Nabble - EGIP

INSPIRE: Call for Expression of Interest for participation in development of INSPIRE Data Specifications for Annex II and III

2009-11-06T02:15:34Z

Dear Colleagues,

The Call is addressed to the INSPIRE Spatial Data Interest Communities (SDICs) and Legally Mandated Organisations (LMOs). The Commission is seeking voluntary contributions of SDICs and LMOs, asking them to propose experts (domain experts, Facilitators, Editors) for the Thematic Working Groups (TWGs) and reference materials to be taken into consideration for the data specifications.

We recommend that you carefully read the following documents before responding to this call.

SDICs and LMOs can participate by logging in and completing the required forms.

Best regards,

Karen Fullerton
http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.cfm

Job at the JRC (keywords: OWS, MapServer, OpenLayers, GDAL, Joomla)

2009-10-27T12:03:45Z

With apologies for cross posting --- I would like to draw your
attention on this open position at the JRC’s Institute for Environment
and Sustainability:

http://ies.jrc.ec.europa.eu/uploads/fileadmin/Documentation/Reports/MSU/Grant_2008/300926.pdf

Deadline for applications is November 3rd.

Other open positions at the JRC:
http://ipsc.jrc.ec.europa.eu/jobs.php?id=8
http://ies.jrc.ec.europa.eu/call-for-grantholders

C

EGIP Archive: http://www.ec-gis.org/egip/

INSPIRE technical development: call for tender

2009-10-13T14:01:58Z

Dear colleagues,

This is to inform you that the Commission has started a tender procedure for the technical support to the development of implementing rules and technical guidelines (IES/H/2009/241622/AMI-CEI). The aim of this procedure is to draw up a list of candidates who meet the criteria in the call. This list can than be used for subsequent contracts for service provision to assist the Commission in the context of the Inspire Directive 2007/2/EC and related implementing rules and technical guidelines.

The call is published at http://web.jrc.ec.europa.eu/callsfortender/index.cfm?action=app.tender&id=458&institute=5

Service providers may be required to support the Inspire data specifications development process by editing the unified modelling language (UML) models and data specifications of the Annex I, II and III data themes, conduct data user requirements and use case studies, compile, and develop and document technical guidance and examples of use for Inspire data specifications. They may also be required to support the specification development and implementation of network services and the Inspire geo-portal by conducting studies on architecture, spatial data services, services invocation, services interoperability, services harmonisation, and registries, and by developing related support software (web-based or not).

All relevant documentation about Inspire can be found at http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/.

For further information on this call, please follow strictly the instructions provided at http://web.jrc.ec.europa.eu/callsfortender/index.cfm?action=app.tender&id=458&institute=5

Cordially,

Paul Smits

------------------------------------------------------

Dr. Paul C. Smits

European Commission, Joint Research Centre,
Institute for Environment and Sustainability,
Spatial Data Infrastructures Unit, TP 262

Via E. Fermi, 2749, I-21027 Ispra (VA), Italy

Tel: +39 0332 78 5279

Fax: +39 0332 78 6325

e-mail: paul.smits@...

SDI Unit: http://sdi.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

IES Institute: http://ies.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

JRC: http://www.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

------------------------------------------------------

The views expressed are purely those of the writer and may

not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an official

position of the European Commission.

GSDI: WorldView-2 (DigitalGlobe)

2009-10-05T11:51:55Z

DigitalGlobe: WorldView-2 / WorldView-2 Earth-Imaging Satellite

Auf der NATO-GIS-Konferenz DGI.CEE-2009, Prag: 29./30.09.2009 informierte J.W. ALLAN, Director of European Sales Defense&Intelligence, von DIGITALGLOBE (USA) ueber den bevorstehenden Start des neuen Mapping-Satelliten Worldview-2 sowie dessen technologischen Parameter, insbesondere die neuen, von 4 auf 8 erweiterten multispektralen Sensoren. Der Start soll am 8. Oktober live im Internet uebertragen werden.
Weitere Details siehe aktuelle GI-News von
GISA (RU), BOEING (US) sowie DigitalGlobe (US):

Use Cyrillic Windows-1251 type font !
На 8 октября 2009 г. запланирован запуск нового спутника компании DigitalGlobe WorldView-2. Спутник будет поставлять снимки с разрешением 0,5 м в панхроматическом режиме и 2 м ≈ в мультиспектральном, причем число спектральных диапазонов увеличено с традиционных 4 до 8, что намного улучшит качество снимков и возможности их анализа. Четыре дополнительных спектральных диапазона (coastal blue, yellow edge, red edge, и near infrared 2) позволят улучшить дешифрирование и анализ снимков, значительно увеличат возможности идентификации и классификации объектов. Коммерческая эксплуатация WorldView-2 может начаться уже в 4-м квартале 2009 г., после чего компания DigitalGlobe получит возможность параллельно снимать Землю с помощью трех спутников высокого разрешения: QuickBird, WorldView-1 и WorldView-2. Общая суточная производительность системы составит 2,7 млн кв. км.

scheduled for Oct. 8 at 11:38 a.m. Pacific time

the first high-resolution 8-band multispectral satellite

[ http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/bls/missions/worldview-2/ ],

За запуском спутника можно будет следить в сети Интернет на сайте Boeing Launch Services
8 октября, начиная с 11:15 a.m. PDT (22.15 по московскому времени).
Старт ракеты запланирован на 11:38 a.m. PDT(22.38 по московскому времени).

5.10.2009 / [FH].
--

<---------------------------------------------------------------------->
IGN e.V.
SKYPE-Call: [ FH_IGN ]
EMAIL:
[ Mailto:info@... ]
WEBLOG Geospatial SAXONY:
[ http://GDI-SN.blogspot.com ]
WEBLOG Geospatial SAXONY Feeds:
[ http://GDI-SN.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default ]
WEBLOG Geospatial SAXONY Comments:
[ http://gdi-sn.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
GI2010-X-border-Symposium (EUREGIA-X-INSPIRE)
1. CEE-X-border-Bohemian-Saxonian-GIS-Forum
GI2010-Kontakt: [ Mailto:GI2010@... ]
10. Saechsisches GIS-Forum, Mai 2010
--

CONFIDENTIALITY CLAUSE
Privileged and Confidential Information may be contained in this message. If you are not the addressee indicated in this message or responsible for delivery of the message to such person, you may not copy or deliver this message to anyone. In such case, you should destroy this message and kindly notify the sender by reply email.
The sender accepts no liability of whatever nature for any loss, liability, damage or expense resulting directly or indirectly from the access of any resources that are attached to this message. Opinions, conclusions and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of IGN e.V. and shall be understood as given by the author only.

GDI-News: 1)GIS market to grow 50% over next five years... # 2) EIS 2010-2015 # 3) DGI-NATO-GI-Strategy # (4) OGC Interoperability Day

2009-09-22T23:13:09Z

(1) GIS market to grow 50% over next five years

22 September 2009 (USA): The worldwide market for GIS is forecast to grow 50% over the next five years, representing a compound annual growth rate of 9.3%, according to a new ARC Advisory Group study. GIS market revenues will be driven in the near future by continued worldwide spending in non-cyclical industries such as electric power, oil and gas distribution, and divisions of federal governments. Growth in the mid to latter years of the forecast period will be driven by increased adoption of GIS in emerging markets such as Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East; and a return to spending in North America and Europe by industries hardest hit by the global economic downturn...
Mehr Info:
[ http://www.gisdevelopment.net/news/viewn.asp?id=GIS:N_bmqketnuvl ]
---------------

(2) [ EU-InformationSociety-FEED ]

Public hearing and consultation on Post-i2010: priorities for a new strategy for a European information society (2010-2015) - The upcoming challenges for Digital Europe have been raised 23. September in a public consultation "Post-i2010: priorities for a new strategy for a European information society"...
Mehr Info:
[ http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/eeurope/i2010/pc_post-i2010_hearing/index_en.htm ]
---------------

(3) NATO-GIS-Strategy Conference in CEE (Prague: 29./30. September 2009)

DGI.CEE - Growing Interoperability & Full Situational Awareness To Support NATO & National Security Operations: GIS Services In Central & Eastern Europe
DGI Central & Eastern Europe is set to become the region's largest annual gathering dedicated to discussing the major challenges of integrating the region's defence and government Geographic Information System (GIS) capabilities into the EU and NATO operations around the world.
DGI CEE will bring together Heads of Geospatial Intelligence, GIS, Remote Sensing, Operations, and Imagery and Analysis, to provide a unique forum to discuss and debate the challenges and future strategies for GIS capabilities in central & eastern Europe.
The conference will address the use of GIS in scenarios such as situational awareness, full in-theatre & strategic interoperability, cooperation between the new member states, border control, refugee trafficking prevention, environmental protection, crime, security.
Mehr Info:
[ http://www.fomi.hu/hunagi/pdf/2004/CEE_GISSecurity.pdf ]
[ http://www.wbresearch.com/dgicee/ ]
------------

(4) OGC Interoperability Day (Darmstadt: 30. September 2009)

EU projects and the OGC: Standards, Benefits and Implementations
What role will standards play in future ICT, environmental and research programs of the European Commission? And how is the OGC participating in this process? What are the experiences and results of some of the projects funded by the European Commission. And what might be the benefits in using standards while participating in such a project? On Wednesday 30 September 2009 you will have a chance to get first hand answers to such questions at the EU funded Projects and the OGC: Standards, Benefits and Implementations OGC Interoperability Day in Darmstadt, Germany.
Mehr Info:
[ http://www.opengeospatial.org/event/090930interop ]

fh / 8:00
<---------------------------------------------------------------------->
IGN e.V.
SKYPE: [ Call: FH_IGN ]
EMAIL:
[ Mailto:info@... ]
WEBLOG Geospatial SAXONY:
[ http://GDI-SN.blogspot.com ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
GI2010-X-border-Symposium (EUREGIA-X-INSPIRE)
GI2010-Kontakt: [ Mailto:GI2010@... ]
10. Sächsisches GIS-Forum, Mai 2010
<---------------------------------------------------------------------->
< LINK des Monats > DGI2009-CEE, 29./30. September 2009 >
[ http://www.wbresearch.com/dgicee/ ]
< /LINK >
<---------------------------------------------------------------------->
< INSPIRE-DOC > INSPIRE-Implementation-NEWS
[ http://www.gdi-de.org/de_neu/thema/2009/c_thema_aktuell.html ]
< /INSPIRE-DOC >
--

Post-doc position available

2009-09-09T07:29:49Z

Dear colleagues,

I would like to draw your attention to a job offer at post-doc level in support to the development of a European Drought Observatory at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra, Italy:
http://ies.jrc.ec.europa.eu/call-for-grantholders

The position deals with the interoperability of drought monitoring and early warning systems in Europe in the frame of the EuroGEOSS project:
http://ies.jrc.ec.europa.eu/uploads/fileadmin/Documentation/Reports/MSU/Grant_2008/300928.pdf

For the description of the EuroGEOSS project see here: http://www.eurogeoss.eu

Please don't hesitate to circulate this information in your institute and to inform suitable candidates of the current opportunity at JRC. Evaluation of the applications will start in October 2009 until filled.

For any questions please contact Stefan Niemeyer, stefan.niemeyer(at)jrc.ec.europa.eu
I apologize for cross posting.

Best regards,
Karen Fullerton

Property Searches - IPSA / ICO 16th July 2009 (IPSA are delighted - the ICO share our 'puritan view')

2009-07-15T16:18:37Z

Dear all,

The long awaited ICO guidance on Property Search information and the EIR instigated by IPSA has been published today.

The ICO have taken the matter very seriously and constructed guidance to withstand a legal challenge; this will be a very important factor in the coming months.

Counsels opinion has been sought by the ICO and the resultant guidance fully supports the stance taken by IPSA which you will recall was based on the leading legal opinion obtained by IPSA from Peter McMaster QC.

IPSA and individual board members have consistently maintained the importance of EIR and European legislation; we have always believed the long term benefits of our stance, whilst classed as ‘puritan’ by other trade organisations, would deliver a new platform for data access and data reuse creating new opportunities for members to raise the standard in consumer experience.

Essentially the ICO guidance confirms the following:

• The majority of the information provided by local authorities in response to property search enquiries is likely to be environmental information as defined by the EIR.
• The charging provisions in the CPSR (Local Authorities (England)(Charges for Property Searches) Regulations 2008) do not apply to environmental information.
• Under the EIR a public authority should accept an applicant’s request to inspect the information.
• Environmental information that is inspected by the applicant cannot be charged for.
• Public authorities cannot use the publication scheme provisions of the FOIA to charge for environmental information contained in property search records.
• Information that is not environmental should be considered under the FOIA. In such cases, the CPSR can form the basis for any charging.

With regard to non-environmental property search information the ICO have said "Although much of the information provided in response to property enquiries will be environmental in nature, there may be some which is not… However, we recognise that for an authority to consider each CON29 question in order to establish whether the information is subject to the EIR or the FOIA has the potential to be an overly bureaucratic process. In light of this guidance, an authority may therefore wish to adopt a policy of making all the property search information available on the basis of the principles set out in the EIR."

IPSA will write to every Local Authority enclosing a copy of the guidance and we will continue to lobby Central Government to encourage Local Authorities to now comply with the law.

Many of you will know that IPSA are board members of the PSI Alliance and through this body, have a direct dialogue with the European Commission regarding the actions of the UK government if they do not comply with European Law. We intend to use this facility if necessary.

Many thanks to all members for your support, this is a huge step in the right direction.

We will continue to lead the fight for the rights of members to inspect Public Sector Information.

The guidance is attached.

Best wishes,

Steve Davies Christian Lister Dave Kaye

Chief Executive Officer IPSA Chairman IPSA Founder

07909007072 07968512465

Anthony Douglas Jane Foster Nina Ashcroft

IPSA Director IPSA Director IPSA Director

The Association of Independent Personal Search Agents Ltd,
Direct House, 87 Church Street, Westhoughton, Bolton, BL5 3RZ.
Registered in England. Company No. 5547806.

www.ipsa-online.org

http://www.epsiplus.net/forum/forum/the_beginning_of_the_end

oledata.mso (10K) Download Attachment
oledata.mso (11K) Download Attachment
FEP116PropertySearchesandEIRv1IPSA.pdf (147K) Download Attachment
epsi - Berlin - ipsa.pdf (17K) Download Attachment

Open Positions JRC Spatial Data Infrastructures Unit, harmonisation of environmental data, deadline 2009-09-03

2009-07-08T09:13:42Z

Dear all,

The Spatial Data Infrastructures Unit of JRC’s Institute for Environment and Sustainability has published a profile for a post-doctoral research fellowship (so-called category-30 grandholders):

IES-2009-300929 - Harmonisation of environmental data

General information and the conditions are available at:

http://ies.jrc.ec.europa.eu/call-for-grantholders

The deadline for applications is 3 September 2009, noon.

