Colleagues,

I have been contacted by Prof.  Silvana Comboim (Universidade Federal de Paraná 
,Brazil)  who is also the new chair of the  ICA Commission on Open Source 
Geospatial Technologies on the arrangements for the next ICA Commission meeting 
on August 27th, 2015 (exact time, room etc will be informed soon) during the  
27th International Cartographic Conference (16th General Assembly ) at Rio de 
Janeiro in Brazil. The new Terms of Reference for the ICA Commission on 
Geospatial Technologies is also available at [1]

Silvana has also been working on making local arrangements for the success of 
Pre-conference workshop on Spatial data infrastructures, standards, open source 
and open data for geospatial (SDI-Open 2015)  jointly organised by the ICA 
Commission on Geoinformation Infrastructures and Standards, the Commission on 
Open Source Geospatial Technologies and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) on 
20 and 21 August 2014 at Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) 
in Rio de Janeiro http://www.labgeolivre.ufpr.br/  and the Conference itself 
http://www.icc2015.org  will be great opportunity to strengthen the “Geo for 
All” initiative and to reinforce the key projects and research links for the 
future.


Silvana has shared two key developments:

1 - As part of the International Map Year, they had an Olympics of Cartography 
organised in Brazil, with almost 700 secondary schools distributed in the whole 
country. Although it was not specifically open source, we are thinking to use 
this in next years to publish tutorials and other materials to secondary 
teachers, because there was an extraordinary response. The map of participants 
can be accessed at  http://www.olimpiadadecartografia.uff.br/index.php/mapa   
and more information can be found in English at 
http://www.icc2015.org/brazilian-cartographic-olympiad.html

2  There is this call from British and Brazilian government to support 
researchers that are willing to make joint research with Brazilian institutions 
at 
https://www.gov.uk/government/world-location-news/confap-and-uk-academies-launch-new-call-to-support-researchers
   We encourage those interested in UK and Brazil universities in Geo4All to 
participate in this funding bid.

I had the opportunity of participating in the NSDI meetings in Brazil last year 
and I would like to thank the Ministry of Planning, Government of Brazil for 
organising this excellent event and also for their kind invitation for keynote 
presentation where i shared the developments in Open Geospatial Science and 
Applications and its importance for widening education opportunities, new jobs 
creation and innovation ecosystems in Geoservices. 

I would like to share some of the things i learned from our colleagues in 
Brazil which i think is relevant to the wider community

1. There are fast paced developments happening in Geospatial domain and it is 
important the countries should keep updating their Geoinformation policies to 
reflect this and take advantage of the new opportunities. I am pleased to see 
countries like Brazil are well tuned to global developments.
2. It is important to have inputs from the academic community and i was pleased 
to see this bringing together of key people from government and academia to 
discuss ideas and good practices.
3. Education and Capacity building is key for expanding opportunities.


Having direct inputs to national policy and Intergovernmental agreements are 
good way to expand "Geo for All" . For example, we have done this with other 
countries like Australia following the 3rd EU - Australia Research 
Infrastructure meetings   that i attended in  Canberra.
  
In the area of sustainable cities, we have agreement to  establish Open Source 
Geoscience Sustainable Cities  Lab at the University of Melbourne with linked 
laboratories across Australia and New Zealand, under the ICA-OSGeo Initiative 
(jointly by INSPIRE, AURIN, ICA-OSGeo).
 
The Joint European Commission- Australian Government Communique is at
http://ec.europa.eu/research/infrastructures/pdf/Third%20European%20Australian%20Workshop%20on%20Research%20Infrastructure%20Communique.pdf
   

I am sure Silvana will expand these ideas for the future at our next Commission 
meeting. We are looking forward to building  strong research and teaching 
collaborations  worldwide in Open Geospatial Science.
 
Best wishes,

Suchith

[1] 
http://opensourcegeospatial.icaci.org/2015/05/terms-of-reference-for-the-ica-commission-on-open-source-geospatial-technologies-2015-2019/




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