Open Data and Open Software Geospatial Applications

Open Data and Open Software Geospatial
Applications
Maria Antonia Brovelli
Politecnico di Milano - GEOLab

GEOlab at Politecnico di Milano
GEOlab is a multidisciplinary research laboratory whose focus
is on the collection, modelling, analysis and representation of
Earth observations
http://geolab.como.polimi.it/

Geoinformatics Engineering
 First Italian Master of
Science in Geoinformatics
Engineering
 two years international
master course taught in
English for Italian and
foreign students.
 It Combines expertizes of
Computer Science,
Environmental Engineering
and Geomatics
http://www.geoinformatics.polimi.it

✔ Open Data
✔ Citizen Science/Geocrowdsourcing
✔ Open Software Geospatial Applications
✔ OSGeo
Outline

Openness is the movement that promotes the spreading of
information as open. It was introduced by Perritt (1997), who
stated "freedom of information issues are centrally important in
countries around the world, and the Internet's World Wide Web
offers the potential to provide freedom of information at low cost".
The doctrine of openness focuses on the improvement of
government’s efficiency and effectiveness, enhances the
economic growth and guarantees an overall transparency
(Davies 2013).
Europe: https://www.europeandataportal.eu/ (Open Government
metadata from public data portals of European countries)
Italy: http://www.dati.gov.it
Open Data

A global measure of how governments are publishing and
using open data for accountability, innovation and social
impact.

The relevance of open geodata is
underlined by some reports of the
European community, which analysed
the datasets available in the EU Open
Data portal (https://data.europa.eu).
Carrara, et al. (2015) declared that
geospatial datasets have the highest
commercial value of re-use between
all the thirteen identified categories
Koski (2011) demonstrated a
business growth of 15% in
countries where geodata are open
• Authoritative Open Geodata
• Open Data created by citizens
(Citizen Science)
Open Geodata

✔ Perritt, Henry H. Jr. “Open government.” Government Information Quarterly,
1997: 14(4):397-406.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740624X97900356)
✔ Davies, Tim. “Open data barometer: 2013 global report.” World Wide Web
Foundation and Open Data Institute, 2013 (http://opendatabarometer.org/ )
✔ Carrara, Wendy, Wae San Chan, Sander Fischer, and Eva van Steenbergen.
Creating value through open data: Study on the impactof re-use of public
data resources. European commission, 2015.
(https://www.europeandataportal.eu/sites/default/files/edp_creating_value_th
rough_open_data_0.pdf )
✔ Koski, Heli. “Does marginal cost pricing of public sector information spur firm
growth.” The Research Institute of Finnish Economy, Discussion Paper,
2011: 1260. (https://www.etla.fi/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/dp1260.pdf )
References

✔ Timeline of (Geo) Crowdsourcing
✔ Crowdsourcing Enabling Factors
✔ Research Networks
✔ Citizen Science Projects
✔ Definitions and classifications
✔ Examples
✔ Open Questions:
➔ Eliciting participation
➔ Ethical Issues
➔ Legal Issues: Privacy
➔ Legal Issues: Property
➔ Legal Issues: Responsability
➔ Visualisation
➔ Quality
➔ Standards
Citizen Science

CitizenScienceOxfordDictionary
VGI
Volunteered
Geographic
Information
Timeline of (Geo)Crowdsourcing/1
Wikipedia
2001
2004
2007
2014
FirstCSConference2015
OpenStreetMap
2012
COSTActions
COSTActions
2016

Citizen
Science
Oxford
Dictionary
VGI
Volunteered
Geographic
Information
Timeline of (Geo)Crowdsourcing/2
2001
2004
2007
2014
2015

✔ OpenStreetMap (OSM) is the most popular project of
Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). Born in 2004 for
streets, then evolved into the largest, most diverse, most
complete & most up-to-date geospatial database of the world.
✔ increasing number of contributors (currently over 3M)
✔ database available under an open license (ODbL)
✔ increasing interest from the academic community
OpenStreetMap

Crowdsourcing Enabling Factors/1
✔ Geolocated sensors and handheld sensors: GPS,
WiFi or Bluetooth receivers, cameras,
microphones,, activity trackers, sensor for body
temperature, heart rate, brain activity, muscle motion
and other critical data

✔ Web2.0 technologies (Tim O'Reilly & Dale
Dougherty 2004)