Best regards,

Paul

------------------------------------------------------

Dr. Paul C. Smits

European Commission, Joint Research Centre,
Institute for Environment and Sustainability,
Spatial Data Infrastructures Unit, TP 262

Via E. Fermi, 2749, I-21027 Ispra (VA), Italy

Tel: +39 0332 78 5279

Fax: +39 0332 78 6325

e-mail: paul.smits@...

SDI Unit: http://sdi.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

IES Institute: http://ies.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

JRC: http://www.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

------------------------------------------------------

The views expressed are purely those of the writer and may

not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an official

position of the European Commission.

[ GI2009-Symposium-DRESDEN published on ePSIplatform ]

2009-07-01T01:55:59Z

info message x-posted !
--
[ GI2009-Symposium-DRESDEN ]

Labels: Awareness, Conference, Education, eGOV, ENVIRO, EUROPA, Geodienste, GI2009, grenzüberschreitend, IGN, INSPIRE, Interoperability, PSI, Sustainability, X-GDI

The results of the GI2009-Symposium, the 9th Saxonian GIS-Forum in Dresden: 14./15.05.2009 have been published today and can be downloaded (total ca. 128 MB) from the European Public Sector Information Server: Proceedings of Abstracts, Posters, Summaries & Paper Presentations !

All presentations and posters are available in a secured PDF, are self-starting and printable !!

The IGN Board acknowledges especially the personal support by C. Corbin, PSI expert in the ePSIplus Programme, to publish at the ePSIplatform server !!!

[ GI2009-Symposium-DRESDEN @ ePSIplatform ]

Die Ergebnisse des GI2009-Symposiums, dem 9. Sächsischen GIS-Forum in Dresden: 14./15. 05.2009 wurden heute auf dem europäischen PSI Server publiziert und stehen zum Herunterladen zur Verfügung (insgesamt ca. 128 MB): Sammelband der Abstrakts, Posters, Zusammenfassungen sowie Präsentationsfolien der eingereichten Vorträge !

Alle Präsentationen und Posters sind als gesichertes PDF verfügbar, sind selbststartend sowie druckbar !!

Der IGN-Vorstand dankt insbesondere Chris Corbin, dem PSI Experten im ePSIplus Programm, für dessen persönliche Unterstützung bei der Publizierung auf dem ePSIplatform-Server !!!

Dresden, 30. Juni 2009 / 14:00
IGN e.V. [ info@... ].
--

IGN e.V.
SKYPE: [ Callto:FH_IGN ]
EMAIL: [ Mailto:info@... ]
WEBLOG: [ http://GDI-SN.blogspot.com ]
FEEDS@WEBLOG: [ http://GDI-SN.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
GI2010-X-border-Symposium (EUREGIA-X-INSPIRE)
GI2010-Kontakt: [ Mailto:GI2010@... ]
10. Sächsisches GIS-Forum, 13./14.05.2010
--
DIXIE2010: Dresden: 07.-16.05.2010
40. International Dixieland Festival
[ http://www.dixieland.de/ ]
[ http://www.dixie-campus.tu-dresden.de ]
[ http://www.dixieland.de/jukebox/index.html ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
PRESSEMITTEILUNGEN < GI2009 > PRESS RELEASES
AT-PROGIS:
[ http://www.progis.com/de/index.php?id=news\presse.html ]
UK-1SPATIAL:
[ http://www.1spatial.com/news_events/news/news.php?news=293 ]
US-GIScafe:
[http://www10.giscafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?articleid=682298]
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Deadline extension: Call for Papers, Geomatica Journal, Special Issue on ³Volunteered Geographic Information²

2009-06-11T06:55:33Z

Deadline extension: Call for Papers, Geomatica Journal, Special Issue on “Volunteered Geographic Information”

Dear colleagues,

* apologies for multiple postings

We are pleased to inform you that the deadline for the call for Papers of the Special Issue on “Volunteered Geographic Information” to Geomatica Journal has been extended until the end of august. We look forward to receiving your submission. Please transfer this call for papers to anyone interested.

Stéphane Roche and Rob Feick,
(Guest editors)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Call for Papers

Geomatica

Special Issue on “Volunteered Geographic Information ”

Guest Editors: Dr. Stéphane Roche and Dr. Rob Feick

Aim
This special issue of Geomatica is devoted to the theme of Volunteered Geographic Information. Geomatica, the Journal of Geospatial Information Science, Technology and Practice, is the quarterly peer-reviewed journal of the Canadian Institute of Geomatics (CIG). It is dedicated to the dissemination of information on technical advances in the field of geomatics science and engineering, including geomatics education. Papers for this special issue on Volunteered Geographic Information must present research results and advanced work in progress related to, user generated geo-content and particularly linkages to neo-geography, Web 2.0 and/or participatory GIS . Discussions on major challenges that VGI introduces to geomatics sciences and engineering and foreseeable future directions are also welcome, and contributions reflecting international perspectives are strongly encouraged.

Scope
Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
-        citizens’ motivations in providing volunteered geographic information,
-        quality, validity, responsibility and legitimacy issues of VGI,
-        privacy, confidentiality and ethical issues,
-        potential applications of VGI see as ‘human sensor networks’ in public health, civil security, etc.,
-        technological challenges and opportunities (e.g. access to wireless networks, mobile phones, etc.…),
-        applications for collaborative VGI (e.g. wikiGIS, wiki carto, etc.)
-        participatory GIS/mapping using VGI and user generated content,
-        cartographic challenges in the context of geospatial Web 2.0,
-        strategy (process, policy, technologies) to integrate VGI into formal GIS processes

Submission guidelines
Papers should be submitted in English or in French to Dr. Stéphane Roche (email: stephane.roche@...) and Dr. Rob Feick (email: rdfeick@...) in Adobe PDF format (.pdf) before the deadline listed below (August 31, 2009). Please follow the instructions to authors that are outlined in Geomatica and are also available at the CIG-ACSG web site (http://www.cig-acsg.ca/page.asp?intNodeID=29). Each paper should not exceed 9,000 words. The special issue will include a maximum of 8-10 papers.

PLEASE NOTE THAT NO PAGES FEES WILL BE CHARGED TO THE AUTHORS FOR THIS SPECIAL ISSUE.

Important (revised) deadlines
Submission of manuscripts: August 31, 2009
Notification of acceptance/rejection: October 15, 2009
Submission of final version: December 31, 2009
Planned publication of special issue: Spring 2010

Guest editors contact information
Dr. Stéphane Roche
Département des sciences géomatiques
Université Laval
Pavillon Louis-Jacques Casault
Québec, Québec
Canada G1K 7P4
Tel: 1-418-656-7841
Fax: 1-418-656-7411
Email: stephane.roche@...

Dr. Rob Feick
School of Planning / Dept. of Geography
University of Waterloo
200 University Avenue West
Waterloo, Ontario
Canada N2L 3G1
Tel: 1-519-888-4567 (ext. 35493)
Fax: 1-519-725-2827
Email: rdfeick@...

GI2009-Symposium-DRESDEN: Final edition published ! (Proceedings of Abstracts, Posters, Press releases and Summaries)

2009-06-07T07:33:12Z

GI2009 Dresden Symposium (May 2009)

The GI2009 cross border symposium 2009 "The European Year of Creativity and Innovation"
was held at the Technical University Dresden ZINT AgroCampus,
Dresden on the 14th and 15th May 2009.
Proceedings: Final edition published at 7th June 2009 (Thanks to C. Corbin) !
Abstracts, Posters and Summaries: 132 pages ( 5,62 MB / PDF Format )

[ http://www.epsiplatform.eu/reports/gi2009_dresden_symposium_may_2009 ]

--
Presentations: to be published soon... !
Session 1
EU PSI Re-use Directive Review Completed What next ?
presented by Christopher Corbin, UK
19 Slides ( PDF Format ) | 19 Slides ( PPS Format ) | 19 Slides ( PPT Format )
...

--
fh / 16:30
IGN e.V.
VORSTAND: [ Mailto:info@... ]
FEEDS@WEBLOG [ http://GDI-SN.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
GI2010-X-border-Symposium: 14./15.05.2009 ( 9. Sächsisches GIS-Forum )
GI2009: WEBLOG [ http://GDI-SN.blogspot.com ]
GI2009: EMAIL [ Mailto:GI2009@... ]
GI2009: SKYPE [ Callto:FH_IGN ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
PRESSEMITTEILUNGEN < GI2009 > PRESS RELEASES
AT: PROGIS:
    [ http://www.progis.com/de/index.php?id=news\presse.html ]
UK: 1SPATIAL:
    [ http://www.1spatial.com/news_events/news/news.php?news=293 ]
US: GIScafe:
    [ http://www10.giscafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?articleid=682298 ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
ARCHIV: GI2009-Symposium - 9. Sächsisches GIS-Forum, Dresden 2009
[ http://www.epsiplatform.eu/reports/gi2009_dresden_symposium_may_2009 ]
ARCHIV: GI2008-Symposium - 8. Sächsisches GIS-Forum, Dresden 2008
[ http://www.epsiplus.net/reports/gi2008_dresden_symposium_may_2008 ]
GI2008-Proceedings delivered at '8.Sächsisches GIS-Forum'
[ http://www.epsiplus.net/news/dresden_presentations ]

--
GI2010-Symposium / 10. Sächsisches GIS-Forum,
Dresden: 13./14.05.2010
--
DIXIE2010 / 40. International Dixieland Festival, Dresden: 07.-16.05.2010
[ http://www.dixieland.de/jukebox/index.html ]
[ http://www.dixie-campus.tu-dresden.de ]
[ http://www.dixieland.de/ ]
--
IGN e.V. - INNOVATION. Grenzüberschreitendes Netzwerk (X-border Network)
- a non-profit Association (gemeinnütziger Verein) for Education, Development and Knowledge Transfer - has been founded first in 2002 as "GDI-Sachsen (i.G.)" - the final outcome of the "OpenGIS Strategy Seminar" series in GI2000 & GI2002 at "Bildungswerk Ost-West" (BOW), but later on re-founded as the follow-up "IGN e.V." at September 2nd, 2003, by Czechia and Saxonia experts of Cartomatics, Cyberlaw, Cybernetics, Geomatics, Economics, Mediamatics, Pedagogics, Regional Development and Spatial Sciences, and officially registered by Dresden City Court as non-profit Association at October 16th, 2003. - Register number # VR4285 - [ http://www.IGN-SN.de/Registration.pdf ].
Its main goals: supporting GEO - ENVIRO - SPATIO - oriented Awareness, Business and Openness in Research, Education and Training on GeoINSPIREd Interoperability, Sustainability, and Usability of spatial Data, Services and Applications for X-border-Infrastructures of Spatial Information (X-INSPIRE) in EUROPE of REGIONS.

[ Copyright © 2009 by IGN e.V. - All rights reserved ]
[ Mailto:Vorstand@... ]

CONFIDENTIALITY CLAUSE
Privileged and Confidential Information may be contained in this message. If you are not the addressee indicated in this message or responsible for delivery of the message to such person, you may not copy or deliver this message to anyone. In such case, you should destroy this message and kindly notify the sender by reply email.
The sender accepts no liability of whatever nature for any loss, liability, damage or expense resulting directly or indirectly from the access of any resources that are attached to this message. Opinions, conclusions and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of IGN e.V. and shall be understood as given by the author only.

PTB - Persistent Testbed - Workshop at AGILE Conference

2009-05-08T04:59:24Z

*AGILE/EuroSDR/OGC Persistent Testbed for Research and Teaching in Europe*
Hannover, 2nd June 2009

We invite you to participate in the workshop "AGILE/EuroSDR/OGC
Persistent Testbed for Research and Teaching in Europe", a
pre-conference workshop at the "12th AGILE International Conference on
Geographic Information Science" located in Hannover, Germany, on 2nd
June 2009. Details about the workshop and its agenda can be found here:

http://www.ikg.uni-hannover.de/agile/index.php?id=460

The PTB is a joint effort from AGILE, EuroSDR and OGC initiated in 2007
to provide a persistent testbed for the various European GI initiatives
and communities with the following objectives:

- To provide a research platform for collaborative European research in
geospatial interoperability,
- To aid the assessment of the current standards for geospatial
interoperability in terms of research compatibility, completeness,
consistency, ease of use and extensibility
- To provide an environment for teaching standards and techniques for
geospatial interoperability
- To provide a resource to AGILE/EuroSDR/OGC for the coordination of
research requirements as well as definition, testing, validation and
development of open standards.

More Details about the PTB can be found here:

http://plone.itc.nl/gitestbed/phase-1-documents/PTB-background-and-future-directions-proposal.pdf/at_download/file

The workshop will report progress from the PTB activities over the last
year. It will include additional test-bed focussed presentations and
provide a forum for discussion of how the PTB Project and related
test-bed activities in Europe should evolve to meet the current and
future needs of the European GI-community.

If you are interested in the PTB Project and other test-beds for
geospatial interoperability and their relationship to the needs of
INSPIRE, SEIS, GMES and related National activity (or Europe’s input to
broader programmes such as GEOSS) then we look forward to meeting you in
Hannover on June 2nd and to your participation in the Workshop.

If you have further questions please contact Johannes Brauner
(johannes.brauner@...).

Lars Bernard (AGILE Council, Technische Universität Dresden)
Chris Higgins (Chair of OGC University Working Group, EDINA at
University of Edinburgh)
Mike Jackson (Chair of EuroSDR Commission 5 - Network Services,
University of Nottingham)
Ulf Sandgren (Chair of EuroSDR Commission 4 - Data Specifications,
Lantmäteriet (the Swedish Mapping, Cadastral and Land Registration
Authority)
Johannes Brauner (PTB facilitator, Technische Universität Dresden)

EGIP Archive: http://www.ec-gis.org/egip/

GI2009-Symposium-UPDATES: ->> DRESDEN, 14./15. Mai 2009

2009-05-05T08:04:05Z

EINLADUNG <> PRIGLASHENIE <> INVITATION
GI2009 - 9. Sächsisches GIS-Forum

Sehr geehrte FachkollegInnen,
beiliegend erhalten Sie aktuelle updates für GI2009 !

Uvazhaemye kolegi
v prilozhenii rassylajutsja aktualnaja informacija o GI2009 !

Dear colleagues,
attached you are receiving actual updates for the symposium GI2009 !

