Dr Suchith Anand
Nottingham Geospatial Institute
Nottingham Geospatial Building
University of Nottingham
UK

Biography
Suchith Anand is the chair of the ICA Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies . He is leading open source research at the University of Nottingham. He established the Open Source Geospatial Lab at the University of Nottingham under MoU with the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. He is now leading the establishment of Open Source Geospatial Labs/Research Centres in key universities worldwide as part of the Geo for All initiative.
He is one of the founders of the Open Source GIS Summer School initiative and the Geospatial Open Source, Open Standards, Open Data e-learning initiative. He is also the founder and co-chair of Open Source GIS Conference Series. He also leads the Open Source, Open Standards, Open Data for Open Nottingham. He is also member of Working Groups on Open Education and Open Science of the Open Knowledge Foundation.
He co-established HealthGIS research theme at the University of Nottingham. He also established AgriGIS research theme in collaboration with colleagues in Plant Science and Crops for the Future Research Centre. These newly established research themes have brought in many research projects, PhD studentships etc for UoN.
He is reviewer for various funding councils (EU, RCUK etc) and number of leading GIS journals (such as the International Journal for Geographical Information Science, Computers and Geosciences etc). He is also in the scientific committees of many international conferences and serves on the Editorial Board of GIS Professional. He is also invited speaker for many conferences and universities. He is involved in many FP7 research (GIS4EU, ISSUE etc) , involved in supervising PhD students and also external examiner for PhD (both UK universities and other EU universities) etc . His research interests and publications are in automated generalization, metaheuristic optimization techniques (simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, hill climbing, tabu search etc), location based services, linked data, HealthGIS, AgriGIS, open source, open standards, open data and data harmonization research.

Abstract
Importance of Open Geospatial Science

There has been tremendous progress and developments in GIS over the last few decades. Oxera’s report on the economic impact of Geo Services report [see Oxera report 2013] estimates the revenues from global Geo services at $150 billion to $270 billion per year. This study is one of the first to consider Geo services as an industry in itself, encompassing all digital mapping and location-based services. It clearly shows the potential for thousands of skilled jobs being created by Geo services. But unfortunately, the number of universities offering GIS programs in developing countries is very low and hence developing countries have been lagging behind in benefiting from the opportunities created by the global geo services. High cost proprietary GIS software packages are unaffordable for majority of users in developing and poor countries and has been a big stumbling block for developing and poor countries to take advantage of the education and job opportunities provided by GIS technologies. The “Geo for All” http://www.geoforall.org initiative of the International Cartographic Association (ICA) and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) is very timely as by using Open Principles (Open Software, Open Educational Resources, Open Data, Open Access, Open Standards etc) in Geospatial research and education will help in the widening geospatial education opportunities for all. Good example of this is gvsig Batovi initiative in Uruguay which developed free and open spatial educational tools that enables primary and secondary education students to understand space, to easily interpret maps and to learn free technologies as part of the wider CEIBAL Initiative . Free and Open source GIS provides accessibility, low cost solutions and lowers the entry barriers for the use of geospatial technologies for all. Open Geospatial Software, Open Data, Open Standards, Open Educational Resources, Open Access to research publications are all key for helping build our vision of Open Geospatial Science. This is key for widening geospatial education opportunities, accelerating new discoveries and helping solving global cross disciplinary societal challenges from Climate change mitigation to sustainable cities.