Dear Valued Customers and Subscribers,
GeoCat Newsletter is back finally! It has been a while for our newsletter of the month. We hope that you had a great summer holiday with the company, family and friends. As for GeoCat team, we all have had perfect summer holidays and indeed many interesting news to tell about the last three months. Once more, we are back with some exciting topics swe would like to share with you related to Open Data, Linked Data, Free and Open Source Software as well as our lastest activities. These stories will give you an insight into selected projects we are working on and conferences that we attended as well as new developments in GeoNetwork Opensource , GeoCat products (GeoCat Bridge and GeoCat Live). We hope you do enjoy this newsletter and please do not hesitate to contact us for further information on these, or any other topics.
On behalf of the GeoCat team,
Jeroen Ticheler
In this Newsletter:
|
|
Geodata Portal for The Swedish SDI
GeoCat BV has been working with MetaGIS, a Swedish GIS company owned by Michael Östling, to develop the new version of the Geodata portal for the Swedish SDI.
The main requirement of the new catalog was to include some modern development frameworks, which could be easily adapted to fit the needs of ITab and iPad. Another requirement was to have complete freedom in designing a GUI that matches the look & feel of the main website: Geodata.se
The current version of the Swedish SDI has a custom user interface that interacts with GeoNetwork backend using the GeoNetwork API.
GeoNetwork 3 user interface has been redesigned to support the development of custom user interfaces with AngularJS/Bootstrap. GeoNetwork also exposes an API which allows interacting with the GeoNetwork backend, from any UI.
To support the new version of the Swedish Geodataportal, a highly customized user interface has been developed for GeoNetwork 3.0. This affects the public search and the metadata editor, no longer an independent application.
All the newly developed features, which could be interesting for GeoNetwork users, will be contributed in the trunk of the project so that they are available in future releases.
The project will be released during the starting of 2017.
|
|
Empowering Citizen Science through Free and Open Source GIS
"Open Geospatial Data, Software and Standards" is an academics journal from the Springer publishing company, which focuses mostly on technologies and applications related to open geo-data.
On the 23rd of July, it released an article authored by Maria Arias de Reyna and Joana Simoes, both from GeoCat. The article in question, "Empowering citizen science through free and open source GIS", describes the COBWEB framework, *designed in order to support a collaborative citizen science environment*. COBWEB (Citizen Observatory Web) is an European research project, whose main objective is to facilitate citizen participation in environmental monitoring and governance, through a collaborative software platform.
Unlike other articles previously published about COBWEB (1.A Generic Infrastructure Platform to Facilitate the Collection of Citizen Science data for Environmental Monitoring; 2. A BPMN solution for chaining OGC services to quality assure location-based crowdsourced data ), this one focuses mostly on the *GIS components of the software*, and it discusses the importance of the licenses on the adoption and development of existing software. As the article is firsthand written by two GeoCat developers, there are lots of details about architecture and implementation and, as GeoNetwork was used as the base for
the COBWEB portal, there is a strong emphasis on GeoNetwork developments in the context of this project.
User engagement and user participation stand at the core of citizen science. One of the top contributions of this article is to show how Free and Open Source GIS can play a key role in supporting and further enhancing these activities.
Being an article about FOSS, on an issue about open data, software and standards, it would not make sense to publish it, with other than "Open access". The article is fully available to the general public.
Overview of COBWEB architecture, with GeoNetwork at its core
|
|
|
Our profound, internationally recognized, expertise comes together in a product that perfectly fits our commitment to you:
Spatial Data Infrastructures Simplified |
|
FOSS4G 2016- A great conference to meet up, to be inspired and to get FOSS spirit
This year, a global FOSS4G 2016 conference was hosted by the German Chapter of OSGEO in Bonn- Germany from 24th until the 26th August. This conference definitely impressed more than 900 attendances by its high standard and professionalism, featuring a full-blown week of talks, workshops, discussions and even code sprints. As Steven Felman wrote in his blog : "Bonn was a perfect city for a FOSS4G, easy travel from within Europe, not too large, great public transport system which was free if you booked a hotel through the conference links, fantastic weather which definitely helps even if the LOC can’t claim the credit for that and of course the two main venues." GeoCat is proud of having participated in this event, by sponsoring it as Silver Sponsor, and by having the whole team presenting in the conference.