----------------------------------------------------------------------
GI2009-Symposium-DRESDEN: 14./15.05.2009
( 9. Saxonian GIS-Forum )
( with international participation from
AT, BE, CZ, DE.bb.nrw.sn, HU, PL, ... SK, UK )
Status as per 05. 05. 2009 !
----------------------------------------------------------------------
GI2009: WEBLOG [ http://GDI-SN.blogspot.com ]
GI2009 - Anmeldung/Registration (ca. 800 KB, ZIP)
[ http://www.ign-sn.de/GI2009/GI2009-Desktop.zip ]
GI2009 - Agenda/DRAFT-Version-20090421
[ http://www.ign-sn.de/GI2009/GI2009-Agenda-DRAFT-Version-20090421.pdf ]
NEW: GI2009 - Final List of Keynote / Paper / Poster - Authors
[ http://www.ign-sn.de/GI2009/GI2009-Autorenliste-Status-03.05.2009.pdf ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
GI2009: EMAIL [ Mailto:GI2009@... ]
GI2009: SKYPE [ Callto:FH_IGN ]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PRESSEMITTEILUNGEN < GI2009 > PRESS RELEASES
AT: PROGIS: GI2009 Symposium PRESSEAUSSENDUNG / 05-2009
        LEBENSMITTEL BIOENERGIE UMWELT stabile Märkte in der Krise !
    [ http://www.progis.com/de/index.php?id=news\presse.html ]
    [ http://www.progis.com/de/PDF/Software_Revolution.pdf ]
    [ http://www.progis.com/de/PDF/PROGIS%20PR_April%20GI2009_Presseaussendung_v2.pdf ]
    [ http://www.progis.com/de/PDF/GI2009-Workshop-MAYER-RuralLOGISTICS%20_PROGIS,%20AT_.pdf ]
EU: V1 Magazine
   [ http://www.vector1media.com/ ]
    [ http://www.vector1media.com/top-stories/corporate-news/1spatial-keynotes-gi2009%3a-automated-generalisation-across-europe ]
UK: 1SPATIAL:
    [ http://www.1spatial.com/news_events/news/news.php?news)3 ]
US: GIScafe:
    [ http://www10.giscafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?articleidh2298 ]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DEADLINE Final Registration of Participants: 10.05.2009
[ http://www.IGN-SN.de/GI2009/GI2009-Anmeldung-NAME.doc ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
DEADLINE for Authors' PPT delivery: 10.05.2009
----------------------------------------------------------------------
GI2009-Symposium-DEADLINE
PROCEEDINGS IMPRIMATUR: 10.05.2009 / 15:00
----------------------------------------------------------------------
GI2009-Symposium-OPENING: 14.05.2009 / 10:00
GPS: [ 51°01'15.52"N, 13°43'44,78"E ]
Mobile Hotline: +49-160-9490.2443
----------------------------------------------------------------------
SOCIAL EVENTS at 14.05.2009 including several personal choices:
17:00 Visit of Historic "Landtechnik-Museum" & GPS-based AST@TUD-ZINT
      [ http://www.landtechnikverein.de/ ]
18:00 Dresden Panorama viewing from newly opened "Bismarck-Tower"
      [ http://www.bismarckturm-dresden.de/html/b_start.html ]
19:00 Public viewing Intern. DIXIELAND Jazz Festival on "ELBE-Riverboats"
      [ http://www.dixieland.de/ ]
      [ http://2008.dixieland.de/jukebox/index.html ]
--
20:00 "Get together..." at the "Panorama-Restaurant" in BOW'ling Arena
<---------------------------------------------------------------------->
IGN e.V. - INNOVATION. Grenzüberschreitendes Netzwerk (X-border Network)
- a non-profit Association (gemeinnütziger Verein) for Education, Development and Knowledge Transfer - has been founded first in 2002 as "GDI-Sachsen (i.G.)" - the final outcome of the "OpenGIS Strategy Seminar" series in GI2000 & GI2002 at "Bildungswerk Ost-West" (BOW), but later on re-founded as the follow-up "IGN e.V." at September 2nd, 2003, by Czechia and Saxonia experts of Cartomatics, Cyberlaw, Cybernetics, Geomatics, Economics, Mediamatics, Pedagogics, Regional Development and Spatial Sciences, and officially registered by Dresden City Court as non-profit Association at October 16th, 2003. - Register number # VR4285 - [ http://www.IGN-SN.de/Registration.pdf ].
Its main goals: supporting GEO - ENVIRO - SPATIO - oriented Awareness, Business and Openness in Research, Education and Training on GeoINSPIREd Interoperability, Sustainability, and Usability of spatial Data, Services and Applications for X-border-Infrastructures of Spatial Information (X-INSPIRE) in EUROPE of REGIONS.
[ Copyright © 2009 by IGN e.V. - All rights reserved ]
[ Mailto:Vorstand@... ]
CONFIDENTIALITY CLAUSE
Privileged and Confidential Information may be contained in this message. If you are not the addressee indicated in this message or responsible for delivery of the message to such person, you may not copy or deliver this message to anyone. In such case, you should destroy this message and kindly notify the sender by reply email.
The sender accepts no liability of whatever nature for any loss, liability, damage or expense resulting directly or indirectly from the access of any resources that are attached to this message. Opinions, conclusions and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of IGN e.V. and shall be understood as given by the author only.

!!! INFO!!! Call for Papers, Geomatica Journal, Special Issue on ³Volunteered Geographic Information²

2009-04-04T18:40:57Z

!!! INFO!!! Call for Papers, Geomatica Journal, Special Issue on “Volunteered Geographic Information” Dear colleagues,

You have probably seen on the instruction of Geomatica Journal (web site) that $50 fees are charged on each page of a paper for author whom are not members of the Canadian Institute of Geomatics. THIS RULE IS NOT APPLICABLE FOR A LARGE CALL FOR PAPERS LIKE THIS SPECIAL ISSUE.

We look forward to receiving your submission.

Stéphane Roche and Rob Feick,
(Guest editors)

------------------------
Dear colleagues,

* apologies for multiple postings

We are pleased to inform you to the call for Papers of the Special Issue on “Volunteered Geographic Information” to Geomatica Journal. We look forward to receiving your submission. Please transfer this call for papers to anyone interested.

Stéphane Roche and Rob Feick,
(Guest editors)

Call for Papers
Geomatica

Special Issue on “Volunteered Geographic Information ”

Guest Editors: Dr. Stéphane Roche and Dr. Rob Feick

Aim
This special issue of Geomatica is devoted to the theme of Volunteered Geographic Information. Geomatica, the Journal of Geospatial Information Science, Technology and Practice, is the quarterly peer-reviewed journal of the Canadian Institute of Geomatics (CIG). It is dedicated to the dissemination of information on technical advances in the field of geomatics science and engineering, including geomatics education. Papers for this special issue on Volunteered Geographic Information must present research results and advanced work in progress related to, user generated geo-content and particularly linkages to neo-geography, Web 2.0 and/or participatory GIS . Discussions on major challenges that VGI introduces to geomatics sciences and engineering and foreseeable future directions are also welcome, and contributions reflecting international perspectives are strongly encouraged.

Scope
Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
-        citizens’ motivations in providing volunteered geographic information,
-        quality, validity, responsibility and legitimacy issues of VGI,
-        privacy, confidentiality and ethical issues,
-        potential applications of VGI see as ‘human sensor networks’ in public health, civil security, etc.,
-        technological challenges and opportunities (e.g. access to wireless networks, mobile phones, etc.…),
-        applications for collaborative VGI (e.g. wikiGIS, wiki carto, etc.)
-        participatory GIS/mapping using VGI and user generated content,
-        cartographic challenges in the context of geospatial Web 2.0,
-        strategy (process, policy, technologies) to integrate VGI into formal GIS processes

Submission guidelines
Papers should be submitted in English or in French to Dr. Stéphane Roche (email: stephane.roche@...) and Dr. Rob Feick (email: rdfeick@...) in Adobe PDF format (.pdf) before the deadline listed below. Please follow the instructions to authors that are outlined in Geomatica and are also available at the CIG-ACSG web site (http://www.cig-acsg.ca/page.asp?intNodeID=29). If the document is bigger than 3.0 MB, please submit it to editgeo@.... Each paper should not exceed 9,000 words. The special issue will include a maximum of 8-10 papers.

Important deadlines
Submission of manuscripts: June 1, 2009
Notification of acceptance/rejection: August 31, 2009
Submission of final version: October 30, 2009
Planned publication of special issue: beginning of 2010
* An early expression of interest through email with a title and short abstract would be highly appreciated.

Guest editors contact information
Dr. Stéphane Roche
Département des sciences géomatiques
Université Laval
Pavillon Louis-Jacques Casault
Québec, Québec
Canada G1K 7P4
Tel: 1-418-656-7841
Fax: 1-418-656-7411
Email: stephane.roche@...

Dr. Rob Feick
School of Planning / Dept. of Geography
University of Waterloo
200 University Avenue West
Waterloo, Ontario
Canada N2L 3G1
Tel: 1-519-888-4567 (ext. 35493)
Fax: 1-519-725-2827
Email: rdfeick@...

Geomatica_SpecialIssue_VGI.pdf (120K) Download Attachment

FW: Call for Papers, Geomatica Journal, Special Issue on ³Volunteered Geographic Information²

2009-03-26T10:46:41Z

FW: Call for Papers, Geomatica Journal, Special Issue on “Volunteered Geographic Information” Dear colleagues,

* apologies for multiple postings

We are pleased to inform you to the call for Papers of the Special Issue on “Volunteered Geographic Information” to Geomatica Journal. We look forward to receiving your submission. Please transfer this call for papers to anyone interested.

Stéphane Roche and Rob Feick,
(Guest editors)

Call for Papers
Geomatica

Special Issue on “Volunteered Geographic Information ”

Guest Editors: Dr. Stéphane Roche and Dr. Rob Feick

Aim
This special issue of Geomatica is devoted to the theme of Volunteered Geographic Information. Geomatica, the Journal of Geospatial Information Science, Technology and Practice, is the quarterly peer-reviewed journal of the Canadian Institute of Geomatics (CIG). It is dedicated to the dissemination of information on technical advances in the field of geomatics science and engineering, including geomatics education. Papers for this special issue on Volunteered Geographic Information must present research results and advanced work in progress related to, user generated geo-content and particularly linkages to neo-geography, Web 2.0 and/or participatory GIS . Discussions on major challenges that VGI introduces to geomatics sciences and engineering and foreseeable future directions are also welcome, and contributions reflecting international perspectives are strongly encouraged.

Scope
Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
-        citizens’ motivations in providing volunteered geographic information,
-        quality, validity, responsibility and legitimacy issues of VGI,
-        privacy, confidentiality and ethical issues,
-        potential applications of VGI see as ‘human sensor networks’ in public health, civil security, etc.,
-        technological challenges and opportunities (e.g. access to wireless networks, mobile phones, etc.…),
-        applications for collaborative VGI (e.g. wikiGIS, wiki carto, etc.)
-        participatory GIS/mapping using VGI and user generated content,
-        cartographic challenges in the context of geospatial Web 2.0,
-        strategy (process, policy, technologies) to integrate VGI into formal GIS processes

Submission guidelines
Papers should be submitted in English or in French to Dr. Stéphane Roche (email: stephane.roche@...) and Dr. Rob Feick (email: rdfeick@...) in Adobe PDF format (.pdf) before the deadline listed below. Please follow the instructions to authors that are outlined in Geomatica and are also available at the CIG-ACSG web site (http://www.cig-acsg.ca/page.asp?intNodeID=29). If the document is bigger than 3.0 MB, please submit it to editgeo@.... Each paper should not exceed 9,000 words. The special issue will include a maximum of 8-10 papers.

Important deadlines
Submission of manuscripts: June 1, 2009
Notification of acceptance/rejection: August 31, 2009
Submission of final version: October 30, 2009
Planned publication of special issue: beginning of 2010
* An early expression of interest through email with a title and short abstract would be highly appreciated.

Guest editors contact information
Dr. Stéphane Roche
Département des sciences géomatiques
Université Laval
Pavillon Louis-Jacques Casault
Québec, Québec
Canada G1K 7P4
Tel: 1-418-656-7841
Fax: 1-418-656-7411
Email: stephane.roche@...

Dr. Rob Feick
School of Planning / Dept. of Geography
University of Waterloo
200 University Avenue West
Waterloo, Ontario
Canada N2L 3G1
Tel: 1-519-888-4567 (ext. 35493)
Fax: 1-519-725-2827
Email: rdfeick@...

Geomatica_SpecialIssue_VGI.pdf (120K) Download Attachment

EURADIN - 1st Thematic Workshop: April 3, 2009 - Veldhoven, The Netherlands

2009-03-24T06:03:03Z

Dear EGIP,

The first thematic workshop of the EURADIN project dedicated to Address systems in Europe and EURADIN project is scheduled for April 3, 2009 (13:45-16:30) in Veldhoven, The Netherlands.

The EURADIN 1st thematic workshop will include the presentation of:

. Best practices on address definition and registration found in EURADIN project, as well as other experiences from external experts;

. The European Address Forum EAF.

The Draft Agenda is available from the EUROGI website at:

http://www.eurogi.org/pooled/articles/BF_NEWSART/view.asp?Q=BF_NEWSART_311045

or the EURADIN website at:

https://euradin.eu/Lists/Calendar/DispForm.aspx?ID=21&Source=https%3A%2F%2Feuradin%2Eeu%2Fdefault%2Easpx

The final agenda will soon be available.

You are most welcome to attend the workshop, as well as kindly asked to distribute this announcement within your network and amongst contacts that might have a potential interest in the matter.

Should you require any further information or assistance please let us know or contact directly Mr. Corrado Iannucci (corrado.iannucci@... and ing.corrado.iannucci@...), who is in charge of coordinating the participation of EUROGI in the EURADIN project.

Thanks in advance for your kind cooperation.

Best,

João

Please accept our apologies for possible cross posting.

João Geirinhas

EUROGI Secretary General

Rua Artilharia Um, 107

1099-052 LISBOA

Portugal

Telephone: +351 213-819-624

Fax: +351 213-819-668

E-mail: joao.geirinhas@...

Web: www.eurogi.org

EUROGI Members Day - 26 March 2009

2009-03-10T10:50:00Z

Dear All,

You are kindly invited to attend the EUROGI Members Day 2009.

The 2009 Members Day is mostly dedicated to European level related topics such as INSPIRE, co funded projects and currently existent Programmes.

A strong focus is given to projects being developed after the eContentplus Programme 2005‑2008, as well as to its follow up Programme ICT-PSP-GEO which will be presented in detail by the European Commission (EC).

For more information about the EUROGI Members Day please visit our website: http://www.eurogi.org/pooled/articles/BF_NEWSART/view.asp?Q=BF_NEWSART_310684 or directly contact EUROGI Secretariat (eurogi@...).

The attendance is open and free of charge but the number of seats available is limited.

In order to allow a proper access control at the EC facilities EUROGI kindly requests your registration in advance (http://www.eurogi.org/SITE/UPLOAD/DOCUMENT/AGBM_2009/Registration_MD_2009.doc) and no later than March 19.

