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GeoNode Motivations, Design, and Challenges

Sebastian Benthall
UC Berkeley School of Information
ICTD Seminar
(Based on a presentation written with
Rolando Peate
OpenGeo)

What is...

Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI)

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

The theory of SDI


developed before
we learned what was
possible with the Internet

Imagine...

...what an ideal SDI would be like

Imagine...

...an SDI that makes


uploading, sharing, and working
with data
as easy as blogging

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.

What is GeoNode?

GeoNode is a spatial data infrastructure


It 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, GeoWebCache
GeoServer, GeoNetwork, and PostGIS
with application functionality built on Django.

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 GeoNode
sheds 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)

GeoNode History
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 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 mindhence a focus on metadata.
GeoNode is being designed in response to the needs and
concerns of institutional partners as they implement real-world
projectshence 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 when


vision and development are decentralized?

How do we continue growth when


vision and development are decentralized?

That's what
open source communities
are for.

But how do we get institutions to get their employees


to participate in the open community?
Need to align broader visions, including...

Disaster Reduction

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.

Academic

MapStor Foundation and Harvard's WorldMap seek to collect and


share data across disciplines and institutions using GeoNode.

Spatial Marketplaces

The AustraliaNew Zealand Spatial Marketplace seeks to increase


data availability in the South Pacific by creating an online
marketplace built on GeoNode and open to all.

Community

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 requires


many visions to be aligned.

OpenGeo

Benefits from contributions back to core software


Has led effort to coordinate between institutions
o easier management and development
o 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 model


o Established a proper Project Steering Committee
o 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 mans sweat and Gods love,
beer came into the world
St. Arnold

Remaining challenges
for OpenGeo

Achieving open source best practices


while being a primary contractor.

Remaining challenges

Maintaining consensus among large organizations


despite 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 develop


technology that works in regions
with low connectivity?

Remaining (technical) challenges

Is the dream of a
secure federated data network
(both spatial and social)
realistic?
This ties into questions of federated social networking.

Remaining (research) challenges

This perspective on GeoNode is from


offices in New York City and Washington, DC
What does it look like in the countries
where it is being deployed

Remaining (research) challenges

Is the open source model


living up to its development goals?

Thank you.

Any questions?

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