[Gfoss] IRST Trento Seminar: "New directions in GRASS GIS development"

[Markus Neteler]

Salve,

con tanto piacere comuniciamo che Jachym e Martin
hanno appena iniziato di lavorare all'IRST (Trento)
su GRASS ed i nostri progetti GFOSS.

Venerdì faremo un seminario qua (vedi giù).
Jachym partecipa' anche al convegno di Palermo.

Ciao
Markus

PS: 

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* SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENT *
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Relatore:	Jachym Cepicky, Martin Landa

Titolo: 	"New directions in GRASS GIS development"

Luogo:	 	ITC-IRST, sala Direzione
		Via Sommarive 18, Povo - Trento

Data:		Venerdì 19 gennaio 2007
Ora:		11.00 am

Abstract: 


Geographic Information System (GIS) is a system for capturing,
storing, analyzing and managing data and associated attributes which
are spatially referenced. Geographic Resources Analysis Support System
(GRASS GIS) is a geographic information system used for data
management, image processing, spatial modeling, and visualization of
many types of data. It is Free Software released under GNU (GNU is Not
Unix!) General Public License (GPL).

Besides GRASS GIS, there are available many Open Source GIS-based
software packages which are widely used, e.g. UMN MapServer, QGIS,
GDAL/OGR, JUMP, GeoTools. Many of the tools can be combined to build
interoperable high level applications. Some of the listed projects are
using GRASS directly as GIS back-end.

This presentation illustrates new directions mainly related to GRASS
GIS with some extensions to GFOSS (Geographic Free and Open Source
Software) in general.

We will describe the use of GRASS GIS and other GFOSS packages for the
Web Processing Service (WPS) standard as defined by Open Geospatial
Consortium (OGC). The WPS standard describes the way how geospatial
operations can be served across computer networks. Here geospatial
computations (data interpolation, buffering, etc.) are performed by
the server. This implies that no client side desktop GIS installation
is needed.

A second topic is the import and processing of cadastral data in GRASS
(referred to the Czech cadastral exchange data format). The
abstraction level in these cadastral data makes its processing in GIS
more challenging. In any case, GRASS was partially modified to become
usable for processing and visualization of cadastral data.

We will also discuss new methods for generating 3D vector data for
virtual tree/forests and for extruding of 3D buildings in
GRASS. Furthermore, using GNU GaMa (the project dedicated to
adjustment of geodetic networks) with GRASS GIS (in particular
converting GaMa XML output file to a GRASS vector map) is shown.

In the conclusions of the presentation, general ideas about GRASS GIS
development will be shared, especially in connection with new GUI
(Graphical User Interface). New approach of GRASS GUI (digitization,
map composer, etc.) will probably be Python based. We introduce the
GRASS module v.edit which allows users to edit vector map layer via
command line interface. This new module will be used in the future as
a back-end for the new GUI-based digitization tool in GRASS.

Contact person at ITC-irst: Markus Neteler

-- 
Markus Neteler  <neteler itc it>  http://mpa.itc.it/markus/
ITC-irst -  Centro per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica
MPBA - Predictive Models for Biol. & Environ. Data Analysis
Via Sommarive, 18        -       38050 Povo (Trento), Italy