Should any further information or assistance be required please let us know.

Kind Regards,

EUROGI Secretariat

EUROGI-European Umbrella Organisation for Geographic Information
Rua Artilharia Um, 107
1099-052 LISBOA
PORTUGAL
Tel: +351 213 819 635/624; Fax: +351 213 819 668
email: eurogi@...
WEB: www.eurogi.org

"Towards INSPIRE" International Workshop - extension to abstract submission date

2009-03-03T11:52:20Z

Apologies for cross posting - extension to abstract submission date.

"Towards INSPIRE" International Workshop
18-19 March 2009 - Szekesfehervar, Hungary
University of West Hungary
Faculty of Geoinformatics, Building "B"
(visit www.inspire.gis4eu.eu)

in conjunction with

GIS Open 2009 18-19 March 2009 - Szekesfehervar, Hungary
Faculty of Geoinformatics University of West Hungary, Main Building
(visit www.geo.info.hu/gisopen/gisopen2009)

Key dates

* Abstract submission deadline: NEW 05/03/2009
* Notification of accepted abstracts deadline: 06/03/2009
* Registration deadline: 06/03/2009
* Camera-ready final papers deadline: 30/04/2009

Workshop Description

The workshop is a paramount opportunity for GIS experts, coming from
research institutions, industry and administrations to meet and exchange
information and experiences. The main focus of the event is to analyse
the INSPIRE Directive (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe)
from a technical point of view and present the results of the recent EU
projects in this field.

In particular the program of the workshop aims to share information on
issues related to international data models and analyse the INSPIRE
Directive as a legislative and methodological framework for all EU
Member States.

GIS experts from academia, government, research organisations and
industry are welcome to submit the abstracts of their latest work for
oral presentation at the workshop.

Themes

The program committee welcomes papers in all areas of INSPIRE theme and
we particularly encourage contributions in

# INSPIRE testing and application;
# Instruments and tools for data modelling versus INSPIRE model;
# Geospatial Web Services - services and geodata sharing by the web
# Multilanguage aspects on geodatabase
# Impact of SDI on Europe - experiences with current spatial data
infrastructures at local, regional, national level under the Inspire
directive
# Cost-benefit assessment for INSPIRE implementation

Authors' guidelines

Authors are required to submit their abstracts by e-mail within 5th
March 2009.
Submission of an abstract is mandatory for submitting a paper.

See more detailed instructions at
http://www.inspire.gis4eu.eu/callforpaper.asp

Oral Presentation and Proceedings

After notification of accepted abstracts, each author is required to
prepare:

Oral presentation: each author has 15 minutes of presentation including
discussion and is supported by slides and Power Point presentation (in
any case the duration of the presentation depends on the number of papers).

All presentations will be uploaded during the Congress with a USB Key or
a CD-Rom.

Papers: the oral presentation is mandatory for the publication of paper
in the Proceedings of "Towards INSPIRE International Workshop".

Authors are invited to submit their full papers in a Word file, no later
than 30 April 2009

See more detailed instructions at
http://www.inspire.gis4eu.eu/callforpaper.asp

For further information or questions please send an e-mail to:
* De Zorzi Stefania (CORILA, Italy) dezorzi@...
* Levai Pal (FOMI) levai.pal@...
* Malerba Valentina (CORILA, Italy) malerba@...
* Taupert Szilvia (University of West Hungary) tsz@...
EGIP Archive: http://www.ec-gis.org/egip/

IGN: OPEN CALL FOR PRESENTATION published (9th Saxonian GIS-Forum - IGN e.V. - GI2009-Symposium (DRESDEN 14./15.May 2009)

2009-03-02T10:33:51Z

[ This info message has been x-posted ]

GI2009: OPEN CALL FOR PRESENTATION !
GI2009: Offener Aufruf zur Präsentation !
GI2009: Otkrytyj vyzov k prezentacii !

DRESDEN: 14.05.2009 15.05.2009
At 25.02.2009 the OPEN Call-For-Presentation has been published !

Dear colleagues / Liebe Fachkollegen & Fachkolleginnen / Dorogie kolegi !

As announced earlier the IGN e.V. is organizing its traditional, the 9th annual GI symposium. The "9. Sächsisches GIS-Forum" to be held in Dresden on 14 and 15 May 2009, in the Framework of European Community's Framework of "The European Year of Creativity and Innovation 2009", "The European SME Week" (announced by European Commission as from 6th to 14th May 2009) and the "EUROPAWOCHE" 2009.
We are awaiting your active participation as authors to propose a title & abstract
of 150-200 Words according to the published TEMPLATE forms for papers /posters,
pcdemos and/or workshop (active authors, as well as participants from new member
states and students will get special conditions to participate at this event).

Read more:

9th Saxonian GIS-Forum <> GI2009-Symposium
( IGN e.V. - Dresden/Saxony: 14./15.May 200 9 )
CFP and templates for title / abstracts see at Weblog !

GI2009-Symposium-DRESDEN: 14./15.05.2009

[ http://gdi-sn.blogspot.com ]
PRE-INFORMATION: 25.02.2009
OPEN CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS: 25.02.2009
(paper, poster, pcdemo, workshop) updated: 01.03.2009
Title / Abstract, max. 200 words can be sent in DE, EN, or RU
DEADLINE for Abstracts : 25. 03. 2009 !
DEADLINE for Summaries+Posters: 25. 04. 2009 !
GI2009-Kontakt [ Mailto:GI2009@... ]
GI2009-INFO [ Mailto:info@... ]
CFP und Vorlagen für Titel / Abstrakt siehe Weblog !
( IGN e.V. - Dresden/Sachsen: 14./15. Mai 2009 )
9. Sächsisches GIS-Forum - GI2009-Symposium

----------------------------------------------------------------------

IGN e.V.
VORSTAND [ Mailto:info@... ]
WEBLOG [ http://GDI-SN.blogspot.com/ ]
GI2009-Symposium [ Mailto:GI2009@... ]
<---------------------------------------------------------------------->
< EVENTS of the Year 2009 > ISAF2009 / GI2009/
MIIGAiK230/ GSDI-11+INSPIRE-3+NSDI-NL/ AGIT2009
ISAF2009 / INSPIREd CEE-SDI / ICT-RURAL / LLAB-RURAL
Information Systems in Agriculture and Forestry, Praha: 11.-13.05.2009
[ http://www.isaf.cz/index_en.php?iMenu20 ]
GI2009-Symposium / 9. Sächsisches GIS-Forum, Dresden: 14. /15. 05. 2009
[ http://gdi-sn.blogspot.com/ ]
[ http://www.geomatik.ch/index.php?id=23 ]
[ http://www.business-geomatics.com/terminkalender.html ]
[ http://www.epsiplus.net/news/dresden_gi2009_symposium ]
[ http://www.ejki2009.de/veranstaltungskalender_1151.html?jahr=2009&monat=5 ]
DIXIE2009 / 39. International Dixieland Festival, Dresden: 13.-17.05.2009
[ http://www.dixieland.de/jukebox/index.html ]
[ http://www.dixieland.de/ ]
International Conference on Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre in XXI-th century
"The 230-th Anniversary of Moscow State University for Geodesy and Cartography"
[ http://www.miigaik.ru/ ] May, 25-29, 2009, Moscow, Russia
[ http://230.miigaik.ru/ ]
The 11th GSDI-WORLD-CONFERENCE & INSPIRE2009, Rotterdam: 15.-19.06.2009
[ http://www.gsdi.org/gsdi11/documents/GSDI_11_FirstCircular.pdf ]
[ http://www.gsdi.org/gsdi11/prog_details.html ]
"Spatial Data Infrastructure Convergence"
[ http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ ]
[ http://www.gsdi.org/gsdi11/ ]
Intergraph-Forum 2009 am 23. und 24. Juni 2009 in Mainz
[ http://www.intergraph-forum2009.de ]
AGIT2009-GeoFORUM, Salzburg: 08.-10.07.2009
[ http://www.gi-forum.org ]
[ http://www.agit.at ]
</EVENTS >
**********************************************************************
Globally to be aware, but locally to act sustainable...!
[ http://www.DEKADE.org ]<==<<<EDU for SustDev 2005-2014<<<
[ http://inspire.jrc.it ]<==================<<to get INSPIREd<<<
Global informiert sein, lokal jedoch nachhaltig handeln...!
**********************************************************************
IGN e.V. - INNOVATION. Grenzüberschreitendes Netzwerk (X-border Network)
- a non-profit Association (gemeinnütziger Verein) for Education, Development and Knowledge Transfer - has been founded first in 2002 as "GDI-Sachsen (i.G.) " - the final outcome of the "OpenGIS Strategy Seminar" series in GI2000 & GI2002 at "Bildungswerk Ost-West" (BOW), but later on re-founded as the follow-up "IGN e.V." at September 2nd, 2003, by Czechia and Saxonia experts of Cartomatics, Cyberlaw, Cybernetics, Geomatics, Economics, Mediamatics, Pedagogics, Regional Development and Spatial Sciences, and officially registered by Dresden City Court as non-profit Association at October 16th, 2003.
- Register number # VR4285 - [ http://www.IGN-SN.de/Registration.pdf ].
Its main goals: supporting GEO - ENVIRO - SPATIO - oriented Awareness, Business and Openness in Research, Education and Training on GeoINSPIREd Interoperability, Sustainability, and Usability of spatial Data, Services and Applications for X-border-Infrastructures of Spatial Information (X-INSPIRE) in EUROPE of REGIONS.

[ Copyright © 2009 by IGN e.V. - All rights reserved ]
[ Mailto:Vorstand@... ]

FW: [OGC Press Release] The OGC forms a Spatial Law and Policy Committee [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

2009-02-25T15:26:47Z

Apologies for cross posting.

Bruce Bannerman

> -----Original Message-----
> From:
> media-bounces+b.bannerman=bom.gov.au@...
> [mailto:media-bounces+b.bannerman=bom.gov.au@...
ial.org] On Behalf Of OGC Press

> Sent: Thursday, 26 February 2009 6:43 AM
> To: media@...
> Subject: [OGC Press Release] The OGC forms a Spatial Law and
> Policy Committee
>
> PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE For information
> about this announcement, contact:
>
> Sam Bacharach
> Executive Director, Outreach and Community Adoption Open
> Geospatial Consortium, Inc
> tel: +1-703-352-3938
> sbacharach@...
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
>
>
> February 25, 2009, Wayland, Massachusetts. The Board of
> Directors of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC(r)) has
> chartered a committee of the Board to specifically address
> the "spatial law and policy issues"
> which will influence development requirements of the
> Consortium's technology process. The Spatial Law and Policy
> Committee (SLPC) will be chaired by OGC director and
> Executive Committee member, Kevin Pomfret, and will be
> organized under board leadership as an educational forum to
> include both select member and community participation.
>
> In the past, legal issues associated with spatial data and
> technology were primarily a concern for lawyers that worked
> with or for the government. Now, both public sector and
> private sector users and providers of geospatial data and
> technologies face a wide range of legal issues associated
> with growth in consumer and business applications for spatial
> technology. Such applications include Earth browsers,
> satellite navigation devices in cars and PDA's,
> location-based services associated with cell phones, business
> intelligence, social networking and satellite tracking of
> vehicles and equipment. All of these applications raise
> issues that involve intellectual property rights, liability,
> privacy, and national security. In many cases, the existing
> legal and policy framework is inadequate to provide
> governments, businesses and consumers clear guidance on these issues.
>
> David Schell, OGC Chairman, said, "The OGC plays an expanding
> role in addressing society's increasing dependence on
> geospatial information services. The advent of information
> interoperability in this technology domain raises the profile
> of geospatial information for policy makers, managers and
> scientists around the world. The Board's creation at this
> time of a Spatial Law and Policy Committee reflects the
> increasing need of leaders to understand the challenges they
> face in this area, and the Board's commitment to meeting
> their related information requirements."
>
> Kevin Pomfret added, "I am looking forward to working with
> the OGC and its members on these important issues. Due in
> large part to their collective vision and hard work, spatial
> technology and applications using spatial data are
> increasingly being utilized in a wide range of important
> activities. In order for this growth to continue, a solid
> legal and policy framework must exist. The OGC's Spatial Law
> and Policy Committee can play a critical role in the
> development of such a framework."
>
> The SLPC, in particular, will provide an open forum for OGC members'
> legal and policy advisors to discuss the unique legal and
> policy issues associated with spatial data and technology.
> The Committee will also work with relevant legal groups, such
> as the ABA, to raise awareness of these issues within the
> broader legal community. The SLPC will not provide legal
> advice to the OGC or its Members and will not take a position
> on any legal or policy matter on behalf of the OGC or its
> membership. It will rather focus on clarification of the
> legal and policy environment of the Consortium and work to
> ensure that Consortium standards reflect related best
> practices and the societal requirements that shape
> institutional uptake of interoperable geoprocessing.
>
> Kevin Pomfret is a Richmond, Virginia based attorney well
> known for the work he has done on assorted legal issues
> associated with spatial data and technology, including
> intellectual property rights, licensing, liability, privacy
> and national security. Prior to entering the law, he served
> as a satellite imagery analyst with the U.S.
> government where he specialized in the development of imagery
> collection strategies to monitor critical arms control
> agreements. He also served in various U.S. government
> positions responsible for developing Intelligence community
> satellite imagery collections and exploitation requirements.
> Over the years he has written and spoken extensively on
> spatial law and technology.
>
> The OGC(r) is an international consortium of more than 370
> companies, government agencies, research organizations, and
> universities participating in a consensus process to develop
> publicly available geospatial standards. The OGC's
> OpenGIS(TM) standards support interoperable solutions that
> "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services,
> and mainstream IT. These standards empower technology
> developers to make geospatial information and services
> accessible and useful with any application that needs to be
> geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at
> http://www.opengeospatial.org/.
> _______________________________________________
> Press and Media mailing list
> Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.
> 35 Main Street, Suite 5, Wayland, MA 01778 USA
> Media@... Subscribe/unsubscribe for OGC
> lists at http://www.opengeospatial.org/resources/?page=email
> Other List Options available at
> https://lists.opengeospatial.org/mailman/listinfo/media
>

EGIP Archive: http://www.ec-gis.org/egip/

[Fwd: FW: Invitation and call for paper - Towards INSPIRE International Workshop 18-19 march 2009]

2009-02-25T03:24:12Z

*INVITATION AND CALL FOR PAPERS*

"Towards INSPIRE" International Workshop 18-19 March 2009 -
Szekesfehervar, Hungary University of West Hungary Faculty of
Geoinformatics, Building "B"
www.inspire.gis4eu.eu <http://www.inspire.gis4eu.eu>

in conjunction with

GIS Open 2009 18-19 March 2009 - Szekesfehervar, Hungary
Faculty of Geoinformatics University of West Hungary, Main Building
www.geo.info.hu/gisopen/gisopen2009
<http://www.geo.info.hu/gisopen/gisopen2009>

Workshop Description
The workshop is a paramount opportunity for GIS experts, coming from
research institutions, industry and administrations to meet and exchange
information and experiences. The main focus of the event is to analyse
the INSPIRE Directive (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe)
from a technical point of view and present the results of the recent EU
projects in this field.

