Abstract
Abstract. The paper presents the outcomes of an Educational Challenge launched by the OSGeo (Open Source Geospatial Foundation) United Nations (UN) Committee in 2018. The Committee promotes the development and use of open source software that meets UN needs and supports the aims of the UN. The Challenge supported the UN OpenGIS Initiative, a project “... to identify and develop an Open Source GIS bundle that meets the requirements of UN operations, taking full advantage of the expertise of mission partners including partner nations, technology contributing countries, international organizations, academia, NGOs, private sector”. The UN OpenGIS Initiative is organized into working groups, called ‘Spirals’. The OSGeo UN Challenge called for the development of training material that can be used for training UN staff working on Spirals 1 and 3. Spiral 1 focuses on a new open source web platform for data collection and Spiral 3 is related to new functionalities needed by UN staff during their field operations. The material developed for the challenges is now openly available for anybody, reaching a wider audience than only UN staff members. This paper describes the challenges and the training material developed for them. Expertise from all over the world was pulled together in designing, mentoring and developing the material.
Highlights
In February 2006, leading teams in the free and open source geospatial world joined efforts to create the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), a not-for-profit organization with the mission to support the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data, and to promote their widespread use
The latter is the case for the OSGeo UN (United Nations) Committee, which aims is to foster the use of open source geospatial software within the UN and projects related to the UN SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals)
The OSGeo UN Committee Educational Challenge Judging Commission comprising representatives from OSGeo, Boundless and UN Open GIS from five different continents evaluated the proposals based on the following criteria: Proposer is an OSGeo Charter Member: 10 Proposer’s documented experience in education and training: 20 Proposer’s age (20 if 40 years old): 20 Experience with respect to what is proposed by the specific challenge: 10 Proposal: 40
Summary
In February 2006, leading teams in the free and open source geospatial world joined efforts to create the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), a not-for-profit organization with the mission to support the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data, and to promote their widespread use. Some projects are related to one open source package (e.g. GRASS, GeoNode, QGIS); others are more transversal and refer more to an application field than to a specific technology The latter is the case for the OSGeo UN (United Nations) Committee, which aims is to foster the use of open source geospatial software within the UN and projects related to the UN SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). With the help of volunteers from GeoForAll (the Education Outreach of OSGeo), the suitability for UN staff to use existing training material about the most used open source packages was evaluated. It was decided, in agreement with the UN, to focus the capacity building on QGIS and PostGIS.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
