FOSS4G 2015 Seoul - Big Bang in Asia
by Miguel Torres
In September 2015 I attended the Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial Conference (FOSS4G) in Seoul. This annual conference is where geospatial geeks that use and write open source software all gather.
From developers to desktop users, it was a great chance to share knowledge on maps and GIS tools.
I had the chance to present our work on calculating Protected Planet coverage statistics during a Special Session named Open Source GIS for UN and Developing Countries.
My presentation was titled Protecting the Planet with Postgis: How we are calculating complex protected area coverage statistics for all countries in the world.
During my presentation, I explained the methodology that we use to calculate the percentage of area of each country that it is covered by protected areas.
For example, using Protected Planet you can find out that 12% of South Korea is protected (Land Area Protected and 4% Marine Area Protected).
All of this was recorded on video which you can watch below.
Protecting the Planet with Postgis — Miguel Torres from FOSS4G on Vimeo.
I held a brief question & answers session afterwards, and my presentation led to a great deal of interest from the audience towards Protected Planet and a number of questions on how they might be able to use it in future.
As well as presenting I had the opportunity to watch a number of really interesting talks, the majority of which were about web tools (e.g. Leaflet, GeoExt3, GeoServer) and Spatial Data Infrastructures (e.g. geOrchestra or MapMint).
Some of this newly acquired knowledge has already been utilised in a project I’m currently working on with the Brazilian Government.
Also related to spatial data management, I attended a GeoNetwork workshop where I learned how to create custom versions of metadata catalogues.
Meeting and talking to the people behind these tools, and staying in touch with them since, has been extremely useful in informing the systems we decide to use in the data management project I’m currently leading for UNEP-WCMC.
I also had the honour to chair one of the sessions on Project Development.
But FOSS4G wasn’t exclusively just about technical stuff. I watched some really inspiring Keynote speeches.
All were very interesting but my favourite was Paul Ramsey’s talk on the next 10 years on Open Source Geospatial, the video for which you can see below.
Keynote Lecture 5: Where do we go from here? The next 10 years of open source geospatial — Paul Ramsey from FOSS4G on Vimeo.
Finally, we also had a great fun in the social events, which included this amazing box for lunch.
And a gala dinner with great Korean drums... and great Korean food!
The event was a huge success thanks to Sanghee Shin and his team.
For me personally it was a great opportunity to talk about the work we do at UNEP-WCMC and raise awareness of the tools we build, such as Protected Planet. And it was also a good chance to learn from the huge number of experts all gathered in one place, and this new knowledge has already proved invaluable.
With 562 attendees, from 48 countries covering every continent, FOSS4G really was a Big Bang in Asia.
Miguel Torres Data Manager, Biodiversity Informatics UNEP-WCMC
@migtorres