In particular the program of the workshop aims to share information on
issues related to international data models and analyse the INSPIRE
Directive as a legislative and methodological framework for all EU
Member States.
GIS experts from academia, government, research organisations and
industry are welcome to submit the abstracts of their latest work for
oral presentation at the workshop.

Themes
The program committee welcomes papers in all areas of INSPIRE theme and
we particularly encourage contributions in

*# *INSPIRE testing and application;
*# *Instruments and tools for data modelling versus INSPIRE model;
*#* Geospatial Web Services - services and geodata sharing by the web
*# *Multilanguage aspects on geodatabase
*#* Impact of SDI on Europe - experiences with current spatial data
infrastructures at local, regional, national level under the Inspire
directive
*#* Cost-benefit assessment for INSPIRE implementation

Authors' guidelines
Authors are required to submit their abstracts by e-mail within 27
February 2009.
Submission of an abstract is mandatory for submitting a paper.
See more detailed instructions
<http://www.inspire.gis4eu.eu/callforpaper.asp>

Oral Presentation and Proceedings
After notification of accepted abstracts, each author is required to
prepare:

Oral presentation: each author has 15 minutes of presentation
including discussion and is supported by slides and Power Point
presentation (in any case the duration of the presentation depends
on the number of papers).
All presentations will be uploaded during the Congress with a USB
Key or a CD-Rom.
Papers: the oral presentation is mandatory for the publication of
paper in the Proceedings of "Towards INSPIRE International Workshop".
Authors are invited to submit their full papers in a Word file, no
later than 30 April 2009
See more detailed instructions
<http://www.inspire.gis4eu.eu/callforpaper.asp>

Further information
For further information or questions please send an e-mail to:
*** De Zorzi Stefania (CORILA, Italy) dezorzi@...
*** **Levai Pal (FOMI) levai.pal@...*
* *Malerba Valentina (CORILA, Italy) malerba@...
*** Taupert Szilvia (University of West Hungary) tsz@...

------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Key dates*

** *Abstract submission deadline:* 27/02/2009*
** *Notification of accepted abstracts deadline: *06/03/2009*
** *Registration deadline: *06/03/2009*
** *Camera-ready final papers deadline: *30/04/2009*

This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an
attachment may still contain software viruses, which could damage your
computer system: you are advised to perform your own checks. Email
communications with the University of Nottingham may be monitored as
permitted by UK legislation.

EGIP Archive: http://www.ec-gis.org/egip/

Re: FP6 Evaluation and FP7 Monitoring

2009-02-23T23:30:25Z

Roger Longhorn wrote:

... In the FP6 evaluation report, one learns that the "average time to
contract" for FP6 projects (measured from receipt of proposal to signing
of contract) was 384 days, with "75% of contracts being signed within
454 days - 15 months"! Various reasons are exposed for this and
recommendations made at the end of the report for how things could be,
and should be, done better in FP7 and future Framework Programmes. This
prompts the expert review panel to comment in the report: "This is not
quite international worst practice among RTD funders but comes very
close to it."...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 8.0.237 / Virus Database: 270.11.3/1967 - Release Date: 02/23/09 07:17:00

************
roger et al.
not yet having read the evaluation reports itself, but it seems to me
that the statistical distribution curve isn't a normal gaussian one...
--
in fact, the FP6_NNR project we participated was delivered in
October 2003 and finally signed end of February 2005... anyway,
finalized in December 2007, meanwhile we have been paid by EC
the last tranche in January 2009...
e.g. you (the small SME's and NGO's) must have a large bank
deposite to survive... !
even more, in FP7 the Life-long-learning programme (LLP) are now
substituted for NGO's with 75% only, e.g. who will be engaged
further in postgradual awareness and educational project
proposals... !??
--
but, INSPIRE needs still a lot more of awareness at local / regional
levels as we could convince ourselve at newly held 1^st GEOday
of Bundesland SN-Anhalt last week...

fh / 8:15

ps: see below URL to newly published so-called GeoZG,
"German law for Geodata access"
--

IGN e.V.
VORSTAND [ Mailto:info@... ]
GI2009-Symposium [ Mailto:GI2009@... ]
GI2009 @WEBLOG [ http://GDI-SN.blogspot.com/ ]
<---------------------------------------------------------------------->
< LINKS des Monats > DE-OpenStreetMap-Sachsen - ( CZ-x-SN )
[ http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=51.02&lon=13.73&zoom=&layers=B000TFF ]
DE-OSM-SN-L [ http://www.kbx7.de/?lid=18536&c=list ]

DRESDEN [ http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/DresdnerOSMStammtisch ]
LEIPZIG [ http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Leipzig/Stammtisch ]
PIRNA [ http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Pirna/OSM-Treff ]

ANMELDUNG [ http://www.list.kbx7.de/list?enter=DE-OSM-SN-L ]- (open registration)
Bohemia<>Saxonia Switzerland [ http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Elbsandsteingebirge ]
CZ<BSS>SN-OSMAP [ http://www.openstreetmap.org/index.html?lat=50.9&lon=14.2&zoom=10 ]
< /LINKS >
--
< EVENT of the Week > GeoZG des Bundes tritt in Kraft (13.02.2009)
Am 14.Februar 2009 tritt offiziell das neue Gedatenzugangsgesetz (GeoZG)
des Bundes in Kraft - Gesetz über den Zugang zu digitalen Geodaten -
Bundesgesetzblatt Jahrgang 2009 Teil I Nr.8 (pdf-Datei, 77kb)
[ http://www.gdi-de.org/de/download/090213_GeoZG_BGBl.pdf ]
Gesetze - Geoinformationswesen - Sachsen (10.02.2009)
[ http://www.medienservice.sachsen.de/news/33159 ]
[ http://www.gdi.sachsen.de/inhalt/info/aktuell/090216/Begruendung.pdf ]
[ http://www.gdi.sachsen.de/inhalt/info/aktuell/090216/Gesetzentwurf.pdf ]
< /EVENT >
--

<---------------------------------------------------------------------->
The INNOVATION.GRENZÜBERSCHREITENDES NETZWERK e.V.
- a non-profit Association (gemeinnütziger Verein) - has been founded first in 2002 as GDI-Sachsen i.G. - the final outcome of BOW OpenGIS Strategy Seminar series GI2000 & GI2002, but later on re-founded as the follow-up IGN e.V. at September 2nd, 2003, by Czechia and Saxonia experts of Cartomatics, Cyberlaw, Cybernetics, Geomatics, Economics, Mediamatics, Pedagogics, Regional Development and Spatial Sciences and officially registered as a non-profit Association by Dresden City court at October 16th, 2003. - Register number # VR 4285 - [ http://www.IGN-SN.de/Registration.pdf ].
Its main goal: supporting GEO - ENVIRO - SPATIO - oriented Awareness, Business and Openness in Education, Research and Training on GeoINSPIREd Interoperability, Sustainability, and Usability of Data, Services and Applications for Infrastructures of Spatial Information.

IGN e.V. © 2009 by Vorstand@... - All rights reserved.

Open Positions JRC Spatial Data Infrastructures Unit, deadline 2009-03-31

2009-02-23T08:53:07Z

Dear all,

The Spatial Data Infrastructures Unit of JRC’s Institute for Environment and Sustainability has published three profiles for post-doctoral research fellows (so-called category-30 grandholders):

IES-300856 - Economist of the Information Society

IES-300906 - Interoperability of spatial data and services

IES-300907 - Support to the implementation plan for the Ukrainian infrastructure for spatial information

General information and the conditions are available at:

http://ies.jrc.ec.europa.eu/Job-opportunities/open-calls/call-for-grantholders.html

The deadline for applications is 31 March 2009.

Best regards,

Paul

------------------------------------------------------

Dr. Paul C. Smits

European Commission, Joint Research Centre,
Institute for Environment and Sustainability,
Spatial Data Infrastructures Unit, TP 262

Via E. Fermi, 2749, I-21027 Ispra (VA), Italy

Tel: +39 0332 78 5279

Fax: +39 0332 78 6325

e-mail: paul.smits@...

SDI Unit: http://sdi.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

IES Institute: http://ies.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

JRC: http://www.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

------------------------------------------------------

The views expressed are purely those of the writer and may

not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an official

position of the European Commission.

FP6 Evaluation and FP7 Monitoring

2009-02-23T06:37:13Z

Of potential interest to list members who participated in FP6 EU-funded
projects - especially those of you still waiting to be paid! - and for
those involved in on-going FP7 projects, or those planning to submit
proposals for current or future FP7 calls for proposal - might be the
two reports from this week's "What's new of the EC Research web site"
newsletter (see links below). These make interesting reading.

Reports [http://ec.europa.eu/research/index.cfm?pg=reports]

FP6 Ex-post Evaluation - Report of the Expert Group [http://ec.europa.eu/research/index.cfm?lg=en&pg=reports]

In 2008, the Commission appointed an Expert Group to undertake an evidence-based, ex-post evaluation of FP6, the group meeting six times between July 2008 and January 2009. This report is the result of our work. In addition to analysing and drawing conclusions from the past, we make recommendations and formulate a vision for new dimensions of European Research and Technological Development (RTD) policy.

First FP7 Monitoring Report (Monitoring Report 2007) [http://ec.europa.eu/research/index.cfm?lg=en&pg=reports]

This first FP7 Monitoring Report covers the year 2007 and is the first one based on a completely new approach: While in FP6 and previous Framework Programmes monitoring had been implemented through annual panels of independent experts which selected specific areas of FP implementation and performance to analyse and report on, the FP7 monitoring system is designed as an internal management tool, based on a coherent system of indicators.

<end extract>

In the FP6 evaluation report, one learns that the "average time to
contract" for FP6 projects (measured from receipt of proposal to signing
of contract) was 384 days, with "75% of contracts being signed within
454 days - 15 months"! Various reasons are exposed for this and
recommendations made at the end of the report for how things could be,
and should be, done better in FP7 and future Framework Programmes. This
prompts the expert review panel to comment in the report: "This is not
quite international worst practice among RTD funders but comes very
close to it."

Some improvement must have been made in procedure, as we find in the
first FP7 monitoring report that "time to contract" on same measurement
scale, had been reduced to "291 days (median 287 days)" for the projects
where such statistics could be determined, i.e. "calls for which at
least 70% of all expected grant agreements have been signed."

But pity the poor evaluators, evaluation observers and even invited
meeting experts for FP7. Not only are these selected experts still being
reimbursed at a daily rate which is little changed from 20 years ago,
but only 6.7% of payments to evaluator and evaluation observers were
made on time in 2007; 41.84% for meeting experts and 47.84% for review
and monitoring experts.

One begins to question just where it is, in the European Commission's
composition or infrastructure, that such delays continue to plague the
Framework Programmes - now in their 7th incarnation?! One would have
thought that, with nearly 30 years experience with the FPs, things might
have improved a bit more than seems to have been achieved to date. Will
FP7 be more successful - administratively - than prior FPs? Only time
will tell.

Kind regards

Roger Longhorn
Editor, GEO:connexion International magazine
roger@...

EGIP Archive: http://www.ec-gis.org/egip/

AGILE workshop on Geo-value, June 2nd 2009

2009-02-16T05:00:46Z

Dear Colleagues,

Please find enclosed a call for contributions to this workshop which will be held in Hannover on June 2^nd.

Best wishes,

max

Dr. Max Craglia
European Commission, Joint Research Centre,
Institute for Environment and Sustainability,
Spatial Data Infrastructures Unit
T.P. 262, I-21027 Ispra (VA), Italy

Tel: +39 0332 78 6269
Fax: +39 0332 78 6325
e-mail: massimo.craglia@...

URL: http://sdi.jrc.it

International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructures Research

http://ijsdir.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

AGILE Workshop_GeoValue 09.pdf (114K) Download Attachment

EC/JRC:X-GDI: ->>Re: Advanced Regional SDIs Report

2009-02-13T07:31:53Z

Max Craglia wrote:

Dear all,

You may find this report useful.

#############################
yes, MAX, but...

i'm feeling that some important CEE experiences are missing !

allown at several ISAF-CZ & GDI-SN events we have heard a lot about !

(see ePSI+ / ISAF-CZ / IGN-SN reports as well... )

other examples: AUSTRIA, X-CENTROPIA, N-BOHEMIA, POLONIA, ...

not to mentione a bit more than BY & NRW only for the GDI-DE regions...

but what about EU-X-OSM... ???

[ http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=51.02&lon=13.73&zoom=9&layers=B000TFF ]

yes, and not to forget the INSPIRE'd EU-Geoportal-NATURNET and its derivates...

