GRASS/ Osgeo-News Open Source GIS and Remote Sensing Information Volume 4, December 2006
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
GRASS/ OSGeo-News Open Source GIS and Remote Sensing information Volume 4, December 2006 Editorial reaching a larger audience, as well as maintain a sin- gle high quality newsletter, the editors have decided by Tyler Mitchell to re-brand it as an OSGeo-News production. I have always been encouraged by the content, layout and Dear GRASS and other open source users, ideas represented by the GRASS-News volumes and hope to see it continue. It is my pleasure to introduce the future expan- sion of GRASS-News. The next edition will be morphed into a broader Open Source Geospatial Call For Articles Newsletter covering projects from the OSGeo Foun- dation and beyond. The aim is to bring relevant news You can help by providing articles or papers for pub- and articles to a larger audience by widening the fo- lication. The next edition of this newsletter will have cus and changing the name. articles that cover several other open source projects GRASS-News has always covered more than just in various topics: GRASS. It has also shown itself to be a high quality • OSGeo-related news items production that we can be proud of reading or even printing to share with friends. With the potential of • ... continues on next page ... Contents of this volume: Simultaneous simulation of hydrological and carbon cycle processes in a GIS framework . 13 Editorial ...................... 1 r.roughness – a new tool for morphometric GRASS-News Editorial .............. 2 analysis in GRASS ............... 17 FOSS4G 2006 Conference: The meeting of the Resampling SRTM 03”-data with kriging ... 20 tribes ....................... 2 Interview with Michael Barton ......... 25 Report on OSGeo Promotions at GIS-IDEAS 2006 3 The GRASS Development Team announces Quantum GIS ................... 4 GRASS GIS 6.2.0 ................ 29 The GRASS user-map ............... 7 The GRASS Development Team announces Linking GRASS with Chameleon ........ 9 GRASS GIS 6.2.1 ................ 33 GRASS/OSGeo-News Vol. 4, December 2006 • GIS • Translator • Remote Sensing • etc. • Web-based mapping and GIS Please take a moment to thank the editorial staff and • Geostatistics / spatial statistics contributors of GRASS-News who have made a great • Geospatial data access newsletter. I am encouraged to see their interest in making the publication applicable to even more peo- • and more... ple. I look forward to seeing the next edition. Do you have layout and design skills? You can help by applying your skills to make OSGeo-News even Tyler Mitchell better. Translators into different languages are also needed. You can help by volunteering as: Tyler Mitchell • Editor Executive Director • Layout Designer OSGeo http: // osgeo. org • Reviewer tmitchell AT osgeo.org GRASS-News Editorial ing of coverage can only add to the usefulness and relevance of the articles in the GRASS-News. As by the GRASS-News staff a result, from the next issue onwards the newslet- ter will be known as OSGeo-News. Rather than Dear former GRASS-News readers, have less GRASS-specific content, we anticipate the GRASS content will remain the same, and the fre- As you may have noticed from the joint logo quency and/or size of the newsletter will increase to and title on the front page, this is the last issue of accomodate wider OSGeo material! To this end we GRASS-News in its current format. GRASS is cur- need your contributions! rently in the incubation process as an OSGeo mem- ber project, and as part of the integration with OS- Thank you for your interest in the past and look- Geo we’ve agreed with the OSGeo publicity commit- ing forward to OSGeo-News volume 1 with some tee to broaden the scope of the newsletter to cover very interesting GRASS articles included! other OSGeo projects. Many articles have already covered use of GRASS along with utilities from other OSGeo projects, and we’re confident that this widen- Your GRASS-News staff FOSS4G 2006 Conference: The meeting of the tribes ference that brought together the different FOSS4G "tribes", merging the GRASS Users conference se- ries, with the Mapserver, EOGEO and Java develop- by Helena Mitasova ers meetings. Hundreds of people, including soft- ware developers, power users and newcomers, had a The Free and Open Source Software for Geoinformat- chance to meet, discuss projects and present new de- ics (FOSS4G, http://www.foss4g2006.org) Confer- velopments and ideas. More than 25 hands-on work- ence held in Lausanne, Switzerland in September shops were offered providing an opportunity for the 2006 was a great success. It was the first joint con- ISSN 1614-8746 2 GRASS/OSGeo-News Vol. 4, December 2006 participants to learn established and new software "politics". Also the second annual Sol Katz award for tools. Five sold out GRASS workshops were offered important contributions of an open source GIS com- including advanced topics such as visualization and munity member was presented. This year Markus lidar data processing. In addition to the plenary Neteler from the Center for Scientific and