Development

Advancing Geospatially-enabled Scientific Workflow Environments with FOSS4G

Session Type: 
Poster
Presenter(s): 
Mr Graeme McFerren, CSIR
Dr Terence van Zyl
Dr Anwar Vahed
Mr Bheki Cwele
Mr Derek Hohls
Ms Bolelang Sibolla

This paper discusses advances in the development of a software environment with capabilities for accessing, utilising and incorporating geospatial data and processes into the scientific workflows of researchers interested in incorporating earth observation and geospatial analysis into their work. In previous work [McFerren et. al. 2010], we introduced the concept of geospatially-enabled scientific workflows; this paper shares progress made, insights gained and future research avenues exposed in the process of implementing EO4Vistrails (http://code.google.com/p/eo4vistrails/), a geospatial extension to the open-source VisTrails scientific workflow, provenance management, data exploration and visualization system (http://www.vistrails.org). FOSS4G software and toolsets are heavily used in EO4Vistrails to provide spatial database, OGC Web Service, geospatial analysis, data transformation and visualization capabilites. We identify the reasons for the suitability and usefulness of spatial databases in scientific workflows, in the context of wildfire research, noting, for example, that (spatial) SQL provides a clear provenance mechanism and a means to distribute processing tasks. Regarding OGC Web Services, we report that certain services are readily implemented into scientific workflows, notably the WFS and WCS, since the kinds of data they work with are well supported by many tools and applications. Other services are more difficult to incorporate: the SOS outputs data that are difficult to translate into formats acceptable to most scientific software; the WPS is very generic, increasing the challenge of developing workflow modules that can handle dynamically the variability of inputs and outputs that can be expected for a WPS.

Speaker Bio: 

Graeme McFerren is a Senior GIS Researcher working in particular on wildfire based applications in southern Africa, heavily utilising FOSS4G tools to accomplish this

Developing an Open Source Geospatial Solution for the Telecommunications Industry

Session Type: 
Tech Session
Presenter(s): 
Mr Scott Stewart, NBT Solutions
Mr Sean Myers
The recent focus on broadband capabilities in the United States has facilitated the expansion of new fiber networks, equipment, and access services such as VOIP, hosted solutions, and internet services. With these new assets and services in place, telecommunication companies are eager to find new clients that are geographically positioned to take advantage of their company's fiber assets and services.
 
Over the past two years, NBT Solutions has been developing a location-based web application that is helping fiber network providers identify customers that could potentially use their assets and services; quickly estimate costs for establishing service to new clients; and providing marketing and sales people with access to data and information about the overall fiber network. The application was built entirely with open source geospatial software and databases including: Map Server, Open Layers, GeoWebCache, and PostGIS. In addition, NBT Solutions used the open source framework MapFish for building the application. The application is provided to clients using a Software as a Service model and is being deployed using a reserved instance on Amazon EC2 servers.
 
During this presentation, NBT Solutions will discuss why we decided to build the application using  open source geospatial tools, including the value it provided the client; how we decided on each component to use; and the overall development process. Within the paper and during the presentation we will elaborate on what we perceive to be the strengths of this open source solution, some of the issues we needed to overcome, workarounds that were required, and our plans for adding more functions to the application.
 
Speaker Bio: 
Mr. Stewart is NBT Solutions Lead Programmer. He is a well-versed technologist with 15 years of professional experience in a wide variety of fields including database design and implementation, data quality and assurance, scientific data processing and production, smart card development and integration, public key infrastructures, cryptography and web services architectures.
 
Mr. Stewart has delivered data management solutions and applications for various state and federal government entities including NASA, NOAA, and the States of Virginia and Hawaii. He also has extensive commercial software product development experience, coming from his years as a senior software engineer for such companies as 3GI, RSA and GuardianEdge.
 

He has a B.S. in Computer Science from Virginia Tech. He currently resides in historic Williamsburg, Virginia 

Schedule info

Time slot: 
Thu, 09/15/2011 - 1:00pm - 1:30pm
Room: 
Tower Court B

Build your own Open Source virtual globe with the OpenWebGlobe SDK

Session Type: 
Tech Session
Presenter(s): 
Mr Tom Payne, Camptocamp SA
Mr Emmanuel Belo

The OpenWebGlobe SDK, created by the Geomatics Engineering departement at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, was open sourced in April 2011. It renders a high quality virtual globe with high precision rendering on the WGS84 Ellipsoid, which allows applications in the field of mixed reality applications and location based services. The SDK presents a mature toolkit for building cross-platform virtual globes with rich capabilities for visualizing and interacting with 3D data, as well as developing unique and exciting new applications. In this talk we present the project, demonstrate how you can present your own data in OpenWebGlobe, and show a preview of a port to WebGL.

Speaker Bio: 

Tom Payne is a GIS developer at Camptocamp SA focusing on bringing 3D GIS applications to the web with WebGL. 

Schedule info

Time slot: 
Thu, 09/15/2011 - 1:00pm - 1:30pm
Room: 
Denver

Real-Time, Web-Based Satellite Tracking

Session Type: 
Lightning Talk
Presenter(s): 
Arthur Endsley, Michigan Tech Research Institute

NASA's Real-Time Mission Monitor (RTMM) service offers real-time ephemeris and footprint information for a variety of satellites, including many important Earth observation (EO) satellites cherished by the geospatial analysis and remote sensing communities. The authors have developed an application utilizing the RTMM web service to make ephemeris and footprint data more accessible to the general public. Users can watch accurate 3D models of EO satellites, generated using Google Sketch-Up, orbit the Earth in real-time within the Google Earth globe browser. Temporal and spatial queries allow users to find the position of satellites in the future or the next time that a given footprint will be imaged. The web application leverages several open-source technologies including the Python web framework Django, the DBMS PostgreSQL DMBS with PostGIS extensions and the Javascript library ExtJS. Data from the RTMM is ingested and cached by the web application, feeding KML/KMZ updates in real-time or fore/backcasting the position of satellites within the web browser. Remote sensing and GIS analysts will find obvious utility in the application, but perhaps the most significant value is for the public at large and particularly students who can gain insight into how our planet is studied from space, what tools we use and where they are now.

Speaker Bio: 

Arthur's background is in geophysics, but he is currently leveraging his experience in open-source web development to support scientific data-sharing applications in water quality monitoring, climate change studies, and transportation asset management. He is interested in database design and management, information science and security, communication protocols, and object-oriented application design in Python and Javascript. He particularly enjoys working with Django, Postgres and PostGIS, and ExtJS.

Schedule info

Time slot: 
Thu, 09/15/2011 - 4:50pm - 5:20pm

Rumble: communicate with your elephant!

Session Type: 
Lightning Talk
Presenter(s): 
Vincent Picavet, Oslandia

Elephants communicate through rumbles on the ground. Communicate with your PostGIS elephant through Rumble then!

Rumble is a PostGIS/QGIS plugin, which allows to launch queries on the database and see their result inside the desktop GIS with almost no effort. It is also a way to send query results to QGIS from inside PgAdmin, PostgreSQL's developer tool.

This lightning talk is a presentation and a demonstration of how cool Rumble is!

Speaker Bio: 

Vincent is involved in Open Source GIS for a while, PostGIS contributor, he created Oslandia with Olivier Courtin in 2009 to provide services on FOSS4G. He often speaks about this subject in international conferences.

Schedule info

Time slot: 
Wed, 09/14/2011 - 4:50pm - 5:20pm
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