[ http://www.NATURNET.org/portal ]

fh / 16:15
#############################
http://sdi.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ws/Advanced_Regional_SDIs/arsdi_report.pdf

Max

Dr. Max Craglia

European Commission, Joint Research Centre,
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com 
Version: 8.0.234 / Virus Database: 270.10.23/1947 - Release Date: 02/11/09 18:11:00

--
IGN e.V.
VORSTAND [ Mailto:info@... ]
GI2009-Symposium [ Mailto:GI2009@... ]
GI2009 @WEBLOG [ http://GDI-SN.blogspot.com/ ]
DE-OSM-SN-IGN [ http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/IGN ]
IGN-FEEDS @WEBLOG [ http://gdi-sn.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default ]

<---------------------------------------------------------------------->
< The VISION of Interoperability - 1999 > GIS OF TOMORROW
1999 - The IGN Vision @ 5th EC-GI&GIS (Stresa/Italy)
[ http://GDI-SN.blogspot.com/ ]
THE CHANGE OF PARADIGM => Integration of GEO+ENVIRO+SPATIO WebResources
INTEROPERABILITY - from GeoData via GeoWebServices to X-GDI-Solutions !
SUSTAINABILITY - from MetaData & CatalogServices to X-GeoMIS-Networks!!
USABILITY - from "Closed Shops" to "OPEN KNOWLEDGE" Infrastructures !!!
/VISION >
--
< INSPIRE-DOC > INSPIRE-Implementation-NEWS
03-Dec-2008: INSPIRE Metadata Regulation / MetaDaten-VERORDNUNG adopted
[ http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2008:326:0012:01:EN:HTML]
[ http://gdi-sn.blogspot.com/2008/12/inspire-metadata-regulations-published.html ]
[ http://www.conterra.de/de/service/news/detail.asp?ID=506
[ http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/whatsnew.cfm ]
12-Dec-2008: INSPIRE Data and Service Sharing Draft Implementing Rule
16-Dec-2008: INSPIRE NETWORK SERVICES SOAP Framework Report
19-Dec-2008: INSPIRE Metadata Implementing Rules: - Technical Guidelines based
on EN ISO 19115 and EN ISO 19119 published (Metadata Document Archive)
[ http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/implementingRulesDocs_md.cfm ]
12-Jan-2009: Meeting for EU-funded projects and initiatives relevant for INSPIRE
Annex II and III data specification development (closed event!)
13-Jan-2009: Comitology register for proposal for INSPIRE Implementing
Rules for Monitoring and Reporting published
13-Jan-2009: Comitology register for proposal for INSPIRE Implementing
Rules for Discovery and View Services published
[ http://sdi.jrc.ec.europa.eu/news-1 ]
< /INSPIRE-DOC >
--
< EVENTS of the Year 2009 > ISAF2009/ GI2009/ MIIGAiK230
(GSDI11+INSPIRE3+NSDI-NL) /AGIT2009
ISAF2009 / Information Systems in Agriculture and Forestry / INSPIRE4CEEC
Praha: 11.-13.05.2009
[ http://www.isaf.cz/index_en.php?iMenu=3D20 ]
GI2009-Symposium / 9. Sächsisches GIS-Forum, Dresden: 14./15.05.2009
[ http://www.ejki2009.de/veranstaltungskalender_1151.html?jahr=2009&monat=5 ]
[ http://www.geomatik.ch/index.php?id=23 ]
[ http://gdi-sn.blogspot.com/ ]
DIXIE2009 / 39. International Dixieland Festival, Dresden: 13.-17.05.2009
[ http://www.dixieland.de/jukebox/index.html ]
[ http://www.dixieland.de/ ]
International Conference on Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre in XXI-th century
"The 230-th Anniversary of Moscow State University for Geodesy and Cartography"
[ http://www.miigaik.ru/ ] May, 25-29, 2009, Moscow, Russia
[ http://230.miigaik.ru/ ]
The 11th GSDI-WORLD-CONFERENCE & INSPIRE2009, Rotterdam: 15.-19.06.2009
[ http://www.gsdi.org/gsdi11/documents/GSDI_11_FirstCircular.pdf ]
[ http://www.gsdi.org/gsdi11/prog_details.html ]
"Spatial Data Infrastructure Convergence"
[ http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ ]
[ http://www.gsdi.org/gsdi11/ ]
Intergraph-Forum 2009 am 23. und 24. Juni 2009 in Mainz
[ http://www.intergraph-forum2009.de ]
AGIT2009-GeoFORUM, Salzburg: 08.-10.07.2009
[ http://www.gi-forum.org ]
[ http://www.agit.at ]
</EVENTS >
--
< LINK of the Week > Gesetz über das Geoinformationswesen in Sachsen
[ http://www.medienservice.sachsen.de/news/33159 ]
< /LINKS >
**********************************************************************

Advanced Regional SDIs Report

2009-02-12T00:33:21Z

Dear all,

You may find this report useful.

http://sdi.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ws/Advanced_Regional_SDIs/arsdi_report.pdf

Max

URL: http://sdi.jrc.it

International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructures Research

http://ijsdir.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

International Photo Competition launched by CTA (last reminder - resending because of wrong link in previous email)

2009-02-11T13:41:56Z

The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA) has launched a Photo Competition.

12 days are left to enter the contest! Participants can win prizes up to Euro 900!

More info at http://pgis.cta.int

CTA, IFAD, the Ford Foundation and other partner organisations are producing a multimedia multilingual training kit supporting the spread of good participatory mapping practice. A collection of images - resulting from the competition - will be included in the kit which will be freely available in different languages in 2010.

More information about the competition, its legal conditions, guidelines for submission and procedures of selection and awarding is found at http://pgis.cta.int

The Photo Competition covers the following categories. Note: You can submit 3 photographs per category.

Category 01 - Capacity Building

Photos in a multicultural environment (possibly in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples) that illustrate the act of transferring knowledge and learning.

Category 02 - Attitudes, Behaviours and Ethics

Photos in a multicultural environment (possibly in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples) that evoke, in body language or appearance, the sentiment of good or bad attitudes and behaviours in development work.

Category 03 - Fundamentals of training delivery and facilitation

Photos in a multicultural environment (possibly in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples) that depict the act of transfer of knowledge among adults.

Category 04 - Community Groundwork and Processes

Photos in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples that depict the act of community consultation between "outsiders" and "insiders".

Category 05 - Enabling and disabling environments

Photos that evoke the sentiment of enabling or disabling environments in developmental work.

Category 06 - Choice of Participatory Mapping Method based on purpose, environment and resources

Photos in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples that depict the act of discussion / choosing / possibly comparing different geographic information technologies.

Category 07 - Technical preparation and Logistics

Photos in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples that depict the act and dynamics activities which are introductory to on-filed participatory mapping activities.

Category 08 - Ground and Sketch Mapping

Photos in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples that depict the act and dynamics of participatory ground or sketch mapping.

Category 09 - Participatory Scale Mapping and Surveying

Photos in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples that depict the act and dynamics of participatory scale mapping, the use of GPS in the field and other devices used for measuring and geo-locating features.

Category 10 - Participatory 3D Modelling

Photos in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples that depict the act and dynamics of participatory 3D modelling in all its phases.

Category 11 - Participatory Mapping using aerial and remote sensed images

Photos in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples that depict the act and dynamics of participatory photo interpretation or the participatory use of remote sensed images.

Category 12 - Introduction to GIS for the Purpose of practicing PGIS

Photos in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples that depict the act and dynamics of using GIS .

Category 13 - Participatory internet based mapping

Photos that depict the act and dynamics of using computers to access and manipulate internet based data .

Category 14 - Documentation

Photos in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples that depict the acts of documenting (map making) processes at community level by different means like hand written note-taking, video or audio recording, photographing or using participatory methodologies for gathering data (e.g. democracy walls, etc.)

Category 15 - Action Planning

Photos in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples that depict one or more of the following acts: (i) planning; (ii) strategising; (iii) communicating; (iv) networking; and (v) advocacy

You are welcome to participate in the competition and to disseminate this announcement.

Many thanks

Giacomo Rambaldi

International Photo Competition launched by CTA (Countdown: 14 days left)

2009-02-09T13:57:28Z

The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA) has launched a Photo Competition.

Two weeks are left to enter the contest!

Participants can win prizes up to Euro 900!

More information about the competition, its legal conditions, guidelines for submission and procedures of selection and awarding is found at http://pgis.cta.int

The Photo Competition covers the following categories. Note: You can submit 3 photographs per category.

Category 01 - Capacity Building

Photos in a multicultural environment (possibly in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples) that illustrate the act of transferring knowledge and learning.

Category 02 - Attitudes, Behaviours and Ethics

Category 03 - Fundamentals of training delivery and facilitation

Photos in a multicultural environment (possibly in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples) that depict the act of transfer of knowledge among adults.

Category 04 - Community Groundwork and Processes

Photos in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples that depict the act of community consultation between "outsiders" and "insiders".

Category 05 - Enabling and disabling environments

Photos that evoke the sentiment of enabling or disabling environments in developmental work.

Category 06 - Choice of Participatory Mapping Method based on purpose, environment and resources

Photos in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples that depict the act of discussion / choosing / possibly comparing different geographic information technologies.

Category 07 - Technical preparation and Logistics

Photos in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples that depict the act and dynamics activities which are introductory to on-filed participatory mapping activities.

Category 08 - Ground and Sketch Mapping

Photos in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples that depict the act and dynamics of participatory ground or sketch mapping.

Category 09 - Participatory Scale Mapping and Surveying

Category 10 - Participatory 3D Modelling

Photos in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples that depict the act and dynamics of participatory 3D modelling in all its phases.

Category 11 - Participatory Mapping using aerial and remote sensed images

Photos in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples that depict the act and dynamics of participatory photo interpretation or the participatory use of remote sensed images.

Category 12 - Introduction to GIS for the Purpose of practicing PGIS

Photos in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples that depict the act and dynamics of using GIS .

Category 13 - Participatory internet based mapping

Photos that depict the act and dynamics of using computers to access and manipulate internet based data .

Category 14 - Documentation

Category 15 - Action Planning

Photos in Developing Countries and/or among Indigenous Peoples that depict one or more of the following acts: (i) planning; (ii) strategising; (iii) communicating; (iv) networking; and (v) advocacy

You are welcome to participate in the competition and to disseminate this announcement.

Many thanks

Giacomo Rambaldi

[PressRelease] EUROGI Opens Membership to all Stakeholders

2009-02-06T12:15:42Z

Dear all,

Please find in attach the latest news related to EUROGI.

We kindly ask you to widely distribute it.

Sincerely,

EUROGI Secretariat

EUROGI-European Umbrella Organisation for Geographic Information
Rua Artilharia Um, 107
1099-052 LISBOA
PORTUGAL
Tel: +351 213 819 635/624; Fax: +351 213 819 668
email: eurogi@...
E-mail Secretary General: joao.geirinhas@...
WEB: www.eurogi.org

Final PR_01-09.pdf (194K) Download Attachment

Google - court settlement and more

2009-01-27T07:03:19Z

FYI

^[1]The Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 retroactively lengthened copyright by twenty years for books copyrighted after January 1, 1923. Unfortunately, the copyright status of books published in the twentieth century is complicated by legislation that has extended copyright eleven times during the last fifty years. Until a congressional act of 1992, rightsholders had to renew their copyrights. The 1992 act removed that requirement for books published between 1964 and 1977, when, according to the Copyright Act of 1976, their copyrights would last for the author's life plus fifty years. The act of 1998 extended that protection to the author's life plus seventy years. Therefore, all books published after 1963 remain in copyright, and an unknown numberunknown owing to inadequate information about the deaths of authors and the owners of copyrightpublished between 1923 and 1964 are also protected by copyright. See Paul A. David and Jared Rubin, "Restricting Access to Books on the Internet: Some Unanticipated Effects of U.S. Copyright Legislation," Review of Economic Research on Copyright Issues, Vol. 5, No. 1 (2008).

^[2]The full text of the settlement can be found at www.googlebooksettlement.com/agreement.html. For Google's legal notice concerning the settlement, see page 35 of this issue of The New York Review.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Volume 56, Number 2 · February 12, 2009

Google & the Future of Books

By Robert Darnton

How can we navigate through the information landscape that is only beginning to come into view? The question is more urgent than ever following the recent settlement between Google and the authors and publishers who were suing it for alleged breach of copyright. For the last four years, Google has been digitizing millions of books, including many covered by copyright, from the collections of major research libraries, and making the texts searchable online. The authors and publishers objected that digitizing constituted a violation of their copyrights. After lengthy negotiations, the plaintiffs and Google agreed on a settlement, which will have a profound effect on the way books reach readers for the foreseeable future. What will that future be?

No one knows, because the settlement is so complex that it is difficult to perceive the legal and economic contours in the new lay of the land. But those of us who are responsible for research libraries have a clear view of a common goal: we want to open up our collections and make them available to readers everywhere. How to get there? The only workable tactic may be vigilance: see as far ahead as you can; and while you keep your eye on the road, remember to look in the rearview mirror.

When I look backward, I fix my gaze on the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment, its faith in the power of knowledge, and the world of ideas in which it operatedwhat the enlightened referred to as the Republic of Letters.

The eighteenth century imagined the Republic of Letters as a realm with no police, no boundaries, and no inequalities other than those determined by talent. Anyone could join it by exercising the two main attributes of citizenship, writing and reading. Writers formulated ideas, and readers judged them. Thanks to the power of the printed word, the judgments spread in widening circles, and the strongest arguments won.

The word also spread by written letters, for the eighteenth century was a great era of epistolary exchange. Read through the correspondence of Voltaire, Rousseau, Franklin, and Jeffersoneach filling about fifty volumesand you can watch the Republic of Letters in operation. All four writers debated all the issues of their day in a steady stream of letters, which crisscrossed Europe and America in a transatlantic information network.

I especially enjoy the exchange of letters between Jefferson and Madison. They discussed everything, notably the American Constitution, which Madison was helping to write in Philadelphia while Jefferson was representing the new republic in Paris. They often wrote about books, for Jefferson loved to haunt the bookshops in the capital of the Republic of Letters, and he frequently bought books for his friend. The purchases included Diderot's Encyclopédie, which Jefferson thought that he had got at a bargain price, although he had mistaken a reprint for a first edition.

Two future presidents discussing books through the information network of the Enlightenmentit's a stirring sight. But before this picture of the past fogs over with sentiment, I should add that the Republic of Letters was democratic only in principle. In practice, it was dominated by the wellborn and the rich. Far from being able to live from their pens, most writers had to court patrons, solicit sinecures, lobby for appointments to state-controlled journals, dodge censors, and wangle their way into salons and academies, where reputations were made. While suffering indignities at the hands of their social superiors, they turned on one another. The quarrel between Voltaire and Rousseau illustrates their temper. After reading Rousseau's Discourse on the Origins of Inequality in 1755, Voltaire wrote to him, "I have received, Monsieur, your new book against the human race.... It makes one desire to go down on all fours." Five years later, Rousseau wrote to Voltaire. "Monsieur,...I hate you."

The personal conflicts were compounded by social distinctions. Far from functioning like an egalitarian agora, the Republic of Letters suffered from the same disease that ate through all societies in the eighteenth century: privilege. Privileges were not limited to aristocrats. In France, they applied to everything in the world of letters, including printing and the book trade, which were dominated by exclusive guilds, and the books themselves, which could not appear legally without a royal privilege and a censor's approbation, printed in full in their text.

One way to understand this system is to draw on the sociology of knowledge, notably Pierre Bourdieu's notion of literature as a power field composed of contending positions within the rules of a game that itself is subordinate to the dominating forces of society at large. But one needn't subscribe to Bourdieu's school of sociology in order to acknowledge the connections between literature and power. Seen from the perspective of the players, the realities of literary life contradicted the lofty ideals of the Enlightenment. Despite its principles, the Republic of Letters, as it actually operated, was a closed world, inaccessible to the underprivileged. Yet I want to invoke the Enlightenment in an argument for openness in general and for open access in particular.

If we turn from the eighteenth century to the present, do we see a similar contradiction between principle and practiceright here in the world of research libraries? One of my colleagues is a quiet, diminutive lady, who might call up the notion of Marion the Librarian. When she meets people at parties and identifies herself, they sometimes say condescendingly, "A librarian, how nice. Tell me, what is it like to be a librarian?" She replies, "Essentially, it is all about money and power."