Techno- sessions, more than 120 presentations were given in logical Research (ITC-irst, Italy) was honored, rec- eight parallel sessions covering wide range of top- ognizing his instrumental work on the GRASS GIS ics and projects, from Webmapping and desktop GIS project. Congratulations to Markus for the well de- to Geodata and OGC standards. The GRASS ses- served award thanks for all the work that he has sions included presentations on hydrologic model- done for GRASS, keeping it growing and getting bet- ing, urban planning applications, processing of mas- ter for the past 10 years. sive data, support for hazard and emergency re- The excellent conference organization was car- sponse management, visualization, python tools and ried out by Camptocamp, the University of Lau- many others. Jim Westervelt from USA CERL dis- sanne, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology cussed the evolution of GRASS from public domain (EPFL) and the University of Applied Sciences, West- to FOSS4G in his keynote. All workshop material ern Switzerland. The conference attendance by far and presentation slides are available online Videos exceeded all previous meetings. Great social events and conference photos from the conference are also accompanied the technical parts of the conference. available on the FOSS4G website under "Souvenirs". The recently established Open Source Geospatial Several informal brainstorming sessions were orga- Foundation (OSGeo, http://www.osgeo.org) was nized as "birds-of-a-feather" (BOF) meetings to work introduced during the conference and offered an in- out open access to geospatial data issues, seed na- formation booth as a focal point for learning more tional user groups, start new programming projects about the foundation and how to get involved. The and more. foundation will take lead on future meetings in the During the final afternoon several keynote talks FOSS4G series; the upcoming FOSS4G2007 will be were given as well as a discussion panel on FOSS4G held in Victoria, Canada from 24-27 September 2007. Report on OSGeo Promotions at GIS-IDEAS 2006 8-11 November,Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (1) Germany (5), India (1), Japan (24), Russia (1), Thailand (2), Vietnam(110)). by Ho Dinh Duan and Venkatesh Raghavan As a part of activities to increase awareness about Open Source Software for Geoinformatics and pro- The GeoInformatics for Spatial-Infrastructure mote OSGeo in Vietnam, a pre-conference workshop Development in Earth & Allied Sciences (GIS- entitled Open Source for Geoinformatics was organ- IDEAS) 2006 Symposium was held in Ho Chi Minh ised at the Vietnamese Academy of Science and Tech- City (HCMC), Vietnam, 9-11 November 2006 (http: nology (VAST) on 8th November, 2006. The de- //wgrass.media.osaka-cu.ac.jp/gisideas06/). tails of the workshop Open Source Geoinformatics The symposium was organised by Japan-Vietnam Workshop at the Institute of Information Technology Geoinformatics Consortium (JVGC) and Institute HCMC are as below: for Environment and Resources (IER-HCMC) with Coordinators: Dr. Tran Van Lang and Dr. Ho support from several other institutions and GIS De- Dinh Duan, VAST-HCM by theme Japan-Vietnam velopment as the Media Partner. GIS-IDEAS 2006 Geoinformatics Consortium, the Institute of Infor- Symposium was the third international GIS-IDEAS mation Technology, the Institute of Physics, VAST Symposium to be held in Vietnam since 2002. The HCMC and supported by Open Source Geospatial main theme of the GIS-IDEAS 2006 was Geoinfor- Foundation (OSGeo). 47 participants from Vietnam matics for Regional Sustainable Development. The and 7 participants from Japan attended this work- GIS-IDEAS 2006 Symposium provided a unique op- shop. portunity for sharing of knowledge and valuable The pre-conference workshop on Open Source experiences amongst the academia, researchers, in- Software for Geoinformatics attracted enthusias- dustry and students. The GIS-IDEAS 2006 attracted tic response with more than 50 participants at- 150 participants belonging to organisations spread tending. The workshop provided an overview over 9 countries Australia (1), (Belgium (2), France of GIS applications (Prof. Mamoru Shibayama, ISSN 1614-8746 3 GRASS/OSGeo-News Vol. 4, December 2006 Joint Secretary JVGC) and Open Source software haps the first official television news program in the tools (Prof. Venkatesh Raghavan, Director, OS- world wherein OSGeo was specifically mentioned Geo). The afternoon session included actual instal- several times (http://wgrass.media.osaka-cu.ac. lation of Open Source software tools and demon- jp/gisideas06/foss4g_ws_on_hcmctv.swf). strations including Vietnamese language localisation The OSGeo booth was operated on all the three (Dr. Go YONEZAWA, Kyoto University and Mr. days (9-11 November, 2006). The poster session Ninsawat SARAWUT, Osaka City University) Par- was preceded by lightning-talk on proposed ac- ticipants were presented with the Osaka City Uni- tivities of OSGeo Vietnam by Mr. Do Long Van. versity (OCU) FOSS4G toolkit CD including GIS/RS Details about activities of OSGeo were also pre- and Web-GIS software for self-learning.