“Roads fragment landscapes and trigger human colonization and degradation of ecosystems, to the detriment of biodiversity and ecosystem functions. The planet’s remaining large and ecologically important tracts of roadless areas sustain key refugia for biodiversity and provide globally relevant ecosystem services. Applying a 1-kilometer buffer to all roads, we present a global map of roadless areas and an assessment of their status, quality, and extent of coverage by protected areas. About 80% of Earth’s terrestrial surface remains roadless, but this area is fragmented into ~600,000 patches, more than half of which are <1 km² and only 7% of which are larger than 100 km². Global protection of ecologically valuable roadless areas is inadequate. International recognition and protection of roadless areas is urgently needed to halt their continued loss”. Science  (December 2016).

Monika Hoffmann studied at the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development and works at the Centre for Econics and Ecosystem Management as GIS expert on different projects related to nature conservation.

It’s summer time and we leave the roads for our topic of the 2nd GeoMonday in 2017, Offstreet. Topics like Routing, Navigation or Traffic Managment are always present and are based on streets, respectively road networks. On the 26th June we address businesses which need to solve spatial problems off-road. Roadless areas occupy a major part of the world and are versatilely used by private people and companies. Typical examples are outdoor activities such as mountain biking, skiing or hiking. To support them, services have to provide detailed information like terrain and weather as well as results of spatial analyses, e.g. avalanche risk. But also businesses like forestry or agriculture have to deal with spatial issues in roadless areas. Inventories have to be mapped and actions have to be defined based on spatial analyses. These are only a few examples of fascinating geospatial issues off-road. Join us on 26th June in Potsdam to enter the world of road-free areas and to get an idea of what happens outside the highway.

Datum:    26. Juni 2017
Zeit:         19 – 22 Uhr
Ort:          Arcona HOTEL AM HAVELUFER, Zeppelinstraße 136, 14471 Potsdam

One of the main reasons why governments collect geodata is because they love zoning! The division and classification of public space is very old governmental business. It can also benefit hugely from new digital tools. The development of „smarter“ zoning software is actually a nice way to show people in administration how they can make better use of their own datasets.

About a year ago, we were approached by a Berlin district with an interesting challenge: Could we build a tool that helps them to put all the kids in their district into the right elementary school, while at the same time maxing out school capacity and guarantee the shortest possible pedestrian path for each kid? Well, this sure sounds like an interesting math problem? Of course things tend to get a bit more complicated once politics is thrown in the mix…

Dr. Benjamin Seibel is a project lead at Technology Foundation Berlin, where he mostly deals with civic tech & open data projects.

Daniel Kirsch is a data scientist at Idalab and an open data activist at Data Science for Social Good.

The European project ENERGIC-OD (European Network for Redistributing Geospatial Information to user Communities – Open Data) address the heterogeneity of GI world and the lack of the single system which could satisfy the different user-requirements in world of geoinformation. The adopted approach is by utilising a brokering architecture and deploying a set of virtual hubs and a single point of access to geospatial datasets. This approach facilitates the development of multidisciplinary applications, based on full exploitation of open GI.

Studied Architecture and urban development, Frank Iden started as an Urban planner and Architect. Later he founded his own firm in 1992, SRP GmbH, where the Geographical Information Systems were developed for “Senate department for urban development and environment Berlin”. The interdisciplinary information system (Fachübergreifendes Informationssystem, FIS), the Geoportal of Berlin (FIS-Broker), and specialised procedures for city, landscape, environmental planning are among their products.

Toponymy has long been a qualitative discipline in between geography, history and philology. With the development of massive digital gazetteers, such as the Geonames database or the OSM database, it is now possible to conduct a quantitative approach of toponymy. In this talk I will give examples of spatial analysis methods applied to place names at different scales.

Hadrien Commenges is an associate professor at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. His research focuses on quantitative methods applied to urban geography, mainly in the field of urban mobility and transportation.

Happy 2017 to everyone! New year, new topics…familiar location 🙂

The first GeoMonday of 2017 is getting closer and here is what it will be about:

Face it, open data is free to everyone – you can present, process and republish it according to your very own needs or business models. This data can be used without any restrictions-  like copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control – and the access is easy and at best machine readable. Especially in the geo sector a lot of business models rely on open data with geospatial references. In this first edition of GeoMonday in 2017, we would like to present some really cool use cases which became possible through the use of open data or open governmental data. Furthermore, we invite all of you to join the discussion of further needs and opportunities – Innovation in Open Data.

Save the date: 27th of March, 7pm, Office Club Berlin

Another exciting GeoMonday passed by – Thanks to our speakers for the broad and very interesting presentations, thanks to the Office Club team for providing us with the room and service, thanks to Esri for the nice drinks and to HERE for the delicious food and of course a big final thanks to you all for attending and making this another successful GeoMonday year.

As always, please check this blog for the presentations and videos of the last GeoMonday. Here are all the presentations:

1. Make maps fun again!
2. Are you a smart citizen? Try Smart Beetles
3. The Beauty of Mapping Big Data
4. Geovisualization Tools

Last but not least, the GeoMonday Team wishes everyone a merry christmas and a happy new year! See you all again 2017.

Data Lens is a cloud-based API toolkit for developing web-based geographical data visualizations. Raw data is queried via a REST API from the Data Lens cloud, and transformed and aggregated to provide input to the JavaScript API, which can render map objects, vector shapes and heat maps. This talk is about the beauty behind big data represented by Data Lens heat maps, the beauty behind its accuracy and its engineering.

A graduate in computer science and information systems, Stoimen started his working life as a server-side developer. For the past eight years, he has fallen hopelessly into front-end technology stacks.  Ever since then, he keeps an obsessive interest in the integration of the latest technologies discovered in the wide world of the front end. Stoimen is currently an R&D Lead for the Product Innovation team in the HERE IoT Department.

Smart cities make use of information technologies to improve performance and quality of urban services, to decrease costs and to optimize resources, besides to involve citizens actively. However, many citizens do not know all the services and advantages that a smart city offers to them. In this work, we make use of a videogame to involve them in different cities and, by playing with real services, increase their knowledge about smart cities.

Francisco Ramos is Associate Professor at University Jaume I of Castellon (Spain). He teaches in the Master Erasumus Mundos of Geospatial technologies and is Director of a Master in Mobile Programming and Videogames. Moreover, he is also co-founder of Pixeder.com

The democratization of spatial data and mapping tools has led to a broader field of actors working on maps and geovisualization tools. In his talk, Sebastian Meier will show examples from student projects to research projects to applied design projects, from the interface design department at the university of applied sciences Potsdam, to illustrate this new opportunity space.

Sebastian is a researcher in the interaction design lab of the university of applied sciences Potsdam and the human centered visualization firm VISLAB. He is working on spatial data visualization and mobile systems.