We are pleased to welcome [http://www.zgis.at/index.php/en/ Z_GIS, Department of Geoinformatics, University of Salzburg] as our 75th ICA-OSGeo lab. Z_GIS are one of the leading centres of Geospatial education and research globally with over 85 staff and one of the best examples of their global impact and leadership is the distance education initiative offering masters and diploma programmes in Geographical Information Science and Systems through the [http://www.unigis.net UNIGIS] International Association. They already contribute to Open Source Geo through both their teaching within UNIGIS and MSc in Applied Geoinformatics (e.g. QGIS module) and research (they develop innovative applications based on OSM, application-centric development of sensor web services architectures etc). They also contribute to outreach through FOSS focused workshops at [http://www.agit.at AGIT], [http://www.gi-forum.org GI Forum], etc.
Dr Suchith Anand, chair of the ICA-OSGeo labs initiative, said “This an important milestone in our growth and we warmly welcome Z_GIS to our initiative. Prof. Josef Strobl is also the Advisory Board member of ICA-OSGeo Labs and we are looking forward to working closely with him, Dr Hermann Klug and other colleagues at Salzburg for building up more research and education collaborations and opportunities globally. Over the last two years since the ICA-OSGeo labs initiative was launched, it has grown rapidly thanks to the strong support of colleagues globally. We now have strong presence in all continents expect Antarctica! Our biggest growth country wise is in the United States of America (over 12) and region wise it is in Europe with over 30 labs joining our initiative. Free and open GI software helps make geospatial education available to students worldwide. We thank all of you for your strong support for this education initiative and it is very happy for us that our initiative has now grown rapidly from very humble beginnings and is helping to widen the benefits of geospatial education opportunities to thousands of students worldwide. More details of our mission at http://www.geoforall.org ”
Open Source Geospatial Foundation ([http://www.osgeo.org 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.?
International Cartographic Association ([http://icaci.org ICA]) is the world authoritative body for cartography and GIScience.