Pierre Levy, 1994,
L’Intelligence collective.
Pour une anthropologie
du cyberespace, La
Découverte, Paris.
✔ Web2.0 technologies (Tim O'Reilly & Dale
Dougherty 2004)
✔ Open access/collaborative and sharing approach to
information resources: Collective Intelligence (Pierre
Levy 1994)
✔ Sharing of skills, goods and services driven by the
increasing sense of urgency of resource depletion

Research Networks: ENERGIC (2012-2016)
http://www.ubiquitypress.co
m/site/books/10.5334/bax/
http://vgibox.eu/

1. Introduction
2. Sources of VGI for Mapping
3. Review of OSM Data
4. Visualization of OSM Data
5. Motivating and Encouraging
Participation
6. Privacy, Legal Issues and Ethics
7. VGI Data Quality
8. Evolution of OSM Data from a Quality
Point of View
9. Visualization and Communication of
VGI Quality
10. Best Practies for Data Collection
11. Best Practices for Storage and
Dissemination
12. SDIs and INSPIRE
13. Case Studies of NMA Experiences
with VGI
14. Urban Planning and VGI
15. European Policies in the Field of
Citizen Science and Citizens’
Observatories
16. The Future of VGI
Research Networks: Mapping and the Citizen
Sensor (2012-2016)
http://www.citizensensor-cost.eu/
http://pure.iiasa.ac.at/14814/1/mapping-
and-the-citizen-sensor.pdf

Research Networks: Citizen Science to promote
creativity, scientific literacy, and innovation
throughout Europe (2016-2020)
https://www.cs-eu.net/
1. Ensure scientific quality of
Citizen Science
2. Develop synergies with
education
3. Improve society-science-policy
interface
4. Enhance the role of CS for civil
society
5. Improve data standardization
and interoperability
6. Overarching - Cross-WG-
Synthesis and overarching
measures

Citizen Science Projects
✔ A laundry list of projects available here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_citizen_science_projects.
✔ Other sources:
➔ Scistarter (https://scistarter.com/ )
➔ Citizen Science Alliance (https://www.citizensciencealliance.org/)
➔ VGI Knowledge Portal (http://vgibox.eu/repository/index.php/Main_Page).

Definitions and classifications/1
✔Citizen science: set of practices in which citizens participate in
data collection, analysis and dissemination of a scientific project
(Cohn 2008)
✔Classification (Haklay 2013)
➔ 'classic' citizen science: amateurs engaged in traditional scientific
activities
➔ community science: measurements and analysis carried out by
amateurs in order to set action plans to deal with environmental
problems
➔ citizen cyberscience: use of computers, GPS receivers and mobile
phones
✗ volunteered computing: citizens download data, run analyses on their own
computers and send back data to the server
✗ volunteered thinking: citizens perform classification works
✗ participatory sensing: applications centered on mobile phones capabilities

✔ Crowdsourced geographic information  any data
contributed by the crowd with a geographical reference (they
could potentially be mapped)
➔ The geographic reference can be explicit or implicit (gazetteer
services, like GeoNames or Wikimapia).
✔ Data can be actively contributed (Volunteer Geographic
Information) or passively (pay attention because not all data
contributed by citizens are open!)
✔ Data can be distinguished in:
➔ Framework data (those previously collected by NMAs:
topographic databases, transportation networks, building
footprints,etc)
➔ No Framework data (biodiversity, air quality, etc)
Definitions and classifications/2

OpenStreetMap
Examples
Google Traffic
Ingress
Pokemon go
Map Share™ Reporter
BIKE SHARE MAP

Example
●http://www.internetlivestats.com/
● 9,890 Tweets sent in 1 second
● 2,528 Instagram photos uploaded in 1 second
● 2,153 Tumblr posts in 1 second
● 1,843 Skype calls in 1 second
● 29,290 GB of Internet traffic in 1 second
● 50,232 Google searches in 1 second
● 106,299 YouTube videos viewed in 1 second
●2,420,172 Emails sent in 1 second

Open Questions: Eliciting Participation
✔ Providing something back as a motivator. This “something” has
to be perceived as of greater value than the sustained effort.
➔ Personal satisfaction  make it as simple as possible to contribute
➔ Fun gaming
➔ Reputation  show immediately and to the whole community the
individual contributions
➔ Monetary return  awards
➔ Gaining new knowledge
✔ Recruitment: it depends on the target audience.
➔ A launch event or side event at existing conferences, workshops and
festivals
➔ Parties, like mapping parties or mapathons (armchair mapping
parties)
➔ Schools and education

Open Data and Open Software Geospatial Applications

Mapathons and Humanitarian Mapathons
A Mapathon is a coordinated mapping event held generally INDOOR.
Step 1
Remote volunteers
trace satellite imagery
into OpenStreetMap
Step 2
Community volunteers
add local detail such as
neighborhoods, street
names and evacuation
centers
Step 3
Humanitarian
organisations use
mapped information to
plan risk reduction and
disaster activities that
save lives.

