"How to publish maps" - at Envirohack

At the upcoming Envirohack  event, I'll be compressing weeks worth of LISAsoft's Open Source Geospatial training material into a 10 minute lightning overview on how to publish geographic maps. I confess that I'll need to skimp on a few details, but it will give attendees direction on where to start, and where to look for more information.

Envirohack is a one day hack-a-thon being held 29 November 2013 in Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane, aimed at building prototypes of application prototypes which make use of  Australian geospatial datasets.
Datasets include:

• Administrative and statistical boundaries
•  Hydrography
• Transport, Utilities
• Geocoding and reverse geocoding
• Terrain, elevation, land use, ...
• Climate change, health, ...
• Imagery

A Call to Action: Digitize Imagery for the Philippines

Request from the World Bank:
Typhoon Yolanda has had a devastating impact on the Philippines.  Thousands are feared dead and many more have been affected by one of the strongest storms on record. The work required to respond and recover from this event will be massive.

One way that you can help is by contributing to OpenStreetMap (OSM).  OSM is a free and open map of the world that everyone can access and contribute to. Right now, hundreds of volunteers from all over the world are working together to digitize roads, buildings, and other features from satellite imagery made freely available by Microsoft and the US State Department's Humanitarian Information Unit. With the coordination of our partners at the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, the geographic information they are creating is already being used by the Red Cross, the United Nations and other responding organizations working in the Philippines. There is more work to be done and the Understanding Risk Community is uniquely positioned to help.

To get started, you can:

• Visit the project coordination page for more information: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Typhoon_Haiyan
• Login to OSM Tasking Manager (OpenStreetMap account required) and click on a task to contribute: http://tasks.hotosm.org/
• If you have any questions or want to learn more you can join the mailing list of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team: https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot

Image available under creative commons.

Ideas4OGC - the phoenix rising from the "GeoServices REST API" ashes

You may remember the contentious proposal for the GeoServices REST API to become an OGC standard? After strong community concerns, largely focused on duplication of existing standards, the motion to approve the proposed standard was withdrawn. The fact that the proposal progressed as far as it did, to the point where it was almost ratified as a standard before being blocked, was a primary driver leading the OGC to initiate an "Ideas for OGC" (Ideas4OGC) review, aimed at re-baselining OGC priorities and processes.
Re-assessing OGC priorities and processes was timely. The OGC is almost 20 years old. OGC standards are now addressing broader and more complicated use cases than OGC's original focus, including mass market, mission critical and production uses. This leads to greater complexity, pressure to maintain consistency between standards, as well as higher requirements for robustness, quality, and clear documentation.
These drivers were fed into the Ideas4OGC initiative, and I've been impressed with the initial set of recommendations which clearly and concisely address OGC's revised priorities and objectives. Highlights include:

• ... any [standard] coming to OGC .. should go through an “early” evaluation process to test the validity of adding it to the OGC baseline. ...
• Early evaluation of [a] new domain's [uniqueness], usefulness and applicability  to OGC ...
• ... strongly encourage internal harmonization of OGC standards  ...
• Routine harmonization through regular standards maintenance. ...
• Develop concise overviews for each standard for managers, architects and programmers. ...
• Develop a set of accessible, concise summaries of OGC rules, policies and procedures ... 
• Provide engineers/architects with [a] well-defined collection of guidelines, templates and tools  ...
• Consistent editorial review ...

The next challenge for the OGC will be to re-prioritise sponsor focus on improving core quality over features. It is exactly what is required, but is a tough sell, as the value is much harder to quantify and justify than developing a standard for a specific use case.