Open Source Geospatial Laboratory established at ETH Zurich, Switzerland

We are pleased to announce the establishment of ICA-OSGeo Open Source Geospatial Laboratory (OSGL, see [0]) at ETH Zurich, Switzerland [1]. The OSGL at ETH Zurich is part is part of the Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation, chair of Cartography [2]. The preceding Institute of Cartography was founded in 1925 by Professor Eduard Imhof, one of the main founders of modern academic cartography. It is therefore the oldest university institute in cartography world-wide. In 2011, with the establishment of the new chair of Geoinformation Engineering, the scope of activities of the institute was expanded and its name was adapted. In cartography, the institute strives to maintain its leading position in topographic cartography (relief representation), thematic cartography, and atlas cartography (school atlases, national atlases) by exploiting and further developing cartographic knowledge and adapting it to new interactive technologies and application domains. Geoinformation Engineering aims at analyzing, representing, modelling, and visualizing spatio-temporal decision processes and integrates such models in mobile geoinformation services and spatial information technologies.

The OSGL at ETH Zurich will be actively implementing the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the International Cartographic Association (ICA) and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), with the vision to support the development of open-source geospatial software technologies, training and expertise. It also aims to provide support for increasing the number and quality of open source teaching and training materials for Cartography and GIS. As a proud member of the ICA-OSGeo Network [3], the ETH Zurich OSGL is focusing on Education, Open Geodata and on Cartographic and Geospatial Research. Additionally the laboratory is participating in the ICA Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies [4] and through the Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation [5] as an associate member in Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) [6].

The lab starts with expertise in several OSGeo projects such as Quantum GIS, OpenLayers, PostGIS and GDAL/OGR. A special attention will be given to QGIS Server, since it was conceived as a research project at the Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation [2]. Furthermore the lab is proud to have joined a collaboration in the areas of Education and Research with the industry partner Sourcepole [7].

The ETH Zurich OSGL will be led by Dr. Ionu? Iosifescu [8] with support from several members of the Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation. Please check the lab webpage for the full list of team members and the assigned areas of responsibility, as well as for the upcoming training possibilities [9].

OSGeo is a not-for-profit organisation founded in 2006 whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open source geospatial technologies and data.

ICA is the world authoritative body for cartography and Geographic Information Science.

[0] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/MOU_ICA
[1] http://karlinapp.ethz.ch/osgl/index.html
[2] http://www.ikg.ethz.ch/karto/index_EN
[3] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Edu_current_initiatives
[4] http://opensourcegeospatial.icaci.org/
[5] http://www.ikg.ethz.ch/index_EN
[6] http://www.opengeospatial.org
[7] http://www.sourcepole.ch
[8] http://www.ikg.ethz.ch/people/staff/iionut/index_EN
[9] http://karlinapp.ethz.ch/osgl/Training.html

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