geospatial

It’s been a few weeks since the JISC Geo Tech & Tools Product Launch event at London so we thought it was time we updated you on some of the follow up activities…

On the second day of the JISC Geospatial Event in London, we had two sessions to gather around tables (and/or move between them) and discuss some questions around the themes emerging from the JISC Geo projects. It followed on from the previous days thoughts “to figure out which products are going to help catalyse the spatial revolution in .AC.UKs”, but this session involved discussion that looked out wider than the presented products.

In session 1 discussions included:

How do we get faculty/students to support students in spatial, scribed by GeoCrimeData
What human infrastructure do institutions need to establish for a spatial foundation?, scribed by ELOGeo.
How do we balance supporting novice spatial users alongside experts? Or, is geospatial analysis necessarily GIS?, scribed by Pelagios.
How to fully exploit spatial analysis within research. (2nd half of blog post), scribed by STEEV.
How spatial and temporal analysis can enhance research. (1st half of blog post), scribed by STEEV.

For session 2 themes running through the projects and 6 stages/ways of working with data were identified and discussed.

Creating geospatial data
Managing geospatial data, scribed by U-Geo.
Repurposing geospatial data, scribed by Halogen.
Analyising geospatial data
Sharing geospatial data, scribed by ELOGeo.
Expressing geospatial data

We would love to hear your thoughts on the discussions – leave your comments on any of the blog posts linked to here or add your comments on any of these topics here. If you were part of these discussions and think an important point didn’t get noted down, do add it as a comment as well.

We will be sharing more materials from the JISC Geo End of Programme events early in 2012 but in the meantime here are some video highlights – also available from our new Podcast stream [Click on subscribe via iTunes] – to enjoy:

JISC Geo Timelapse

View the whole of the first day of the JISC Geo in just 1 minute: JISC_Geo_Launch_Event_Timelapse

Highlights from the JISC Geo Show & Tell

Hear about the best projects at the Show & Tell events where all 12 JISC Geo projects showed off their work along with some guest exhibitors: Highlights from the JISC Geo Show & Tell

I can now disclose the successful 15/10 projects which will form the focus for GECO. In alphabetical order they are:

Bristol University is hosting the ‘Nature Locator’ project, tagged as #NatureLocator
Edinburgh University is hosting the ‘Spatio-Temporal Energy Efficiency Visualisations’ project, tagged as #e3viz
Edinburgh University is hosting the ‘Interoperable Geographic Information for Biosphere Study’ project, tagged as #iGIBS
Essex University is hosting the ‘Unlocking the Geospatial potential of survey data at the UK Data Archive’, tagged as #?
The Institute of Education, University of London is hosting the ‘Geo tools for Teachers’ project, tagged as #?
Leeds University is hosting the ‘Exploiting geo-spatial datasets to enhance crime analysis and related research methods’ project, tagged as #geoCrimeData
Leicester University is hosting the ‘Improving and Enhancing a Vital Spatial Research Asset’ project, tagged #?
Nottingham University is hosting the ‘e-Learning Framework for Using Geospatial Open Data, Open Source and Open Standards’ project, tagged as #?
The Open University is hosting the ‘Document and Integrate Ancient Linked Open Geodata’ project, tagged as #PELAGIOS: Enable Linked Ancient Geodata In Open Systems?
The School of Advanced Study, University of London is hosting the ‘xEvents / PhilEvents’ project, tagged as #xevents
The University College London is hosting the ‘Geospatial Engine for Mass Mapping Applications’ project, tagged as #gemma
The University College London is hosting the ‘Bridging the Gap between the GeoWeb and GIS’ project, tagged #?

More on these soon but a good launching point (in fact the counterpart to this blog is) the jiscGEO blog maintained by the 15/10 Programme Manager.

The primary purpose of GECO is to enable and help others be more aware of geospatial resources available to them – in the UK Higher and Further Education space that’s quite a lot of things…for example (this is not a comprehensive list so please post a comment to help fill out my own knowledge gaps!):

The screenshots below point to a wealth of data and services available to the community – ultimately Id like to mind-map these into a completer picture that can act as a synopsis of what is currently available.

Note that all the below are primarily aimed at a higher and further education market and have their origins in that sector – there are of course alternate universes of other geospatial tools and services out there (Google earth/maps; Yahoo; OVI; Bing; Open Street Map; OS OpenData; data.gov.uk; etc etc etc (as Yul Brenner might have said))…

Digimap Collections

Landmap

Casweb

agcensus

Census Portal

CIDER

Geoconvert

Maptube

ShareGeo

SurveyMapper

OpenStream

Screenshot of UKBORDERS

Unlock

Welcome to GECO, the Geospatial Enablement and Community Outreach blog.

Note: this is a draft of a proposal that is taking shape. Please use tag #jiscGECO to comment…

Aims, Objectives and Final Output from GECO

The overarching purpose of GECO is to foster a community(ies) of users of geospatial resources (data, services, support). Geospatial, taken in its broadest sense underpins a vast array of academic endeavour – geography represents a fundamental organising axis for information. Space (and time) are fundamental aspects of most resources and activities and the purpose of GECO is to help:

foster self-help within identifiable communities of interest that emerge form the recent JISC 15/10 funding call (in the Call itself this is referred to as ‘Community Synthesis’;
increase the use of geospatial tools, infrastructure (data and services) and information for the wider benefit of the teaching, learning and research communities;
to collate exemplars of use and to establish a trajectory for the future embedding of geospatial resources within research, teaching and learning landscapes;
to identify and promote best practice (such as standards, interoperability, machine interfaces) and to provide a means for knowledge transfer from specialist to less spatially literate users and domains;
assist with the maturation of the UK academic Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) and ensure
Graphical depiction of what an SDI is.

that location (space/geography) is championed across sectoral domains.
Promote the JISC Geospatial Working Group’s (GWG) Vision for geospatial resources in UK higher and further education.
Champion awareness raising of INSPIRE (summary 2 pager here), ensuring that the sector is cognisant of the obligations and opportunities that this gives rise to.
Promote good data management principles, including data curation and stewardship ensuring transparency and reuse where practicable.

At the conclusion of the project we anticipate:

The establishment of a nexus of (largely) self-sustaining communities that exploit geospatial information within a particular domain.
Greater awareness of existing JISC investment in geospatial resources and a higher degree of awareness of key policy areas such as INSPIRE.
Additional services and data with exemplar usage and best practice guidance.

How do you solve a problem like Geo? Highlights from the JISC Geo Event and Discussions

The 15/10 Projects unwrapped

Say What?

Post the First – Aims, Objectives and Final Output from GECO