YouthMappers
The motto of YouthMappers: WE DON'T JUST BUILD MAPS.
WE BUILD MAPPERS.
Capitalizing on web-based open geospatial technologies, the
mission is to cultivate a generation of young leaders to create
resilient communities and to define their world by mapping it.
72 chapters in 23
countries!!!

GeoChicas (GeoGirls from Latin America)
• OSM Latin American Women community Geochicas
works towards closing the gender gap within the OSM
community through different projects focused on the
understanding of the role, participation and
representation of women in OpenStreetMap.
• The Geochicas working group states that the data
gathered by the OSM community is male oriented and
biased given the fact that only 3% of OpenStreetMap
contributors is perceived as women and this has a
direct impact on the information and points of interest
that are mapped and how the map, the community
activities are conducted

More than 200 kids mapping buildings in the northernmost part of
Swaziland in a project for malaria elimination (task #1577)
Minimapathons

Biodiversity
Cultural
elements
Street
furniture
Architectural
barriers
Participatory Sensing

WebApp: http://viaregina3.como.polimi.it/app/ or App (Via Regina in
Play and Apple Store)
Participatory Sensing

http://bit.ly/foss4game
MIGRation pATterns in Europe
http://geomobile.como.polimi.it/migrate/
http://muvias.eoapps.eu/cityfocus/

Crowdsourcing in National Mapping 2017
An International Workshop
Held in Leuven, Belgium April 3rd and 4th 2017
With NMCAs, Geomatics Industry, academic research,
software developers, citizens involved in geographic
crowdsourcing and VGI, leaders or managers of
crowdsourcing or VGI projects
http://www.cs.nuim.ie/~pmooney/eurosdr2017/

✔ It is an open question.
✔ The key ways to respect ethics in data-based research
include:
➔ involving participants throughout the research process;
➔ avoiding collecting information that should remain private, notifying
participants of their inclusion and providing them with options to
correct or delete personal information
➔ using public channels to disseminate research such as Open Data.
Open Questions: Ethical Issues

✔ Private data is any data or
information that can be linked to
an individual contributor who
created, collected or edited that
data.
✔ Many citizens (even when active
contributors) are not aware
about the possible downstream
future usages of their content.
✔ We are constantly tracked by the devices that we carry around with
us. Is location information, in itself, a private data or can it be linked
to individuals? That depends on the location accuracy.
✔ How to protect not only the privacy of the volunteer contributing
citizen but also the privacy and security of the subjects (human and
non-human) of the contribution?
Graffiti in Shoreditch, London – Zabou (Wikimedia Commons)
Open Questions: Privacy/1

To avoid compromising privacy and security, there is an urgent
need for privacy-friendly applications and protocols.
Technological approaches
✔ Blurring or fuzzing;
✔ Anonymizing data and selectively revealing information
according to citizen preference;
✔ Privacy-preserving data mining techniques:
➔ appropriate levels of anonymity , to avoid the undesired side effects
on privacy, by means of controlled transformation of data and/or
patterns
➔ but with limited distortion to preserve the possibility of discovering
useful patterns and trends.
Open Questions: Privacy/2

• Share alike licenses that require the derived datasets to be
released with the same license; the most famous one in
geographical information is the Open Database License (ODbL)
used by OpenStreetMap.
Open Questions: Property/1

Survey report: data management in Citizen
Science projects – JRC (Sven Schade and
Chrysi Tsinaraki, 2016)
 public domain, i.e. completely free from
any restriction of intellectual property;
 with attribution, i.e. giving credit to the
original creator;
 as share-alike, i.e. licensing derivatives
under identical terms;
 non-commercial, i.e. allowing any re-use
that is not of a commercial nature;
 no derivatives, i.e. preventing any way of
changing the original source or building
upon it.
http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.e
u/repository/handle/JRC101077
Open Questions: Property/2

