geonode motivation, design, and challenges
DESCRIPTION
A presentation of the underlying motivations and institutional context behind GeoNode, some of its major design decisions, and unresolved challenges for its sustainability. I gave this talk at UC Berkeley School of Information's research seminar on Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICTD). Much of the material comes from an older presentation I wrote with Rolando Peñate.TRANSCRIPT
GeoNode Motivations, Design, and Challenges
Sebastian BenthallUC Berkeley School of Information
ICTD Seminar
(Based on a presentation written with
Rolando PeñateOpenGeo)
What is...
Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI)
“[Spatial Data Infrastructure] provides a basis for spatial data discovery, evaluation, and application for users and providers within all levels of government, the commercial sector, the non-profit sector, academia and by citizens in
general.”– SDI Cookbook
Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI)
The theory of SDI
developed before
we learned what was
possible with the Internet
...what an ideal SDI would be like
Imagine...
...an SDI that makes
uploading, sharing, and working
with data
as easy as blogging
Imagine...
Publishing data
Anthony has some spatial data and wants to display it as part of a blog post.
Publishing data
Anthony uploads it to a public SDI, styles it, provides a background, and then puts a map
widget on his blog.
Publishing data
Meanwhile, the data, style, and map remain available on the public SDI
for others to use.
Metadata and reputation
The World Organization tells Cameron, their consultant, to put data she has gathered on their
SDI.
Metadata and reputation
Other users notice mistakes in the metadata. They notify Cameron and give it a low rating.
Metadata and reputation
Cameron fixes the mistakes, and the other users rate the data more highly. Her reputation on the
SDI improves.
Federated search
A regional Health agency and a regional Transit agency have separate SDI systems.
Federated search
Tom, a GIS analyst doing research, seeks out correlations between health and bicycle routes
Federated search
Tom searches for data in a single federated index and downloads the data as a batch.
GeoNode is a spatial data infrastructureIt focuses on data, then users, then metadata.
Data upload, sharing, cartography, user profiles, dynamic metadata generation, and more.
What is GeoNode?
GeoNode builds on open source geospatial projects like
GeoExt, OpenLayers, GeoWebCacheGeoServer, GeoNetwork, and PostGIS
with application functionality built on Django.
What is GeoNode?
GeoNode Vision
⇒
GeoNode Involvement
⇒
GeoNode Community
GeoNode Vision
⇒
GeoNode Involvement
⇒
GeoNode Community
How did this happen?
Can the lessons learned can help other ICTD projects?
A case study GeoNodesheds light on international disaster
reduction efforts.
Disaster Risk Modeling 101
• Used for determining development investments
• Once were a mess• Now standardizing:
Risk(busted stuff)
=
Hazard(boom)
x
Exposure(stuff)
x
Vulnerability(bust per boom)
The World Bank had a problem:
Disaster risk modeling requires lots of data Central American Probabilistic Risk Assessment (CAPRA) initiative needed participating agencies across various governments to share data
Top-down approaches didn't work
Needed to work bottom-up
GeoNode History
The World Bank had a problem:
Costly proprietary GIS solutions are a burden to developing nations The Bank wanted to build local capacity around financially sustainable software
Smart folks within the Bank turned to open source geospatial software
GeoNode History
GeoNode Vision
OpenGeo had an idea for a solution:
The Bank provided the perfect use case for OpenGeo's vision for open source architectures of participation in geospatial Providing freely available web-based tools could be a great way to collect and share data.
GeoNode was born.
GeoNode Involvement
Traditional SDIs have typically been designed by 'experts' with abstract needs in mind—hence a focus on metadata.
GeoNode is being designed in response to the needs and concerns of institutional partners as they implement real-world projects—hence a focus on data and users.
Metadata Pain
Good metadata for geospatial data is important but hard to produce.
GeoNode has user profiles and features them prominently Those profiles have ISO metadata fields within them
Metadata Made Easy
Metadata Published
Metadata is published
with open standard
CSW
using GeoNetwork
Open Data Skepticism
Isn't GeoNode an open data platform?
Doesn't open data raise concerns about
data quality and data security?
Open Data Optimism
Yes, GeoNode is designed to promote open data.
Open Data Optimism
Features like
User reputation
Organizational endorsement
Flexible security
address data quality concerns
Open Data Optimism
GeoNode supports
the continuum
of openness with a common platform
for institutional GIS and neogeography
GeoNode Involvement
GeoNode seeks to unify data management across organizations.
Thus many different organizations have reason to get involved.
The opportunity and challenge is effective collaboration.
GeoNode Involvement
As more organizations got involved, development had to decentralize.
Not just a single team within OpenGeo, but a larger community
How do we continue growth whenvision and development are decentralized?
How do we continue growth whenvision and development are decentralized?
That's whatopen source communities
are for.
But how do we get institutions to get their employeesto participate in the open community?
Need to align broader visions, including...
• Australia-Indonesia Facility for Disaster Reduction• Geoscience Australia• Global Earthquake Model• Global Facility for Disaster Risk Reduction• Secretariat of the Pacific
are mapping infrastructure in developing nations, performing disaster modelling, etc. using GeoNode.
Disaster Reduction
MapStor Foundation and Harvard's WorldMap seek to collect and share data across disciplines and institutions using GeoNode.
Academic
Spatial Marketplaces
The Australia–New Zealand Spatial Marketplace seeks to increase data availability in the South Pacific by creating an online
marketplace built on GeoNode and open to all.
The World Bank's vision was the collaboration of many institutions and governments
around common goals of data management
Community
As a result,many organizations are involved
in building and extending GeoNode
Community
How can we keep these efforts coherent, not divergent? Efficient, not redundant?
Community
GeoNode's development requiresmany visions to be aligned.
Community
OpenGeo
• Benefits from contributions back to core software• Has led effort to coordinate between institutions
o easier management and developmento stronger open source communities
Our task has been to scale up open source development
practices to large institutions
Roadmapping Summit May 2011
• Explicit transition to open source community modelo Established a proper Project Steering Committeeo Passed policies for contributions and code review
• Official decentralization from OpenGeo's core team• Identified common development goals
How to discover common development goals?
We
collected
individual organization's roadmaps
We
standardized
individual organization's roadmaps
Participants shared their visions with each other,explored the roadmap,
and contributed new items that were missing.
We
identified
a common roadmap
Then we collectively
prioritized
those roadmap items.
Which do we build first?
Outcomes
• "Rock Solid" 1.1 • People entered the summit to big ideas to impress their
bosses• People left having committed resources to docs, bug
fixes, and other work necessary to keep the project running.
Outcomes
• Framework for future improvements• We have principled roadmap for the software with real
institutional backing• We know who to call when we have the resources
Outcomes
• Community solidarity
• “From man’s sweat and God’s love, beer came into the world”— St. Arnold
Remaining challengesfor OpenGeo
Achieving open source best practices while being a primary contractor.
Remaining challenges
Maintaining consensus among large organizationsdespite natural tensions and turnover.
Remaining challenges
As the process decentralizes, who is responsible for the hard work of this coordination?
Remaining (technical) challenges
Can the GeoNode community developtechnology that works in regions
with low connectivity?
Remaining (technical) challenges
Is the dream of asecure federated data network
(both spatial and social)realistic?
This ties into questions of federated social networking.
Remaining (research) challenges
This perspective on GeoNode is fromoffices in New York City and Washington, DC
What does it look like in the countrieswhere it is being deployed
Remaining (research) challenges
Is the open source modelliving up to its development goals?
Thank you.
Any questions?