OGRS2012 Conference homepage

The Open Source Geospatial Research and Education Symposium (OGRS) is a meeting dedicated to exchanging ideas on development and use of open source geospatial software in both research and education.

Motivated by the inaugural symposium in Nantes, France, OGRS2012 will be held from October 24 – 26, 2012 in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland. The symposium is hosted and organized by the School of Business and Engineering Vaud  (HEIG-VD), in partnership with EPFL Lausanne, University of Lausanne, University of Geneva, which are all academic institutions in Western Switzerland, and the Institute for Research on Urban Sciences and Techniques in France (see details on Organizers and Partners).

Several opportunities exist for presenting results, principles, methods and practices while supporting a primary theme: how to carry out research and perform education projects using, contributing to, and initiating open source geospatial initiatives.

Participating in open source initiatives can potentially boost innovation as a value creation process requiring joint collaborations between academia, foundations, associations, developer communities and industry. Additionally, open source software can improve education efficiency, by means of student involvement in community actions projects.

The symposium outcomes will validate the importance of the open source model and demonstrate how it can be used successfully for geospatial research and education.

In summary, OGRS2012 is a place to share geospatial knowledge and expertise in the open source paradigm to foster innovation. The main goals are:

• to build a panel of new scientific research and education practices using and contributing to open source initiatives in the geospatial fields;
• to discuss a framework and highlight a rationale about geospatial open source technology usage in research and education activities;
• to provide an innovation platform to network and develop ideas for future collaborative work between academia – from research to education – and other actors of the field (associations, foundations, local authorities, industry etc.).