC, Multispeak, and CIM, that are widely implemented by local governments, industry, and utilities. This panel will discuss the proposed government data models, how they related to open standards, and their implications for local government.

Wed 14:45 Convergence Management: Thriving in an Era of Global Climate Change, Aging Infrastructure, and Shrinking Workforce
Geoff Zeiss

Compared to the low cost airline industry, the banking industry, and the automobile manufacturing industry, where IT has dramatically reduced costs by streamlining operations, in some sectors IT has hardly begun to scratch the surface.  But there are signs that external factors such as shrinking workforce, sustainability, and aging infrastructure are forcing a change.  A fundamental problem in organizations responsible for maintaining network infrastructure is that the flow of essential infrastructure data is inhibited by islands of information, inefficient paper-based information flow, and redundant data and processes.  Typical symptoms are as-built backlogs which can extend to years, paper-based business processes that inhibit data quality, and declining productivity.  Convergence offers solutions that can dramatically improve information flow and business processes by reducing paper flow, eliminating redundant data, and enabling the collective intelligence.

Wed 17:10 A Look at Three Open Source GIS Servers: GeoServer, MapGuide, and MapServer
Panel: Robert Bray, Engineer, Autodesk; Justin Deoliveira, Engineer, The Open Planning Project; and Paul Ramsey, Engineer, Clever Elephant
Moderator: Michael Gerlek, Software Architect, LizardTech, Inc.

Free and Open Source software continues to be a key part of today’s GIS infrastructures, and servers are perhaps the most prominent part of such an open spatial data infrastructure. This presentation will introduce GeoServer, one of the major open source servers available today. The presentation will cover the server’s particular strengths, its support for OGC interfaces and other interop/compatibility features, the depth and strength of its user base and developer base, and more.

OSCON: Creating Location Aware Web 2.0 Applications on an Open Source Platform

Neal Niemiec and I will be giving an afternoon hands-on lab today on open source geospatial at OSCON in Portland.  The last time we looked 60 people had signed up for this hands-on lab.  What we try to achieve in the lab is for everyone who brings his/her own  notebook, to install from a DVD we provide all the software required for the lab, and then to develop a location aware web application.    Our goal is that everyone leaves with a running web application they have built on an open source platform. 

It is interesting that many of the people who come to these labs are not developers.  For example, at Where 2.0 where over 80 people attended the lab, the group was pretty evenly split between developers and non-developers.

GeoWeb 2008 Vancouver: Mapguide Open Source brings together CAD, GIS and BIM Technologies

On the first day of GeoWeb 2008, Neal Niemiec gave a hands-on afternoon lab on integrating CAD, GIS and BIM technologies on an open source platform, MapGuide Open Source and FDO.  Neal included an introduction to BIM as well as IFC, CityGML, DWF and KML, and participants built an application that integrated CAD, GIS and BIM models.  Like the first lab that Neal, Paul Spencer and I gave last year at GeoWeb on open source geospatial, Neal had a full house - there wasn't an empty seat.  This is indicative of the level of interest there is in both topics, open source geospatial and BIM/CAD/GIS integration.

Tomorow, Neal and I will be giving a hands-on lab on Creating location aware web 2.0 applications on an open source platform at OSCON in Portland.  OSCON is a general open source event and not specifically geospatial, but the last time we checked, 60 people had signed up for this lab which is really quite amazing.  Last year at OSCON I gave a presentation about open source geospatial and I was really rather surprised and gratified when about 30 people showed up for this.  Hence the lab this year.  To me this suggests that there is significant and growing awareness of open source geospatial in the general open source community.

GeoBrazil/GeoBrasil: CAD, BIM, GIS Convergence

I have attended GeoBrazil almost every year since 2003.  This year it was part of Geo Summit Latin America 2008 , together with three other geospatial related conference Geo Oleo e Gas, Geo Cidades, and ExpoGPS.

GeoBrazil is a combined trade show and conference.  It is always well organized and includes most of the important geospatial vendors and service providers in Brazil.  This year I believe that about 3 000 attendees participated.

CAD/BIM/GIS Integration

One of the things I like about GeoBrazil is that they always organize very interesting panel discussions on topics that are currently high on the charts in the geospatial world.  The panel participants often include international as well as Brazilian speakers, and when they include international speakers they arrange for simultaneous translation, Portuguese and English.  This year Eduardo Francisco organized and moderated a panel discussion on CAD/BIM/GIS - Integrated Solutions. The presenters were myself, Wolmar Sabino, and Salvio Lerner.  I was quite amazed by the size of the audience.  To me it was indicative of the tremendous interest that there is in this area, even though BIM, the acronym and the methodology, is still relatively new to most geospatial folks.  Of course at a geospatial conference like this everybody is familiar with CAD and GIS, and CAD/GIS integration is not a new topic, but BIM/CAD/GIS integration appears to be something that most geospatial people have at least heard enough about to be motivated to attend a discussion like this one at GeoBrazil.

World Construction Output

One of the readers of this blog Mike Smith asked about the source of the total value of world construction that I've been using.  That peaked my interest and I've done a further bit of research and found a better report originating with the University of Reading (Roger Flanagan and Carol Jewell).  Their estimate of the total 2006 construction output worldwide is $4.6 trillion in Jan 2007 US$.   They also provide regional estimates for different parts of the world.  The chart can be found in McGraw Hill Construction's Interoperability in the Construction Industry.