Organisation terrestris GmbH & Co kg

Paper Abstract (long)

European Union (EU) Member States are currently in the implementation phase of the INSPIRE Directive, building a cross-border spatial data infrastructure (SDI) for Europe by adding components to their existing spatial data-sharing resources. Although INSPIREÕs technical guidelines have been based on existing international standards, implementations often use standards either in different ways or different versions. In addition, standards themselves regularly evolve with often limited coordination between changes in different standards. Such issues can limit interoperability between information systems, especially in cross-border contexts. There is a need for additional guidance and increased collaboration to share best practices and approaches in INSPIREÕs implementation. Moreover, technical components (software, technical guidelines, Ôsemantic assetsÕ etc.) need to be referenced and shared to support the EU Member States and address these interoperability issues. Such a resource will also help other European policy areas to reuse this material when looking to share and integrate spatial in their, broadly speaking, e-government activities. This includes contributing to technologies and infrastructures to support open data and the EUÕs key ICT policy, the Digital Agenda for Europe. The EUÕs Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations (ISA) Programme is an initiative covering many aspects of the interoperability requirements for cross-border and cross-sector e-government, from strategic policy needs in legal and organisational interoperability through to semantic and technical requirements. Under ISA, a Reusable INSPIRE Reference Platform (ARE3NA) is addressing the dual needs to support interoperability between Member StatesÕ implementations and the reuse of INSPIRE components in other sectors. Based in the Unit responsible for the technical coordination of INSPIRE at the European CommissionÕs (EC) Joint Research Centre (JRC), the ARE3NA team have already established several baseline inventories as part of its initial evidence base. This includes an inventory of European policies using spatial information and a related inventory of data-sharing platforms and tools. Another inventory has reviewed recent studies to identifying components already being used in Member States, including associated architecture documents and the technologies being used in some INSPIRE implementation tasks. These have, in turn helped to draft generic workflows in the INSPIRE implementation process. In many instances the tools being used are Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), and a third inventory has both built on the recent work of Steiniger and Hunter (2012) to create an overview of the current groups of technologies being deployed in Member States to support INSPIRE. In order to provide more reference components, work has also created inventories of the standards being used in INSPIRE, with a final inventory providing a baseline position on the amount of geospatial data current being shared in national open data portals. The online ARE3NA platform space to share these findings has recently been established within the ISA programmeÕs JoinUp platform, a resource to support developers and e-government professionals share their experience with interoperability solutions. This platform will help users to validate the material being found and to gather further examples towards a ÔconstellationÕ of components connected to INSPIREÕs legal items, implementation tasks and the technologies (etc.) involved. The platform is being supported by a survey to gather further evidence that will run for the duration of the project. The survey aims to establish what other technologies are being used to support INSPIRE implementation and where there may be Ômissing componentsÕ or gaps in current technologies or standards or, similarly, gaps between the data-sharing infrastructure of INSPIRE and the needs of European cross-border and cross-sector e-government, including those that ARE3NA can help to address by supporting developments in new or existing open source projects. The survey also aims to identify good practices and training to support INSPIRE implementation across the Member States in the coming years. Already, ARE3NA has addressed one gap by developing the open source INSPIRE Registry. This fundamental component for geospatial data interoperability across European SDIs provides a means to manage and share codelists from INSPIRE data models. By developing the INSPIRE Registry with ISA in mind, these codes can also be readily adopted in other contexts, potentially reducing multiple vocabularies for similar spatial objects across Europe. By basing its development on open source software tools, the INSPIRE Registry itself becomes a reusable component in JoinUp, so that other interoperability projects can adopt the software for their own purposes, including any register, including those involving hierarchical information, from organogram details to thesauri. Following the collaborative processes seen throughout INSPIRE, the presentation will provide an opportunity to introduce ARE3NA to a key stakeholder audience, with an invitation to participate in the platform and survey as well as present the evidence to date, illustrating the role of FOSS in establishing interoperable SDIs in Europe.

Topic type		Target Type
Collaboration: data collection, data sharing, open standards.		Manager Technical / Developer

ID Number

183

Name	Michelle Walker
Organisation	The Rivers Trust
Email	[e-mail]

Paper Title	A toe in the water - using open source software to support catchment management planning
I can give a practical demo	yes

Paper Abstract (short)

The Rivers Trust demonstrate how open source software and data is improving the sharing of information, leading to better decision-making and ultimately more sustainable management of rivers and their catchments.

Paper Abstract (long)

Integrated river catchment management planning seeks to balance many demands on the water and land, to protect water resources and ecology for the benefit of the economy, society and the natural world. Third sector organisations have a key role in this process - providing both the practical delivery of river restoration work, and an 'honest broker' role between government, private sector interests and local communities, to try and balance these often conflicting interests in a sustainable catchment plan. However, access to the complex evidence, software models and datasets, which are required for strategic environmental management planning, can be difficult for the third sector and community groups, due to reasons such as cost, licensing restrictions or technical capability. As the umbrella organisation of the rivers trusts movement in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, The Rivers Trust has been exploring the potential for open source software and datasets to improve the sharing of information and evidence with a range of stakeholders in the catchment management planning process. A web GIS application for identifying and prioritising barriers to migratory fish (based on Geoserver) and an application to identify sources of diffuse sediment pollution (built on SAGA GIS) will be demonstrated, and plans for future development of open source tools and data sharing is discussed.

