The scenario this project will focus on is disaster management, as it is a strength of GISCorps through their extensive experience after Hurricane Katrina. This project will to extend the User Friendly Desktop Internet GIS (uDig), an extensible open source project that can serve as a full GIS or a specialized geospatial application, to be able to seamlessly integrate with US Framework data layers served from WFS (version 1.1). As uDig is open source software, with no license restrictions, GIS professionals can show up to volunteer with the software on a CD. As a Java-based application it is fully functional on almost any operating system. Specialized applications such as 'search and rescue' and problem reporting applications can easily extend potential users in to the thousands for a single disaster response - imagine rescue workers marking the status of road closures on top of Framework transportation layers using their laptops as they drive around.

The work done for this project will be very general and adaptable to additional uses. Everything will be released as open source, which means that there are few if any restrictions for including the work in another product or building something entirely new on top of it, which is not possible if the source code is not released. The open source methodology also focuses on maximizing reuse of components. The recent Open Technology Development Roadmap, prepared for the Department of Defense, has a clear recommendation for the open source approach:

Building on previous OSS studies, experiments, projects, and initiatives, this report
recommends shifts in the process of technology acquisition from closed, locked-in black box
systems to open and modular approaches.

The GML 3.1.1 parser and WFS 1.1 datastore of this project will be built to be extremely general - capable of parsing any Level 0 or 1 GML 3.1.1, not just the schemas that are part of this project. And the parser and the datastore will be released as independent modules in the low level GeoTools programming toolkit, ensuring that the new capabilities will not be tied to the display or any other component of the desktop GIS client. As a completely independent library, other software projects will be able to include it as a component.

Interim Report

The Open Planning Project
Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN)
URISA's GISCorps

Contact:

Chris Holmes
718-290-5730
cholmes [at] openplans.org

Other contacts:

Greg Yetman, 845-365-8982, gyetman [at] ciesin.columbia.edu
GISCorps, www.giscorps.org