Development

Lifemapper Moves Forward: Bringing Together Geospatial and Biodiversity Informatics Tools to Save the World

Session Type: 
Tech Session
Presenter(s): 
Aimee Stewart, University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute
James Beach

Lifemapper (www.lifemapper.org) is a research project funded by the National Science Foundation bringing together open source geospatial and biodiversity informatics tools to facilitate bio-geographical research, to demonstrate potential climate change effects to school children, and to publicize the utility of museum specimen data. Lifemapper predicts current and future species distributions by combining specimen data from globally distributed natural history museums and climate data from Worldclim (http://www.worldclim.org/) and climate modeling centers working with International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios in openModeller (http://openmodeller.sourceforge.net), an open-source modeling framework.

The Lifemapper system has two main components, the frontend and pipeline. The frontend provides data and analysis tools as OGC-compliant web services, through Lifemapper plug-ins to open-source desktop softwares, such as Quantum GIS (QGIS, http://www.qgis.org/) and VisTrails (www.vistrails.org), and through our website. The Lifemapper backend pipeline moves user requests, data, and results between a PostGIS-enhanced PostgreSQL database and a 64-node compute cluster. The pipeline responds to user queries, data and analysis requests and recalculates species distribution maps when inputs are updated. The backend system and client libraries are written in Python; Python libraries for GRASS, R, GDAL/OGR and a variety of other open-source libraries support the underlying analyses.

Speaker Bio: 

Aimee Stewart has degrees from the University of Kansas in Computer Science and Geography. She has worked in the GIS and Remote Sensing fields for the last 13 years, focusing on software development and mapping applications in the Informatics department of the KU Biodiversity Institute since 2001. After her initial seduction by proprietary software, she came to her senses and now uses open source tools whenever possible.

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Spatial Processing using JEQL

Session Type: 
Tech Session
Presenter(s): 
Martin Davis, Tsusiat Software

JEQL is a simple yet powerful language designed for expressing spatial (and non-spatial) processes. It follows the Table-Oriented Programming paradigm and provides a SQL-like query language. This talk gives an overview of JEQL and show some examples of its use.

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Shortest Path search for real road networks with pgRouting

Session Type: 
Tech Session
Presenter(s): 
Daniel Kastl, Georepublic
Anton Patrushev

pgRouting adds routing functionality to PostGIS. This presentation will show the inside and current state of pgRouting development. We will explain the shortest path search in real road networks and how the data structure is important to get better routing results. Furthermore we will show how you can improve the quality of the search with dynamic costs and make the result look closer to the reality. You will learn about difficulties and limitations of implementing routing functionality in GIS applications, the difference between algorithms and their performance.

pgRouting includes:

  • Shortest path search (3 algorithms: Dijkstra, A-Star, Shooting Star)
  • Traveling salesperson problem solver (TSP) - Driving distance calculation
  • NEW: Dial-a-ride-problem solver (DARP)
  • NEW: All-pair-shortest-path algorithm (APSP)

pgRouting is an extension of PostgreSQL and PostGIS. A predecessor of pgRouting – pgDijkstra, written by Camptocamp, was later extended by Orkney and renamed to pgRouting. The project is now supported by Georepublic and a broad user community.

Speaker Bio: 

Daniel Kastl is founder and CEO of Georepublic UG and works in Germany and Japan. He is moderating and promoting the pgRouting community and development. He's an active OSM contributor in Japan and an initial foundation member of the Japanese local chapter.

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GeoAPI 3.0, Java interfaces as an OGC standard

Session Type: 
Tech Session
Presenter(s): 
Martin Desruisseaux, Geomatys

GeoAPI 3.0 is a new OGC standard – approved in April 2011 – specifying a set of Java language programming interfaces for geospatial applications. The API provides the community with a point of interoperability between client code written to use the API and library code written to implement the API. GeoAPI aims to achieve for geospatial applications what JDBC interfaces achieved for database applications.

The GeoAPI interfaces closely follow the abstract model and concrete specifications published collaboratively by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in its 19100 series of documents and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) in its abstract and implementation standards. GeoAPI provides an interpretation and adaptation of these standards to match the expectations of Java programmers. This presentation will give an overview of ISO 19115 (metadata) and ISO 19111 (referencing) standards, explain how abstract models are mapped to Java interfaces, and how historical evolution like ISO 19115-2 (imagery metadata) are integrated.

For users, working example codes using the Geotoolkit.org reference implementation will be provided. These examples use only standard Java API and GeoAPI without explicit reference to any implementation. For implementers, the presentation will introduce the GeoAPI testing tools for conformance verifications.

GeoAPI is driven by an OGC Standard Working Group (SWG). The standardization process will be briefly discussed, and we will suggest how peoples can contribute both inside the SWG or outside as non-OGC members. Then we will present future developments.

The GeoAPI web site is located at http://www.geoapi.org. The GeoAPI 3.0 JAR files will be signed by OGC and deployed to Apache Maven Central.

Speaker Bio: 

Martin Desruisseaux is the main author of the Geotoolkit.org metadata, referencing and grid coverage modules. He did a Ph.D. in oceanography making extensive use of remote sensing data. The development of the Geotk library targets the needs identified by this experience in a scientific field.

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On-demand transportation optimization with pgRouting + DARP

Session Type: 
Tech Session
Presenter(s): 
Haruyuki Seki
Daniel Kastl, Georepublic

Public transportation in rural and sparsely populated areas is facing considerable challenges in these years. The regular public transportation is often not economically or environmentally sustainable anymore and therefore it is necessary to develop new ways of public transportation in such areas.
 
We have implemented a Dial-a-Ride Problem (DARP) solver for pgRouting aiming to help build a better and more flexible transportation system. The concept for a public transit management system is based on existing infrastructure such as taxis, buses and micro-buses. Customers send transportation requests containing specified pickup and target locations together with a desired departure and arrival time window. Then DARP solver tries to minimize transportation cost while satisfying customer service level constraints (time windows violation, waiting and travelling times) and fleet constraints (number of cars and capacity, as well as depot location).
 
This presentation is going to give an insight into the latest development of pgRouting, an extension of PostGIS with shortest path search functionality and tools for spatial network analysis. By implementing DARP and other generic algorithms to solve spatial optimization problems, pgRouting can provide the groundwork for fleet management, transportation and logistics applications.

Speaker Bio: 

Daniel Kastl is founder and CEO of Georepublic UG and works in Germany and Japan. He is moderating and promoting the pgRouting community and development. He's an active OSM contributor in Japan and an initial foundation member of the Japanese local chapter.

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