We are back with Pierre Bourdieu. Yet most of us would subscribe to the principles inscribed in prominent places in our public libraries. "Free To All," it says above the main entrance to the Boston Public Library; and in the words of Thomas Jefferson, carved in gold letters on the wall of the Trustees' Room of the New York Public Library: "I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition promoting the virtue and advancing the happiness of man." We are back with the Enlightenment.

Our republic was founded on faith in the central principle of the eighteenth-century Republic of Letters: the diffusion of light. For Jefferson, enlightenment took place by means of writers and readers, books and librariesespecially libraries, at Monticello, the University of Virginia, and the Library of Congress. This faith is embodied in the United States Constitution. Article 1, Section 8, establishes copyright and patents "for limited times" only and subject to the higher purpose of promoting "the progress of science and useful arts." The Founding Fathers acknowledged authors' rights to a fair return on their intellectual labor, but they put public welfare before private profit.

How to calculate the relative importance of those two values? As the authors of the Constitution knew, copyright was created in Great Britain by the Statute of Anne in 1710 for the purpose of curbing the monopolistic practices of the London Stationers' Company and also, as its title proclaimed, "for the encouragement of learning." At that time, Parliament set the length of copyright at fourteen years, renewable only once. The Stationers attempted to defend their monopoly of publishing and the book trade by arguing for perpetual copyright in a long series of court cases. But they lost in the definitive ruling of Donaldson v. Becket in 1774.

When the Americans gathered to draft a constitution thirteen years later, they generally favored the view that had predominated in Britain. Twenty-eight years seemed long enough to protect the interests of authors and publishers. Beyond that limit, the interest of the public should prevail. In 1790, the first copyright actalso dedicated to "the encouragement of learning"followed British practice by adopting a limit of fourteen years renewable for another fourteen.

How long does copyright extend today? According to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 (also known as "the Mickey Mouse Protection Act," because Mickey was about to fall into the public domain), it lasts as long as the life of the author plus seventy years. In practice, that normally would mean more than a century. Most books published in the twentieth century have not yet entered the public domain. When it comes to digitization, access to our cultural heritage generally ends on January 1, 1923, the date from which great numbers of books are subject to copyright laws. It will remain thereunless private interests take over the digitizing, package it for consumers, tie the packages up by means of legal deals, and sell them for the profit of the shareholders. As things stand now, for example, Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt, published in 1922, is in the public domain, whereas Lewis's Elmer Gantry, published in 1927, will not enter the public domain until 2022.^[1]

To descend from the high principles of the Founding Fathers to the practices of the cultural industries today is to leave the realm of Enlightenment for the hurly-burly of corporate capitalism. If we turned the sociology of knowledge onto the presentas Bourdieu himself didwe would see that we live in a world designed by Mickey Mouse, red in tooth and claw.

Does this kind of reality check make the principles of Enlightenment look like a historical fantasy? Let's reconsider the history. As the Enlightenment faded in the early nineteenth century, professionalization set in. You can follow the process by comparing the Encyclopédie of Diderot, which organized knowledge into an organic whole dominated by the faculty of reason, with its successor from the end of the eighteenth century, the Encyclopédie méthodique, which divided knowledge into fields that we can recognize today: chemistry, physics, history, mathematics, and the rest. In the nineteenth century, those fields turned into professions, certified by Ph.D.s and guarded by professional associations. They metamorphosed into departments of universities, and by the twentieth century they had left their mark on campuseschemistry housed in this building, physics in that one, history here, mathematics there, and at the center of it all, a library, usually designed to look like a temple of learning.

Along the way, professional journals sprouted throughout the fields, subfields, and sub-subfields. The learned societies produced them, and the libraries bought them. This system worked well for about a hundred years. Then commercial publishers discovered that they could make a fortune by selling subscriptions to the journals. Once a university library subscribed, the students and professors came to expect an uninterrupted flow of issues. The price could be ratcheted up without causing cancellations, because the libraries paid for the subscriptions and the professors did not. Best of all, the professors provided free or nearly free labor. They wrote the articles, refereed submissions, and served on editorial boards, partly to spread knowledge in the Enlightenment fashion, but mainly to advance their own careers.

The result stands out on the acquisitions budget of every research library: the Journal of Comparative Neurology now costs $25,910 for a year's subscription; Tetrahedron costs $17,969 (or $39,739, if bundled with related publications as a Tetrahedron package); the average price of a chemistry journal is $3,490; and the ripple effects have damaged intellectual life throughout the world of learning. Owing to the skyrocketing cost of serials, libraries that used to spend 50 percent of their acquisitions budget on monographs now spend 25 percent or less. University presses, which depend on sales to libraries, cannot cover their costs by publishing monographs. And young scholars who depend on publishing to advance their careers are now in danger of perishing.

Fortunately, this picture of the hard facts of life in the world of learning is already going out of date. Biologists, chemists, and physicists no longer live in separate worlds; nor do historians, anthropologists, and literary scholars. The old map of the campus no longer corresponds to the activities of the professors and students. It is being redrawn everywhere, and in many places the interdisciplinary designs are turning into structures. The library remains at the heart of things, but it pumps nutrition throughout the university, and often to the farthest reaches of cyberspace, by means of electronic networks.

The eighteenth-century Republic of Letters had been transformed into a professional Republic of Learning, and it is now open to amateursamateurs in the best sense of the word, lovers of learning among the general citizenry. Openness is operating everywhere, thanks to "open access" repositories of digitized articles available free of charge, the Open Content Alliance, the Open Knowledge Commons, OpenCourseWare, the Internet Archive, and openly amateur enterprises like Wikipedia. The democratization of knowledge now seems to be at our fingertips. We can make the Enlightenment ideal come to life in reality.

At this point, you may suspect that I have swung from one American genre, the jeremiad, to another, utopian enthusiasm. It might be possible, I suppose, for the two to work together as a dialectic, were it not for the danger of commercialization. When businesses like Google look at libraries, they do not merely see temples of learning. They see potential assets or what they call "content," ready to be mined. Built up over centuries at an enormous expenditure of money and labor, library collections can be digitized en masse at relatively little costmillions of dollars, certainly, but little compared to the investment that went into them.

Libraries exist to promote a public good: "the encouragement of learning," learning "Free To All." Businesses exist in order to make money for their shareholdersand a good thing, too, for the public good depends on a profitable economy. Yet if we permit the commercialization of the content of our libraries, there is no getting around a fundamental contradiction. To digitize collections and sell the product in ways that fail to guarantee wide access would be to repeat the mistake that was made when publishers exploited the market for scholarly journals, but on a much greater scale, for it would turn the Internet into an instrument for privatizing knowledge that belongs in the public sphere. No invisible hand would intervene to correct the imbalance between the private and the public welfare. Only the public can do that, but who speaks for the public? Not the legislators of the Mickey Mouse Protection Act.

You cannot legislate Enlightenment, but you can set rules of the game to protect the public interest. Libraries represent the public good. They are not businesses, but they must cover their costs. They need a business plan. Think of the old motto of Con Edison when it had to tear up New York's streets in order to get at the infrastructure beneath them: "Dig we must." Libraries say, "Digitize we must." But not on any terms. We must do it in the interest of the public, and that means holding the digitizers responsible to the citizenry.

It would be naive to identify the Internet with the Enlightenment. It has the potential to diffuse knowledge beyond anything imagined by Jefferson; but while it was being constructed, link by hyperlink, commercial interests did not sit idly on the sidelines. They want to control the game, to take it over, to own it. They compete among themselves, of course, but so ferociously that they kill each other off. Their struggle for survival is leading toward an oligopoly; and whoever may win, the victory could mean a defeat for the public good.

Don't get me wrong. I know that businesses must be responsible to shareholders. I believe that authors are entitled to payment for their creative labor and that publishers deserve to make money from the value they add to the texts supplied by authors. I admire the wizardry of hardware, software, search engines, digitization, and algorithmic relevance ranking. I acknowledge the importance of copyright, although I think that Congress got it better in 1790 than in 1998.

But we, too, cannot sit on the sidelines, as if the market forces can be trusted to operate for the public good. We need to get engaged, to mix it up, and to win back the public's rightful domain. When I say "we," I mean we the people, we who created the Constitution and who should make the Enlightenment principles behind it inform the everyday realities of the information society. Yes, we must digitize. But more important, we must democratize. We must open access to our cultural heritage. How? By rewriting the rules of the game, by subordinating private interests to the public good, and by taking inspiration from the early republic in order to create a Digital Republic of Learning.

What provoked these jeremianic- utopian reflections? Google. Four years ago, Google began digitizing books from research libraries, providing full-text searching and making books in the public domain available on the Internet at no cost to the viewer. For example, it is now possible for anyone, anywhere to view and download a digital copy of the 1871 first edition of Middlemarch that is in the collection of the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Everyone profited, including Google, which collected revenue from some discreet advertising attached to the service, Google Book Search. Google also digitized an ever-increasing number of library books that were protected by copyright in order to provide search services that displayed small snippets of the text. In September and October 2005, a group of authors and publishers brought a class action suit against Google, alleging violation of copyright. Last October 28, after lengthy negotiations, the opposing parties announced agreement on a settlement, which is subject to approval by the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.^[2]

The settlement creates an enterprise known as the Book Rights Registry to represent the interests of the copyright holders. Google will sell access to a gigantic data bank composed primarily of copyrighted, out-of-print books digitized from the research libraries. Colleges, universities, and other organizations will be able to subscribe by paying for an "institutional license" providing access to the data bank. A "public access license" will make this material available to public libraries, where Google will provide free viewing of the digitized books on one computer terminal. And individuals also will be able to access and print out digitized versions of the books by purchasing a "consumer license" from Google, which will cooperate with the registry for the distribution of all the revenue to copyright holders. Google will retain 37 percent, and the registry will distribute 63 percent among the rightsholders.

Meanwhile, Google will continue to make books in the public domain available for users to read, download, and print, free of charge. Of the seven million books that Google reportedly had digitized by November 2008, one million are works in the public domain; one million are in copyright and in print; and five million are in copyright but out of print. It is this last category that will furnish the bulk of the books to be made available through the institutional license.

Many of the in-copyright and in-print books will not be available in the data bank unless the copyright owners opt to include them. They will continue to be sold in the normal fashion as printed books and also could be marketed to individual customers as digitized copies, accessible through the consumer license for downloading and reading, perhaps eventually on e-book readers such as Amazon's Kindle.

After reading the settlement and letting its terms sink inno easy task, as it runs to 134 pages and 15 appendices of legaleseone is likely to be dumbfounded: here is a proposal that could result in the world's largest library. It would, to be sure, be a digital library, but it could dwarf the Library of Congress and all the national libraries of Europe. Moreover, in pursuing the terms of the settlement with the authors and publishers, Google could also become the world's largest book businessnot a chain of stores but an electronic supply service that could out-Amazon Amazon.

An enterprise on such a scale is bound to elicit reactions of the two kinds that I have been discussing: on the one hand, utopian enthusiasm; on the other, jeremiads about the danger of concentrating power to control access to information.

Who could not be moved by the prospect of bringing virtually all the books from America's greatest research libraries within the reach of all Americans, and perhaps eventually to everyone in the world with access to the Internet? Not only will Google's technological wizardry bring books to readers, it will also open up extraordinary opportunities for research, a whole gamut of possibilities from straightforward word searches to complex text mining. Under certain conditions, the participating libraries will be able to use the digitized copies of their books to create replacements for books that have been damaged or lost. Google will engineer the texts in ways to help readers with disabilities.

Unfortunately, Google's commitment to provide free access to its database on one terminal in every public library is hedged with restrictions: readers will not be able to print out any copyrighted text without paying a fee to the copyright holders (though Google has offered to pay them at the outset); and a single terminal will hardly satisfy the demand in large libraries. But Google's generosity will be a boon to the small-town, Carnegie-library readers, who will have access to more books than are currently available in the New York Public Library. Google can make the Enlightenment dream come true.

But will it? The eighteenth-century philosophers saw monopoly as a main obstacle to the diffusion of knowledge not merely monopolies in general, which stifled trade according to Adam Smith and the Physiocrats, but specific monopolies such as the Stationers' Company in London and the booksellers' guild in Paris, which choked off free trade in books.

Google is not a guild, and it did not set out to create a monopoly. On the contrary, it has pursued a laudable goal: promoting access to information. But the class action character of the settlement makes Google invulnerable to competition. Most book authors and publishers who own US copyrights are automatically covered by the settlement. They can opt out of it; but whatever they do, no new digitizing enterprise can get off the ground without winning their assent one by one, a practical impossibility, or without becoming mired down in another class action suit. If approved by the courta process that could take as much as two yearsthe settlement will give Google control over the digitizing of virtually all books covered by copyright in the United States.

This outcome was not anticipated at the outset. Looking back over the course of digitization from the 1990s, we now can see that we missed a great opportunity. Action by Congress and the Library of Congress or a grand alliance of research libraries supported by a coalition of foundations could have done the job at a feasible cost and designed it in a manner that would have put the public interest first. By spreading the cost in various waysa rental based on the amount of use of a database or a budget line in the National Endowment for the Humanities or the Library of Congresswe could have provided authors and publishers with a legitimate income, while maintaining an open access repository or one in which access was based on reasonable fees. We could have created a National Digital Librarythe twenty-first-century equivalent of the Library of Alexandria. It is too late now. Not only have we failed to realize that possibility, but, even worse, we are allowing a question of public policythe control of access to informationto be determined by private lawsuit.

While the public authorities slept, Google took the initiative. It did not seek to settle its affairs in court. It went about its business, scanning books in libraries; and it scanned them so effectively as to arouse the appetite of others for a share in the potential profits. No one should dispute the claim of authors and publishers to income from rights that properly belong to them; nor should anyone presume to pass quick judgment on the contending parties of the lawsuit. The district court judge will pronounce on the validity of the settlement, but that is primarily a matter of dividing profits, not of promoting the public interest.

As an unintended consequence, Google will enjoy what can only be called a monopolya monopoly of a new kind, not of railroads or steel but of access to information. Google has no serious competitors. Microsoft dropped its major program to digitize books several months ago, and other enterprises like the Open Knowledge Commons (formerly the Open Content Alliance) and the Internet Archive are minute and ineffective in comparison with Google. Google alone has the wealth to digitize on a massive scale. And having settled with the authors and publishers, it can exploit its financial power from within a protective legal barrier; for the class action suit covers the entire class of authors and publishers. No new entrepreneurs will be able to digitize books within that fenced-off territory, even if they could afford it, because they would have to fight the copyright battles all over again. If the settlement is upheld by the court, only Google will be protected from copyright liability.

Google's record suggests that it will not abuse its double-barreled fiscal-legal power. But what will happen if its current leaders sell the company or retire? The public will discover the answer from the prices that the future Google charges, especially the price of the institutional subscription licenses. The settlement leaves Google free to negotiate deals with each of its clients, although it announces two guiding principles: "(1) the realization of revenue at market rates for each Book and license on behalf of the Rightsholders and (2) the realization of broad access to the Books by the public, including institutions of higher education."

