IWG-SEM member area

Autumn 2016 meeting in Vienna

The draft agenda for the autumn 2016 meeting in Vienna can be found here. The agenda also includes the texts on membership policy and decision making that were formulated and discussed during the autumn 2016 meeting in Vienna.

The draft minutes are available here.

 

Rolling action list

The rolling action list can be found here. Members of the working group are invited to edit and complete the list as needed.

 

Minutes of monthly IWG-SEM Teleconferences

2016: 2016-01

2015: 2015-10, 2015-09, 2015-07, 2015-06, 2015-05 (spring meeting Bonn), 2015-05, 2015-05 (adhoc Nepal), 2015-04 (adhoc Nepal), 2015-04, 2015-03 2015-02, 2015-01

2014: 2014-12, 2014-11 (fall meeting Oberpfaffenhofen), 2014-10, 2014-09, 2014-07, 2014-06, 2014-05 (spring meeting Oberpfaffenhofen), 2014-04, 2014-03, 2014-02

2013: 2013-12, 2013-11, 2013-10 (fall meeting Washington), 2013-09, 2013-07, 2013-06, 2013-05, 2013-04 (spring meeting Torino), 2013-03, 2013-02

2012: 2012-11, 2012-10 (fall meeting Geneva), 2012-09, 2012-07, 2012-04 (spring meeting Ispra)

2011: 2011-09 (Hohenkammer workshop)

 

Outreach

Members are asked to share their presentations on IWG-SEM.

 

Emergency Mapping Guidelines

Download the latest working document of the guidelines here.

 

Technical discussion group on collaborative mapping

2015-01-18: Teleconference on organizing a topic talk at FOSS4G 2016 in Bonn on collaborative mapping. Participants: Engelbert Niehaus (University Landau), Melanie Platz (University Landau), Blake Giradot (H.O.T. OSM), Fabian Selg (University Bonn), Lars Wirkus (BICC), Stefan Voigt (DLR), Lorant Czaran (UN-SPIDER), Antje Hecheltjen (UN-SPIDER). An abstract and first draft agenda is available as a living working document here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MxBlhPyA-H1wUv47If0em4DWoePxWJw_GVDHfoz7iSs/edit?usp=sharing

2015-05-27: Dynamic Objects in OSM/HOT - Data Structure - Draft input (pdf version) by Engelbert Nienhaus. 

2015-05-27: Dynamic Objects in OSM/HOT - Data Structure - Draft input (doc version) by Engelbert Nienhaus. 

2015-11-08: video on basic principles of HOT-OSM dynamic maps by Engelbert Nienhaus (this video was shown during the IWG-SEM 2016 autumn meeting in Vienna)

2015-11-11 (continuously being updated google doc): Ideas document for improved collaborative mapping by Fabian Selg.

Background documents on crowdsourcing and collaborative mapping

iRevolutions: This is how social media can inform UN needs assessment during disasters

Report on the International Expert Meeting on Crowdsource Mapping for Disaster Risk Management and Emergency Response carried out in the framework of the United Nations Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response (UN-SPIDER)

Space-based information for crowdsource mapping Report of the Secretariat

 

Technical discussion group on GeoRSS technology

The GeoRSS technical discussion group was set up following the December 2013 IWG-SEM teleconference with the goal to create an operational solution of GeoRSS feeds to share metadata related to emergency mapping activities by the first quarter of 2014. The technical discussion group was formed by 18 people from DFO, DLR, EC-JRC, GWU, ITHACA, PDC, RIT, OOSA/UN-SPIDER, USGS/EROS, and it is chaired by Jan Kucera from EC-JRC. 

GeoRSS public documents

Meanwhile the first results, i.e. the GeoRSS technical specifications  as well as the feed aggregator, are available via the public IWG-SEM website.

GeoRSS technical discussion group internal working documents

2014-02-25: GeoRSS background document

2014-09-18: GeoRSS background and specs

2014-10-30: Minutes of GeoRSS telco

2014-11-26: GeoRSS technical specifications

Email discussion on choice of RSS

Email comment by RIT (14 December 2013):

It might be worth looking closer at the choice of RSS in general, as it seems its future is uncertain, see:

  • http://ericungs.com/death-to-google-reader-and-the-future-of-rss/
  • http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/google-reader-is-dead-but-the-race-to-replace-the-rss-feed-is-very-alive/
  • For example, the USGS has stopped offering GeoRSS-based earthquake feeds like they did in the past (see: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/feed/v1.0/)

Email comment by ITHACA (16 December 2013):

The main rationale behind choosing GeoRSS was to identify a standard/OGC compliant solution allowing people to subscribe to a specific feed exploiting the non-geospatial component with common software (e.g. e-mail clients) or to use specialized GIS software to access also the geospatial component of the feed. Furthermore organizations involved in IWG-SEM should already have the technical capacity to broadcast GeoRSS feeds.

Email comment by UN-SPIDER (16 December 2013):

Jumping on RSS might be a bit late - sure it works still great for most applications, though e.g. twitter switched off rss already in favor of json support. (Seeing twitter as one of the top micro blogging services and a repository of near & realtime data (particularly in dm), you should keep an eye on what they're doing)
So building a new service should rather focus on new technology, which is around the corner, namely html5 - lastly, with integration of javascript frameworks, it can much easier handle GeoJson than xml, as latter needs some additional parsing, whereas Json feeds can be used directly in Javascript applications (mapping clients, etc.)
What does OGC foresee? C. possible developments in one of the technical committees (i.e. http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/89 & http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/gservrestswg)

GeoRSS related links

The following links were shared by Franck Albinet in a presentaiton on Geo-visualization during the 2014 UN-SPIDER RSO meeting in Vienna; they might serve as food for thought for the further development of IWG-SEM metadata-sharing:

Examples of feeds and webmapping tools that different providers are currently using (compiled on 19 May 2014 by UN-SPIDER):