Some Suggestions

[Mukkai Krishnamoorthy]

Hi,

Here is a project (related to creating social geo - providing geographical data and business locations for third world countries

and countries which need public domain/open source map information).

suggested by Anne Sullivan last Summer. Joe, Nate and Filipe worked on last Summer.

Hopefully Nate (Nate Stedman  <nat...@gmail.com>) will be continuing to work on this Fall. I hope some of you will be interested in

pursuing this worthwhile project. We will have personalized mentoring for this project. (Some of you have suggested 

more mentoring for RCOS projects - we will try to incorporate personal mentoring this semester onwards - besides

group meetings.). Please contact me if you need any further information, This will help you, RCOS and Rensselaer in the long run.

JumpStart has been 
working in working in the Palestinian West Bank since late last year, 
employing young graduates to develop public domain map information 
including roads and points of interest, open data intended for use in 
NGO, public, and private sectors.  In April we were able to gain 
access to the Gaza Strip, and we extended the project there to make 
our map of Palestine complete.  We are currently expecting to release 
our West Bank data in the middle of this month, and the Gaza data in 
early June.  For these projects we used the open-source OpenStreetMap 
tools, and employed OSM's GPS mapping techniques. 

As the project has progressed we've managed to partner with all sorts 
of geographic agencies, municipalities, and universities, and the most 
striking thing about all of them is how related their work is and how 
disconnected they are from one another.  One GIS department in 
Bethlehem may have little or no contact with another in Ramallah, and 
then in Gaza there are even fewer connections.  This is remarkable 
because when GIS guys do in fact meet up, it's a data extravaganza as 
they excitedly show off their work, trade information, and talk for 
hours.  Yet with all different organizations collecting similar data 
independently what would be of great value would be a system for 
sharing that data, allowing different permissions to different 
contacts, and even nudging them towards opening their data publicly. 

As this idea progresses, I can imagine a platform of even more 
overwhelming value to the NGO community.  The bridging of project data 
with geographic information could be immense.  How useful would it be 
for USAID to know geographically where all their money goes?  Or how 
valuable would it be to examine the locations of underserved 
communities?  And then to further bridge this information between 
different organizations?  The possibilities are endless with program 
management, something which might one day become a most excellent 
extension to this project. 

I hope those of you who are interested in discussing this further have 
looked over Mikel's notes at https://we.riseup.net/cgdev/socialgeo/. 
While I'm just a field guy with sophomoric technical knowledge, Mikel 
understands the guts of these things and if we can pursue this project 
he'll be the man to advise.  For the moment I'm really interested in 
hearing from everyone on your background, interests, and thoughts on 
this project.  And please, offer your insights, ideas, and 
recommendations, even if they're totally contrary to our own.  The 
more input we have, the better!

--
Best Regards

--Moorthy
------------------------------------------------------------
M. S. Krishnamoorthy (mskmo...@gmail.com)
518-276-6911(o) 518-273-6624(h) http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~moorthy