Topic type		Target Type
Case Studies: Relate your experiences. Visualization: effective presentation of information. Collaboration: data collection, data sharing, open standards.		People new to open source geospatial End User

ID Number

8

Name	Andrea Aime
Organisation	GeoSolutions s.a.s.
Email	[e-mail]

Paper Title	Advanced cartographic map rendering in GeoServer
I can give a practical demo	No

Paper Abstract (short)

Various software can style maps and generate a proper SLD document for OGC compliant WMS. However, in most occasions, the styling allowed by the graphical tools is pretty limited and not good enough to achieve good looking, readable and efficient cartographic output. The presentation will provide hints, examples and enough information to master SLD in order to create beatiful maps with GeoServer.

Paper Abstract (long)

Various software can style maps and generate a proper SLD document for OGC compliant WMS like GeoServer to use. However, in most occasions, the styling allowed by the graphical tools is pretty limited and not good enough to achieve good looking, readable and efficient cartographic output. Topics that will be covered are as follows: - Mastering multi-scale styling, choosing the appropriate style and content for the various map scales - Using GeoServer extensions to build common hatch patterns - Line styling beyond the basics, such as cased lines, controlling symbols along a line and the way they repeat - Leveraging TTF symbol fonts and SVGs to generate good looking point thematic maps, line and fill patterns - Use the full power of GeoServer label lay-outing tools to build pleasant, informative maps on both point, polygon and line layers, including adding road plates to your map - Leverage the labelling subsystem conflict resolution engine to avoid overlaps in stand alone point symbology - Blending charts into a map - Dynamically transform data during rendering to get more explicative maps without the need to pre-process a large amount of views, such as on the fly contours extraction, heat maps, and wind maps from raster data - Leverage the analitic power of spatial databases to build dynamic thematic maps based on SQL views - Perform cross layer filtering and parametrize it to perform informative cross layer containment and neighborhood searches. The presentation aims to provide the attendees with enough information to master SLD documents allowing him to produce amazingly looking maps on his own. At the end of the presentation the SLD will no longer be cartographer's enemy.

Topic type		Target Type
Case Studies: Relate your experiences. Visualization: effective presentation of information. Development: new developments in products. Hacks and Mashes: novel solutions to our problems.		Manager End User

Additional Presenters
Name	Alessio Fabiani
Organisation	GeoSolutions s.a.s.
Email	[e-mail]

ID Number

174

Name	Mauro Bartolomeoli
Organisation	GeoSolutions SAS
Email	[e-mail]

Paper Title	Advanced GeoServer security with GeoFence
I can give a practical demo	yes

Paper Abstract (short)

The presentation will provide an introduction to GeoFence, an open source tool to configure and use complex authorization rules to protect data served by GeoServer OGC services

Paper Abstract (long)

The presentation will provide an introduction to GeoFence, an open source tool to configure and use complex authorization rules to protect data served by GeoServer OGC services. The introduction will cover the unique integration architecture, comparing it with the usual security proxies and comparing merits of the different approaches, moving on to show the fine setup of grained authorization rules spanning form spatial filters, attribute filters, attribute hiding as well as cropping raster data to areas of interest, and how they can be assigned to single users or groups of them. The granularity can span from the instance of GeoServer, to workspaces, to single layers. The presentation will move on to authentication integration and user management, with examples from the integration of LDAP directories. Using LDAP GeoFence and GeoServer can use a common users database, simplifying administrators job. We will show how GeoFence can centralize authorization policies on a common repository, for several GeoServer instances, easing cluster configurations. Finally, the presentation will show how GeoFence is used in practice with a few real world use cases.

Topic type		Target Type
Development: new developments in products.		Technical / Developer

Additional Presenters
Name	Alessio Fabiani
Organisation	GeoSolutions SAS
Email	[e-mail]

ID Number

232

Name	Paul Van Lindt
Organisation	Flemish Government, Department of Spatial Planning
Email	[e-mail]

Paper Title	Advantages of using FOSSGIS software to automate and manage the building permit process
I can give a practical demo	yes

Paper Abstract (short)

Case study of how FOSSGIS software is effectively used to realize an integrated solution for managing building permit processes.

Paper Abstract (long)

Flanders currently invests in a management system to automate the processes for requesting and handling building permits. The system integrates business process management with web GIS and foresees a M2M interface with existing systems being used by governments and architects. It also has an intuitive web front-end for user interaction (citizens, architects and public administrators). Paul Van Lindt, Project Leader working with the Flemish Government Department of Spatial Planning will cover the key objectives, system requirements and the project challenges. We will also explain how FOSSGIS technology is used and what the advantages are for this solution.

Topic type		Target Type
Case Studies: Relate your experiences. Business Cases: building the economic case. Visualization: effective presentation of information. Collaboration: data collection, data sharing, open standards.		People new to open source geospatial Manager End User Technical / Developer Public administration

ID Number

201

Name	Nathan Woodrow
Organisation	Digital Mapping Solutions
Email	[e-mail]

Paper Title	All the New Cool Stuff in QGIS 2.0
I can give a practical demo	yes

Paper Abstract (short)

A quick overview of all the new cool features in QGIS 2.0.

Paper Abstract (long)

With QGIS being such a fast moving project and just over a year since the 1.8 release, 2.0 is packed full of new and exciting features. This presentation will give an overview of some of the new awesome features in QGIS 2.0 like composer snap and guide lines, built-in Atlas printing, blending modes for vectors and rasters, grouping and tagging support for symbols, new faster raster engine, and much much more. A roadmap of 2.1 gives you a peak of what is coming in the future.