✔ The question of intellectual property is strictly related to the
responsability.
✔ Who is responsible for the correctness and reliability of data?
✔ Many citizens are not fully aware of the additional intelligence
that can be elicited to they content by the powerful
combinations of cloud computing and data mashuping and
processing technologies available today.
➔ From the position of the volunteer, their legal role and their
contribution may not always be clearly defined and this can lead to
potentially exposing them to legal problems.
➔ On the other hand, if a data provider or data portal only facilitates
the transfer or access to VGI data, then who carries the legal
responsibilities related to consequences of future use of these
data?
Open Questions: Responsability

http://viaregina3.como.polimi.it/WorldWind/
Open Questions: Visualisation/1

Open Questions: Visualisation/2
Received SMS texts
from Wednesday, December 25, 2013
to Tuesday, December 31, 2013
for all Milano grid cells
Received Calls (6 days)
Color: # SMS
X,Y: lat,long
Z: day of the week

✔ ISO Principles and Guidelines.
✔ Reference Datasets.
✔ Fundamental Assumption: authoritative data are of higher
quality than crowdsourced (is it true??)
✔ ISO Quality Elements:
➔ Completeness
➔ Logical Consistency
➔ Thematic Accuracy
➔ Positional Accuracy
➔ Temporal Accuracy
➔ Usability
Open Questions: Quality/1

Completeness: OSM vs Authoritative Topographic
DB at scale 1:2000, Milan 2016 (building footprints)

City #
homologous
pairs
m(d)
before
(m)
RMS(d)
before
(m)
m(d)
after
(m)
RMS(d)
before
(m)
Milan 141251 2,33 2,42 0,54 0,24
Berlin 247523 1,28 1,68 0,02 0,00
S. Francisco 766565 0,5 0,76 0,20 0,11
Positional Accuracy: mean and RMS of the distance between
homologous pairs of OSM and the Authoritative Maps before
and after applying an affine transformation (building
footprints)
Map Assessment
and Warping

Open Questions: Standards
OGC Citizen Science DWG will address the citizen science
relevant aspects of interoperability:
✔ Hardware communication (standards used by sensors
communicate e.g to a mobile phone);
✔ Data acquisition (how devices send data to repositories);
✔ Data storage and dissemination (how repositories make data
discoverable and available);
✔ Data curation and preservation (how the data is maintained in
particular in the long term when the actual data campaign is
finished).
✔ http://external.opengeospatial.org/twiki_public/CitizenScience
DWG/WebHome

✔ (Geo) crowdsourcing is relatively new but it is a high-pace
evolving approach to science and research.
✔ Many applications have been exiting the scientific field and are
becoming of high interest in the business world.
✔ Despite the (many) projects, it is still a research in progress in
various fields, from the legal and ethical point of view to the
more technical questions.
✔ Being highly related to sensors (IoT), connectivity (the Cloud),
volume, variety, velocity and veracity (Big Data) we are just at
the very beginning and we expect a great evolution in next
years.
Conclusions

✔ FOSS4G
✔ OSGeo
✔ OSGeo Live
✔ Desktop GIS
✔ Browser facing GIS
✔ Web Services
✔ Data Stores
✔ Navigation and Maps
✔ Spatial Tools
✔ Geospatial Libraries
✔ UN Open GIS
✔ GeoForAll
Open Software

FOSS4G (Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial Applications) are
software that provides the user the freedom to run the program for any
purpose, access the source code to study how it works and change it,
redistribute copies, and redistribute copies of modified versions of the
software (GNU Project 1996).
The software must comply with the 10 criteria listed in the Open Source
Initiative:
FOSS4G

✔ There is at least one mature sophisticated FOSS4G for every geo-
technology area and geospatial information need and application.
✔ Emerging technologies such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and
Structure from Motion are exceptions where the FOSS4G options do not
have yet the maturity or robustness for routine deployment
✔ However, several efforts exist such as
✔ OpenDroneMap http://opendronemap.github.io/odm
✔ MicMac http://www.micmac.ign.fr
✔ Currently there are over 350 FOSS4G projects listed in FreeGIS
http://freegis.org and Open Source GIS http://opensourcegis.org.
✔ Some of these projects have a history that dates back to the early 1980s
(e.g. GRASS GIS) while others are more recent and yet have a wide and
solid user base (e.g. Geoserver) .
FOSS4G and Software Maturity

