Events

Trajectory of Geospatial Open Source Innovation Discussed at FOSS4G NA

By Dan Ford on May 25th, 2018

Trajectory of Geospatial Open Source Innovation Discussed at FOSS4G NA

Earlier this month, a cohort from Azavea presented, exhibited, and attended talks at FOSS4G NA in St. Louis.

400+ open source users, contributors, and enthusiasts gathered for more than 120 presentations. Three days of talks were followed by a Community Day, including a Code Sprint.

Presentation highlights

Our staff presented on various topics, including deep learning on satellite imagery, Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs, using Apache Spark and GeoTrellis to work with OpenStreetMap data, and creating an environmental inventory application using open source.

Check out slides for the talks below.

Raster Vision: Deep Learning for Aerial and Satellite Imagery from Lewis Fishgold

 

 

 

We were also excited to see talks that highlighted our open source projects like GeoTrellis. This is what FOSS4G is all about; community collaboration to drive innovation. Click on a title to learn more about the talk.

Machine Learning After Party

Birds of a Feather events are a great way to share ideas. Since machine learning for geospatial analysis is a hot topic industry-wide, we partnered with The Climate Corporation, Astraea, and DevelopmentSeed to host an enhanced Birds of a Feather event.

Machine Learning After Party presented by The Climate Corporation and Azavea with support from Astraea and DevelopmentSeed

Special thanks to Mike Jeffe from The Climate Corporation and Thea Aldrich and Anne Jacko of The Eclipse Foundation for their help organizing the event and accounting for all the little details.

During the event, presenters told us about their work and let the FOSS4G community know where they think the trajectory of this type of work is going.

Thanks to the speakers for giving the audience great conversation fodder!

  • Keely Roth & Pramithus Khadka, The Climate Corporation
  • Rob Emanuele, Azavea
  • Daniel Bailey, Astraea
  • Drew Bollinger, DevelopmentSeed
  • Martin Mendez-Costabel, Monsanto

A “consequential” keynote

Chris Holmes, a fellow at Planet Labs, gave a keynote to a captivated crowd called, Towards a Queryable Earth, centered on the trajectory of geospatial technology innovation. He outlined the problem (“an exponential explosion of data”) and the solutions he sees as having the greatest potential (computer vision and machine learning on imagery, SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog, Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs (COGs), etc).

During his talk, Chris narrated a high-level walkthrough of Raster Foundry, showcasing an example of leveraging the power of COGs for imagery analysis.

Till next time

We enjoyed FOSS4G NA and value the face-to-face community interaction that conferences enable. We appreciate the hard work of Eclipse Foundation and LocationTech staff, the FOSS4G NA organizing committee, and volunteers to create an opportunity for our team to connect with others in our field.

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