Starting the journey with FOSS4G, GeoCat provided two GeoNetwork workshops "GeoNetwork from scratch" and "Hook your own customizations in GN". Both tool place on Tuesday in Gustav-Stresemann-Institut, which was a perfect location, featuring a lovely inner garden. With the supports from Fraincois Prunayre and Juan Luis de Ponce, Maria Arias de Reyna ran the two workshops, for both beginner and advanced users of GeoNetwork. The first workshop introduced some relevant technologies for GeoNetwork, such as Angular.js and Bootstrap. With a full room, the participants have learned how to easily install and develop an extension to GeoNetwork. The second workshops, on the other hand, focused mostly on the customization of the user interface. As usual, FOSS4G conference offered a great mix of workshops, which were interesting to attend, in order to get more knowledge about some certain GIS fields.
This FOSS4G brought an interesting plus for commercial purposes, by organizing Business-to-Business (B2B) meeting, where registered attendants (individuals or company) got a chance to do a 5-minute sale pitch about their products , services or even their own stories. The session was organized in four blocks of "Pecha-Kucha talks". During the B2B meeting, all attendants had the opportunity to foster business networkings, find potential partners and listen to many interesting presentations. Thanks to Joana and her creative FOSS Tale about Leno and GeoCat, we believe that GeoCat made a clear statement about our business, products, services and its core values. The session was followed by an official reception from the City of Bonn, hosted at the "Old Town Hall", a warm welcome by the municipality before the official start of the conference.
The official FOSS4G conference lasted 3 days, featuring a great combination of Lightning Talks, Keynote Speeches, Topic Talks, Scientific Tracks, a Poster Session and even a Map Gallery. It was very interesting to see talks covering all different levels and a wide range of topics, as well as more generic presentations; the quality and innovation "hype" of some of the talks was quite impressive. In each presentation and talk, it certainly was valuable and appreciated to hear the firsthand experiences of speakers on topics, which are transversal to many GIS projects. GeoCat was proud to have our delegates chairing various sessions, and to have them presenting on a full session about Metadata and GeoNetwork. Joana Simoes, who gave two of these talks, has said: " I was really happy to see so many people interested in metadata, and also about the momentum generated by the talks, which resulted in some valuable discussion during question time".
GeoCat presented seven talks the three days of the conference: GeoNetwork: State Of The Art; Spatial Data and Search Engines; Free, Open and Libre; Integrating the Spatial Web with Linked Open Data Using GeoDCAT-AP; Scalability of GeoNetwork: Current Status and Future Directions; Leveraging Big Data through Metadata; GeoDataStore: Governmental Open Data Cloud Storage and Easy Metadata Creation . "It was very enlightening to have the opportunity to exchange ideas with so many people, and at least for me, a lot of cues came up which can drive developments of GeoNetwork, Live and FOSS in general", Joana Simoes has said.
Apart from the workshops, talks and presentation, we trust that FOSS4G 2016 was definitely one of the best FOSS4G so far, also because of their various networking activities such as CodeSprints, B2B meeting, Reception Drink, Ice-breaker in BaseCamp, Pub Race and especially an incredible Gala Event on MS Rheinenergie. It was such a memorable night with Cellodion, The Queen Kings and even DJ Rafa!
