52°North Initiative for Geospatial Open Source Software GmbH

Web Page: https://wiki.52north.org/bin/view/Main/GSoC2012IdeasPage

Mailing List: http://52north.org/resources/mailing-list-and-forums/

52°North is an international R&D partner network with partners from academia, the public sector and industry (http://52north.org). Our goal is to foster innovation in the field of Geoinformatics by organizing and facilitating a collaborative software development process. The topics we address, such as the sensor web, the web of things or linked open data, reflect both the strengths and strategies of the partners involved.

All of the 52°North software is published under an OSI approved open source license. 52°North GmbH, which is the legal body and service center of this network, acts as a non-profit organization (http://52north.org/about/get-involved/shareholder-agreement).

Projects

• Exchangeable Encodings for SOS - extension support WaterML2 The 52°North SOS implements a subset of the O&M data format, because O&M is too flexible to be supported completely. It would be a good alternative, if users could just implement a simple encoding (for example to support their own CSV or JSON data format) and upload a compiled jar file to the SOS with a browser-based user interface. Then a client selects the newly available response format to retrieve the data in a new format. As an extension it would be very useful to researchers and data maintainers in the hydrological and meteorological domain to have the SOS server deliver WaterML2.0 encoded time-series. Based on the SOS adminstrator project, the desired encodings could be prepared as .jar-files and added via a web frontend.
• GIS link to the Web of Things The project titled “GIS link to the Web of Things” envisions a world in which everyday devices and objects are linked by fully integrating them into the World Wide Web. Imagine, a scenario in which thousands of sensors spread over the seven seas can be controlled via any location on the earth. Although, one would rightly argue that such system are already in place, but what we are lacking is an interoperable API which can answer http request to the sensors, and its equivalent GIS software at the client/access end. Implementing the GeoServices REST API directly on the sensor platform would provide just that.
• On-demand transformation of Open Street Map Data into common GIS formats Open Street Map (OSM) is a valuable and free source of geographical data backed by a large number of volunteers mapping the world. However, the usage of this data is not trivial. The central website offers only a ’raw’ data format. GIS systems have their own dataformats. An on-demand transformation step is missing which can be filled by (interoperable) Web Services such as the 52North Web Processing Service (WPS). Project result: An addition to the 52North WPS to transform OSM data in various GIS formats on demand.
• SOS Administrator Deploying SOS on a server is quite a complex process as of now. Also, data administration tasks such as Read/Update/Delete operations on database and changing configuration settings is not very user friendly. After this project has been completed, SOS will have a web-based user friendly automatic installer and a SOS administration, which will make configuring SOS very easy and intuitive and all data administrative tasks could be done at one place.