What will happen if Google favors profitability over access? Nothing, if I read the terms of the settlement correctly. Only the registry, acting for the copyright holders, has the power to force a change in the subscription prices charged by Google, and there is no reason to expect the registry to object if the prices are too high. Google may choose to be generous in it pricing, and I have reason to hope it may do so; but it could also employ a strategy comparable to the one that proved to be so effective in pushing up the price of scholarly journals: first, entice subscribers with low initial rates, and then, once they are hooked, ratchet up the rates as high as the traffic will bear.

Free-market advocates may argue that the market will correct itself. If Google charges too much, customers will cancel their subscriptions, and the price will drop. But there is no direct connection between supply and demand in the mechanism for the institutional licenses envisioned by the settlement. Students, faculty, and patrons of public libraries will not pay for the subscriptions. The payment will come from the libraries; and if the libraries fail to find enough money for the subscription renewals, they may arouse ferocious protests from readers who have become accustomed to Google's service. In the face of the protests, the libraries probably will cut back on other services, including the acquisition of books, just as they did when publishers ratcheted up the price of periodicals.

No one can predict what will happen. We can only read the terms of the settlement and guess about the future. If Google makes available, at a reasonable price, the combined holdings of all the major US libraries, who would not applaud? Would we not prefer a world in which this immense corpus of digitized books is accessible, even at a high price, to one in which it did not exist?

Perhaps, but the settlement creates a fundamental change in the digital world by consolidating power in the hands of one company. Apart from Wikipedia, Google already controls the means of access to information online for most Americans, whether they want to find out about people, goods, places, or almost anything. In addition to the original "Big Google," we have Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Images, Google Labs, Google Finance, Google Arts, Google Food, Google Sports, Google Health, Google Checkout, Google Alerts, and many more Google enterprises on the way. Now Google Book Search promises to create the largest library and the largest book business that have ever existed.

Whether or not I have understood the settlement correctly, its terms are locked together so tightly that they cannot be pried apart. At this point, neither Google, nor the authors, nor the publishers, nor the district court is likely to modify the settlement substantially. Yet this is also a tipping point in the development of what we call the information society. If we get the balance wrong at this moment, private interests may outweigh the public good for the foreseeable future, and the Enlightenment dream may be as elusive as ever.

Notes

International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC)
Chamber of Commerce: 410 27 560

E-mail disclaimer
The information in this e-mail, including any attachments, is intended for the addressee only. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, distribution or action in relation to the content of this information is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail by mistake, please delete the message and any attachment and inform the sender by return e-mail. ITC accepts no liability for any error or omission in the message content or for damage of any kind that may arise as a result of e-mail transmission.

GI2009-INFO-090121: The 9th Saxonian GIS-Forum - IGN e.V. - GI2009-Symposium (DRESDEN 14./15.May 2009)

2009-01-21T06:22:10Z

[ sorry, this info message has been x-posted ]

PRE-INFORMATION / VORINFORMATION / PRE-INFORMACIJA

14.05.2009 15.05.2009: DRESDEN - Symposium & Workshops

The IGN e.V. is organizing its annual symposium. The "9. Sächsisches GIS-Forum" to be held in Dresden on 14 and 15 May 2009, in the European Community's framework of "The European Year of Creativity and Innovation 2009" and "The European SME Week" (announced by European Commission as from 6th to 14th May 2009).

The focus of GI2009 is to promote "Best practices" in

Interoperability for Awareness, Business and Openness,
Sustainability of creative lifelong learning and innovative regional development, as well
Usability of Geo-Envi-Spatio Applications in the Agri, Envi & Forestry Sectors"

and to exchange Knowledge & ideas for creative and innovative X-border-GDI in Europe of Regions.

The intention of GI2009 is to integrate

participants from AT, BG, CZ, DE, HU, ..., MT, PL, RO, ..., SK, UK.

IGN e.V. is organizing the GI2009 in close X-border-Cooperation with Czech Organizations CAGI and CCSS to be complementary with the European ISAF-Conference & INSPIRE4CEEC-Workshop, Praha: 12./13.05.2009 , as well as disseminate the GeoINSPIRE'd final results of the EU-GeoPortal-NATURNET, the ENVI-Atlas Region LIBEREC, and further innovations in special workshops on X-MAP-GEN, and X-GDI-OSM... etc.

The OPEN Call-For-Presentation is to be announced until February 25th, 2009.
Read more:

9th Saxonian GIS-Forum <> GI2009-Symposium
( IGN e.V. - Dresden/Saxony: 14./15.May 200 9 )
-- see more pre-information at the WEBLOG

[ http://gdi-sn.blogspot.com/ ]

-- siehe erste Vorinformationen auf dem WEBLOG
9. Sächsisches GIS-Forum - GI2009-Symposium
( IGN e.V. - Dresden/Sachsen: 14./15. Mai 2009 )

TITLE / TITEL
EUROPA der REGIONEN im "Europäischen Jahr der Kreativität und Innovation" - Nachhaltigkeit der interregionalen Zusammenarbeit The European Year of Creativity & Innovation - Sustainability of inter-regional Collaboration

The OPEN Call for Presentation t.b.a.: 25.02.2009 (Proposals & abstracts maybe written in DE, EN, RU)

You are invited to participate in this OPEN call and to deliver your creative & innovative title/abstract proposal according to the deadlines and editorial templates to be published soon on the WEBLOG page, but not later then March 25th, 2009:

Der OFFENE Aufruf für Autoren erfolgt bis: 25.02.2009 (siehe Formatvorlagen demnächst auf WEBLOG, einzusenden nicht später als 25. März 2009 )

IGN e.V.
Doz. Dr. F. HOFFMANN, CSc
- Vorstandsvorsitzender -
Dresden, 21.01.2009 / 15:00
-------------------------

FURTHER INFORMATION
Offizieller Auftakt des Europäischen Jahres <> Official Start of the EYCI2009:
Am 7.01.2009 fand die offizielle Auftaktveranstaltung des Europäischen Jahrs der Kreativität und Innovation 2009 in Prag statt. <> The European Year of Creativity and Innovation 2009 has been launched newly in Prague (CZ) - see / siehe [ Official Launch VIDEO (21 MB) of the Year in Prague/CZ - 07/01/2009 ]
--
More background information:
The European Year of Creativity and Innovation 2009 - EUROPA
[ http://www.create2009.europa.eu/ ]
--
The Goals of the European Year of Creativity and Innovation 2009
[ http://www.create2009.europa.eu/index_en/goals_of_the_year.html ]
--
Press information - EYCI2009
[ http://www.create2009.europa.eu/press.html ]
--
Europäisches Jahr der Kreativität und Innovation 2009 in Deutschland
[ http://www.ejki2009.de/ueber_das_europaeische_jahr_2009_2.html ]
--
Europäisches Parlament fordert mehr Information und Kommunikation
mit den Bürgern - 19-Jan-2009
[ http://www.wib.sachsen.de/3754.htm ]
--
Nachhaltig und innovativ: Zukunft im ländlichen Raum
[ http://www.ilr-2013.de/index.html ]
--
GeoINSPIRE'd UMWELT-Atlas der Region LIBEREC
[ http://maps.kraj-lbc.cz/mapserv/atlaszp ]
(ONLINE-Freischaltung geplant ab 1. März 2009 - Printversion: 10.000 Ex.)
--

IGN e.V.
VORSTAND [ Mailto:info@... ]
WEBLOG [ http://GDI-SN.blogspot.com/ ]
GI2009-Symposium [ Mailto:GI2009@... ]
DE-OSM-SN-IGN [ http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/IGN ]
WEBLOG-FEEDS-POST [ http://gdi-sn.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default ]
<---------------------------------------------------------------------->
< EVENTS of the Month > INSPIRE-MetaDaten-VERORDNUNG vom 3.12.2008
03-Dec-2008: INSPIRE Metadata Regulation adopted
[ http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2008:326:0012:01:EN:HTML]
[ http://gdi-sn.blogspot.com/2008/12/inspire-metadata-regulations-published.html ]
[ http://www.conterra.de/de/service/news/detail.asp?ID=506
[ http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/whatsnew.cfm ]
12-Dec-2008: INSPIRE Data and Service Sharing Draft Implementing Rule
16-Dec-2008: INSPIRE NETWORK SERVICES SOAP Framework Report
19-Dec-2008 INSPIRE Metadata Implementing Rules: - Technical Guidelines based
on EN ISO 19115 and EN ISO 19119 published (Metadata Document Archive)
[ http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/implementingRulesDocs_md.cfm ]
< /EVENTS >
--
< EVENTS of the Year 2009 > ISAF2009/ GI2009/ MIIGAiK230/ GSDI11+INSPIRE3+NSDI-NL/ AGIT2009
ISAF2009 / Information Systems in Agriculture and Forestry / INSPIRE4CEEC
Praha: 11.-13.05.2009
[ http://www.isaf.cz/index_en.php?iMenu=3D20 ]
GI2009-Symposium / 9. Sächsisches GIS-Forum, Dresden: 14./15.05.2009
[ http://www.geomatik.ch/index.php?id=23 ]
[ http://gdi-sn.blogspot.com/ ]
DIXIE2009 / 39. International Dixieland Festival, Dresden: 13.-17.05.2009
[ http://www.dixieland.de/jukebox/index.html ]
[ http://www.dixieland.de/ ]
International Conference on Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre in XXI-th century
"The 230-th Anniversary of Moscow State University for Geodesy and Cartography"
[ http://www.miigaik.ru/ ] May, 25-29, 2009, Moscow, Russia
[ http://230.miigaik.ru/ ]
The 11th GSDI-WORLD-CONFERENCE & INSPIRE2009, Rotterdam: 15.-19.06.2009
[ http://www.gsdi.org/gsdi11/documents/GSDI_11_FirstCircular.pdf ]
[ http://www.gsdi.org/gsdi11/prog_details.html ]
"Spatial Data Infrastructure Convergence"
[ http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ ]
[ http://www.gsdi.org/gsdi11/ ]
Intergraph-Forum 2009 am 23. und 24. Juni 2009 in Mainz
[ http://www.intergraph-forum2009.de ]
AGIT2009-GeoFORUM, Salzburg: 08.-10.07.2009
[ http://www.gi-forum.org ]
[ http://www.agit.at ]
</EVENTS >
**********************************************************************
Globally to be aware, but locally to act sustainable...!
[ http://www.DEKADE.org ]<==<<<EDU for SustDev 2005-2014<<<
[ http://inspire.jrc.it ]<==================<<to get INSPIREd<<<
Global informiert sein, lokal jedoch nachhaltig handeln...!
**********************************************************************
CONFIDENTIALITY CLAUSE
Privileged and Confidential Information may be contained in this message. If you are not the addressee indicated in this message or responsible for delivery of the message to such person, you may not copy or deliver this message to anyone. In such case, you should destroy this message and kindly notify the sender by reply email.
The sender accepts no liability of whatever nature for any loss, liability, damage or expense resulting directly or indirectly from the access of any resources that are attached to this message. Opinions, conclusions and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of IGN e.V. and shall be understood as given by the author only.

Genesis Initiative (press release)

2009-01-20T06:48:02Z

Genesis Initiative (press release)

<<Press Release CDL GENESIS.pdf>>

Best wishes,

Christian Lister
Company Director
The Genesis Initiative Ltd
Direct Dial 01925 578 511

IMPORTANT
This e-mail is intended solely for the addressee, is strictly confidential and may also be legally privileged. If you are not the addressee please do not read, print, re-transmit, store or act in reliance on it or any attachments. Instead, please email it back to the sender and then immediately permanantly delete it.

Please note that neither X-Press Legal Services Limited nor the sender accepts any responsibility for viruses and it is your responsibility to scan the email and attachments (if any).

ole1.bmp (280K) Download Attachment
ole2.bmp (90K) Download Attachment
ole3.bmp (34K) Download Attachment
Press Release CDL GENESIS.pdf (68K) Download Attachment

2009 CTA Photo Competition (PGIS/PPGIS - related categories)- please disseminate

2009-01-14T05:44:44Z

2009 CTA Photo Competition

http://pgis.cta.int

Enter the competition to win prices up to a maximum of EUR 900!

CTA and partners are creating a multimedia multilingual training kit to support the spread of good participatory mapping practice. The training kit will promote examples of participatory mapping from around the world.

To achieve this goal we need your participation.

We would like to include your photos in the training kit. This provides us with a wide variety of examples and applications, and allows you to share photos of your experiences with other practitioners.

To make this fun, and encourage you to contribute, we decided to hold a competition.

Photos that you donate to be used in the training kit will be entered into contest (there are 15 different categories). You will have the opportunity to win up to 900 Euros.

To learn more about the competition, please read the legal conditions and the guidelines for submission and the procedures of selection and awarding.

To enter the competition you have to be a registered user.
During the registration process you will receive an activation e-mail.
If you cannot find it in your Inbox, please check your Spam folder
After login the Photo Competition Menu will appear on the left navigation bar.

CTA is the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA)

http://pgis.cta.int

Giacomo Rambaldi

image001.jpg (45K) Download Attachment

New and improved Data Licensing Best Practices Guide now available online

2008-12-16T04:26:42Z

Improved Data Licensing Best Practices Guide Now Available Online

The Data Licensing Guide Working Group, on behalf of GeoConnections, has
issued version two of The Dissemination of Government Geographic
Data-Best Practices Guide. To access this guide, go to

http://www.geoconnections.org/en/resourcelibrary/keyStudiesReports

This updated version of the Best Practices Guide enhances the initial
version in several ways. First, it expands the types of licensing
templates commonly used in Canada. As with the first version, you'll
find licensing templates for the end-user model, the reseller model, and
the value-added reseller model. But you now get an unrestricted-use
model template as well.

Second, the new guide reflects the rapid development and technological
advances in web-based services, distributed computing, and other user
applications. In other words, the revised guide is more Internet
friendly and intuitive. It also accommodates changes in government data
dissemination policy.

And finally, the new version offers standard legal clauses that allow
you to customize your data-licensing agreeements, should you want. These
clauses deal with topics such as intellectual property rights, source
protection and acknowledgment, fees, royalties, reporting,
representations, warranties, and indemnities.

These additions make it easier for you to design solid agreements that
reflect your special circumstances.

A Collaborative and Ongoing Process

Version 2 of the Guide was developed based on consultations with
government departments and agencies involved in producing, using, and
licensing government geographic data, as well as input from the Canadian
geomatics industry.

In addition, the Working Group capitalized on input from Version 1
readers to refine the document. That's why you'll find a feedback form
in the guide to propose changes to subsequent versions. With your help,
the guide will remain a valuable information asset for the geospatial
data-licensing community.

EGIP Archive: http://www.ec-gis.org/egip/