I am seconded from Laser-Scan Ltd. (Cambridge, UK) to Italy at the Space Applications Institute for 12 months.
The secondment is for 12 months, from Dec.1st and I a "visiting scientist"
in "Interoperability in GIS". I will remain a Laser-Scan employee at zero
pay and will be returning to Cambridge afterwards. My salary and expenses
are paid for by the Joint Research Centre. in Ispra.
My first "mission" was to attend the International
Conference and Workshop on Interoperating Geographic Information Systems,
December 3-6 1997 in Santa Barbara, followed by the OGC
Technical Committee Meetings December 8-11 in San Rafael (on the North
side of San Francisco) and February 9-12 in Munchen.
Reasons for your application for a scientific visit...
To further European knowledge of, and influence on, object-oriented
GIS and emerging standards for interoperability, and to introduce them
through a range of development and educational initiatives to the JRC and
wider European community.
Proposed subject of work during the visit...
Coordination of European geographic Information Systems (GIS) standardisation
activities in relation to interoperability and OpenGIS emerging standards.
Standardization activities including writing software to exercise and test proposed interoperation, data transfer and metadata standards as well as attending standardisation meetings and participating in discussion groups by email and usenet bulletin boards.
Technical and commercial presentations to European industry groups on the technical merits and commercial adavantages of object-oriented inter-operation standards and of object-oriented GIS in general.
Preparation of demonstrator software and presentation materials for distribution and discussion in the European GIS community.
Research and dissemination in technology transfer, training, adoption strategies and backwards compatibility issues for non-object-oriented European GIS systems users and developers seeking to take advantage of object-oriented standards and techniques without requiring a commercially infeasible additional effort.
Investigation into the training needs in European GIS developers for object-oriented programming skills (e.g. Java, Python, Eiffel) and the development of new training materials specifically aimed at professional programmers working with spatial databases.
Investigation into the software development processes in European GIS systems developers in conjunction with researchers at the European Software Engineering Institute in Bilbao. A comparison between this and corresponding efforts at the American Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh.
Development of a GIS-customisation of the Unified Modelling Lanaguage (UML) object-oriented design notation to cover common GIS design object types. Use of this to document common GIS class framework idioms ("patterns").
Investigation of the practicalities and scalability of a proposed new technique "Object Terrain Modelling": an extension of Digital Terrain Modelling where each spatial location is associated with an object consisting of many attribute values rather than fixed-length set of digits representing one attribute value or colour.
Philip Sargent
Terminale Postale 950
CCR
21020 Ispra (VARESE)
ITALY
+39 (332) 78 5455 tel. +39 (332) 78 5500 fax.Philip.Sargent@computer.org
The application form details don't tell the whole truth. The real reason is for me to be a focal point for liaison between the European Community and the OGC: the OpenGIS Consortium. Since that is viewed by many as an American organisation (although it isn't entirely), the bureaucratic realities are expedited if no mention of it appears on the application form.
What I expect I will be doing is travelling a lot around European GIS software developers and users, attending OGC meetings and ensuring that the "European voice" is heard in USA/Intl. standardisation initiatives. This is probably a mixture of technical/marketing: understanding software technologies and capabilities and accepting no excuses for people settling for inferior or brain-damaged software infrastructures or standards. The VPF profiles, or perhaps I should say "sub-standards", come to mind here (pun intended).
I will be working closely with David Arctur (USA) and Adrian Cuthbert (UK).
Note this paragraph from the proposal: "Investigation into the training needs in European GIS developers for object-oriented programming skills (e.g. Java, Python, Eiffel) and the development of new training materials specifically aimed at professional programmers working with spatial databases. "