Starting from FOSS4G 2015 in Seoul, "The Most Innovative Developer" Award is given annually to one developer that best exemplifies leadership and innovation in the FOSS4G community. GeoCat is glad to once more time sponsor this award, which is designed to encourage the "FOSS spirit" among all GIS developers. We would like to congratulate once more Even Rouault, for winning "GeoCat Award -The Most Innovative Developer"
Last but not least, we would like to thank the organization of FOSS4G for such a great conference, which reflects a desire of "Building Bridge" to connect the different communities of users, developers and experts. As Paul van Genuchten highlighted: "FOSS4G is the best place to meet the core developers of GeoNetwork, GeoServer, MapServer, deegree, OpenLayers, Leaflet, Hale and PostGIS, see what is new in the latest releases, discuss alignment of different open source products and road maps and provides plenty of options to ask about tiny details on using the software".
|
|
Other stuff to know
Bolsena Code Sprint In June
In June, GeoCat successfully organized the "Bolsena Code Sprint", which takes place in an Italian monastery near Bolsena. This year, we had 20 attendants from different companies and organizations. Featuring several interesting presentations and fruitful discussions, this event is designed to foster and promote activities related to Open Data, Linked Data, Free& Open Source Software, and GeoNetwork Opensource. GeoCat team had an intensive internal meeting to discuss how to keep improving GeoCat Bridge and our GeoNetwork Service Support, on a long term. Furthermore, GeoCat Live - our new product, was presented for the first time by its project leader, Joana Simoes. Soon we will provide further details and even a demo environment for GeoCat Live. Regarding the excursion of Bolsena 2016, we were all amazed throughout the tour around Vulci, which is famous for its Etruscan Tomb. We are looking forward to having more attendants joining Bolsena Hackathon 2017.
Join us this September, at the INSPIRE Conference in Barcelona
The INSPIRE Conference is a well-known annual event that aims to show how the implementation of INSPIRE contributes to the European Interoperability Framework and the EU's digital economy in general. It attracts many stakeholders from government, academic , institutions, organization and industry to hear about and discuss the latest developments of the INSPIRE Directive. In 2016, this conference will take place in Barcelona starting from 26th until the 30th of September, with an expected attendance of 800 individuals. One of the main goals of this event is to address applications and implementations of INSPIRE, interoperability challenges and solutions, research issues and new and evolving technologies and applications, through a series of plenary sessions, parallel sessions and posters. The INSPIRE conference provides an excellent opportunity for all participants to present Europe's INSPIRE Directive to the community and discuss the developments in the scope of the National SDI's.
As GeoCat has been very much involved with the INSPIRE standard, we are glad to participate in the INSPIRE conference as Exhibitors and to share with the community our knowledge and firsthand experiences regarding INSPIRE-ready services, through a series of workshops and presentations. Moreover, GeoCat will conduct a 30-minutes presentation in the Commercial Track, will take place in 29th September, describing our INSPIRE ready products and services. Are you curious about this special presentation? Do not miss a chance to pass by room B3 at 10:00 in 29th September and join us on the commercial track.
Join the conference and meet Paul van Genuchten, Joana Simoes, Maria Arias de Reyna and Trang Pham - our delegates in INSPIRE conference.
   
For further information about the conference, you may consult the program here. |
|
GeoCat Bridge 2.0 News
GeoCat Bridge 2.0.8
We are constantly improving GeoCat Bridge, by adding new features and improving existing ones in order to support the latest and greatest features the servers. In the beginning of May, we proudly released GeoCat Bridge 2.0.8 with many bugfixes and improvement regarding GeoServer. We are working on a new release of Bridge, scheduled to come out next month. Curious about how GeoCat Bridge works? Do not hesitate to request 3-days trial license to fully test all features. As soon as you request, we will send you a license key code with a link to download compatible installers to your ArcGIS Desktop.
|
|
About GeoCat Bridge
GeoCat Bridge is our extension for Esri ArcGIS Desktop. It has been designed to make the process of publishing geospatial data on the internet as easy as hitting the Publish button. From your project in ArcGIS Desktop, you are literally only one click away from publishing your geographic data and metadata on the Internet using an open source server platform.
Most Spatial Data Infrastructures available today are running on Free and Open Source Software. GeoCat Bridge supports these best of breed map servers, geodatabases and catalogues. They include GeoServer, MapServer, PostGIS, ArcSDE, GeoNetwork opensource and CWS-T compliant catalogs.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
