President’s Blog: Geo4All International Cartographic Association

Prof. Chen Jun (ISPRS President), Jeff McKenna (OSGeo President) and Prof. Georg Gartner (ICA President) during their meeting at AfricaGEO in Cape Town in July 2014 to discuss future collaboration for GeoforAll

The “Geo for All” Initiative has developed out of the Memorandum of Understanding Activities between ICA and OSGeo (the Open Source Geospatial Foundation). So-called “ICA-OSGeo Labs” have been founded in unexpected high numbers in the last months (http://www.geoforall.org/locations/), demonstrating the great interest and demand for evaluating and using Open Source Software in the area of Cartography, GI Science and Geospatial Information Management.

In order to direct the development of this initiative an Advisory Board has been found, co-chaired by the Presidents of ICA (Georg Gartner) and OSGeo (Jeff McKenna). Due to the inclusive character of this initiative and a strong interest being expressed several times from the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) is now joining this initiative.

We are looking forward to working together in our common aim to expand geospatial education and opportunities to all.