General Software Evaluation Criteria

✔ In 2006 the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo),
was started. (www.osgeo.org )
✔ OSGeo is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to
support and promote the collaborative development of open
geospatial technologies and data.
✔ The foundation was formed to provide financial, organizational
and legal support to the broader open source geospatial
community.
✔ It serves as an independent legal entity to which community
members can contribute code, funding and other resources,
secure in the knowledge that their contributions will be
maintained for public benefit.
OSGeo

OSGeo Software Evaluation Criteria

OSGeo Live
OSGeo-Live is a self-contained bootable DVD, USB thumb drive or
Virtual Machine based on Lubuntu, that allows you to try a wide
variety of open source geospatial software without installing
anything.
OSGeo-Live 11.0 released
(on 2017-08-09)

UN Open GIS
To identify and develop open source GIS software (Spatial Data
Infrastructure) that meets the requirements of UN operations,
taking full advantage of the expertise of mission partners.
Architecture based on Open Source GIS; new products under
development
GitHub Geo-Analysis
https://github.com/mapplus/spatial_stat
istics_for_geotools_udig
Geo-Analysis functions are available
to use via WPS and uDig.

✔ Global network of academic research and education
laboratories and government/industry partners
✔ Mission: Making geospatial education and opportunities
accessible to all
✔ Goals:
✔ Create research and teaching opportunities in open geospatial
science
✔ Build global open access teaching and research infrastructure
✔ Establish collaborations between academia, government and
industry around open geospatial science and education
GeoForAll

69
Founded in 2011: MoU between OSGeo and the International
Cartographic Association (ICA)
Georg Gartner and Arnulf Christl, renewal in
2015 with Jeff McKenna
How it started

70
Georg Gartner, Jeff McKenna and Chen Jun, 2014
2014: MoU between OSGeo and the Internationational Society of
Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
One step forward

71
University Consortium for GIScience (UCGIS) signed in 2016
Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe (AGILE)
signed in 2017
International Geographical Union (IGU), signed in September 2017
More MoUs

72
Map of the labs 2012
12 labs in 2012

73
120 labs globally in 2017
Map of the labs 2017

74
✔ open access educational material based on free and
open source geospatial software and data
✔ free and open source curricula, courses, workshops
OSGeo Educational Content Inventory
✔ Teaching areas for some labs are listed on wiki - add
yours
https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/ICA_OSGeo_Lab_Teaching_
areas
✔ open source GIS certificate U Colorado Denver
✔ GeoAcademy, open access on-line courses
fossgeo.org: 10000+ learners enrolled in 4 years
Education

Research
✔ Urban Science - City Analytics: Chris Petit, Patric Hogan
✔ AgriGIS: Didier Leubovici, Nobusuke Iwasaki
✔ GeoCrowd - VGI, Crowd Sourcing and Citizen Science: M.
A. Brovelli, P. Mooney
✔ K-12 education, collaboration with mapstory.org

Geo4all Webinars YouTube Channel
Thanks to Rafael Moreno, University of Colorado
Denver FOSS4G Lab
Interested to present?
Contact Rafael.Moreno@ucdenver.edu
Webinars

77
Monthly Newsletter with updates
about the Community: Lab of the
Month, GeoAmbassador of the
Month, highlights of activities, events,
conferences, webinars, courses,
workshops, funding, scholarships,
exchange programs
Thanks to the Editors:
– Nikos Lambrinos (Chief Editor)
– Rizwan Bukbul, Pavel Kikin,
Alexey Kolesnikov, Ranya
Elsayed, Seraphim Alvanides,
Antoni Perez Navaro, Emma
Strong, Sergio Acosta y Lara,
Codrina Ilie, Nikos Voudrislis
(editorial team for regions in
the world)
Newsletter

✔ The Open Source Geospatial Community is veru active
✔ There is at least one mature sophisticated FOSS4G for every
geo-technology area and geospatial information need and
application.
✔ OSGeo projects require not only the openess of the code but
also the existence of a Community of Developers, Users and
Educators behind every package. This is the key point for
ensuring sustainability to the projects themselves.
✔ OSGeo community is inclusive and we need to have more
contacts and active members also in Asia. If China is
interested in collaboration, your great contribution (as
developers, users and educators) will be more that
appreciated!
Conclusions

Thanks for your attention!
Questions?
For contacts:
maria.brovelli@polimi.it
geomobile.como.polimi.it

Open Data and Open Software Geospatial Applications

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