I am assistant Professor at the Department of geomatic sciences of Laval University in Quebec City (Canada). I am also a full time researcher and a member of the steering committee of the Centre for Research in Geomatics (CRG).

The Open Source Business Resource (OSBR.ca) online journal publishes this month an interesting special issue on Business Intelligence (BI). It includes a paper from the GeoSOA research group entitled "Enabling geospatial Business Intelligence" which provides details on what is geospatial BI and about the open source GeoBI software stack (GeoKettle, GeoMondrian and SOLAPLayers, formerly known as Spatialytics) developed by the group. A long version of the paper published in the OSBR journal can freely be downloaded here.

The GeoSOA research group was at the First Opensource Geospatial Research Symposium (OGRS 2009) which was held in Nantes, France from the 8th to the 10th of July 2009. It was the opportunity for the research group to deliver a tutorial/lab session on GeoKettle (the Spatial ETL tool developed by the group) and two presentations. The first one is a technical showcase about the geospatial BI software stack (GeoKettle, GeoMondrian and Spatialytics) developed by the GeosOA research group and released as open source projects. The second one deals with the research agenda in which the group is currently engaged and the research challenges we are addressing. You can access and download all the slides, exercices and files hereafter:

• Tutorial / lab session on GeoKettle:
  • Slides of the tutorial/lab session (in French, 989 Ko)
  • Pre-installed Ubuntu 9.04 virtual machine for VirtualBox 2.2.4 (1860384 Ko)
  • PostgreSQL/PostGIS database creation script for running the exercices (5 Ko)
  • Free data and transformations used in the lab (18460 Ko)
• Presentations:
  • Open source geospatial Business Intelligence (BI) in action ! (1740 Ko)
  • Towards a mobile Spatial OLAP (SOLAP) infrastructure to better support decision in mobility (1521 Ko)

The GeoSOA research group is pleased to announce the publication of a special issue on mobile GIS (in French) of the European Journal of GIS and Spatial Analysis. Dr. Thierry Badard has co-edited this special issue with his colleague, Dr. Hervé Martin from the Laboratoire d'Informatique de Grenoble in France. This special issue provides a good overview of Francophone research works undergone at the intersection of GIS and mobility domains.

It includes among other papers an article stemming from the GeoSOA research group on:

A web service oriented architecture for the delivery of SOLAP mini-cubes to mobile clients

You can access for free at:

• Table of content (in French) of the special issue [ pdf ]
• and the editorial section (in French) [ pdf ]

If you want to buy this special issue, please visit the website of the European Journal of GIS and Spatial Analysis (in French).

Have a good reading!

After the release of a new version of its open source spatial ETL tool, GeoKettle yesterday (please see the announcement for more details), the GeoSOA research group at Laval University, Quebec, Canada is proud to announce the availibility as new open source projects of GeoMondrian, the first implementation of a Spatial OLAP (SOLAP) server and Spatialytics, a lightweight cartographic component which enables navigation in SOLAP data cubes. GeoKettle, GeoMondrian and Spatialytics are components of the complete geospatial BI (Business Intelligence) software stack developed by the GeoSOA research group.

The GeoSOA research group is proud to announce the release of a new version of its open source spatial ETL tool, GeoKettle. Based on Kettle 3.2.0-stable, GeoKettle v3.2.0-20090609 brings many new interesting features ...

The GeoSOA research group was at the SummerCamp/GeoCamp 2009 event which was held in Ottawa at the Algonquin College on May 13-15, 2009. It was an opportunity for the group to present the last developments performed on the free and open source geospatial Business Intelligence software stack designed by the research group. GeoMondrian, the first open source implementation of a Spatial OLAP (SOLAP) server and Spatialytics, a cartographic component which enables the navigation in the geo-analytical data cubes and aims at being integrated in various dashboard frameworks, have been presented and demoed. The slides and a video (part 1 | part 2) of the presentation (in English) given by Dr. Thierry Badard are now online. Have a good reading and video session! Do not hesitate to contact us if you require further details.

A workshop on the geospatial BI tools developed by the GeoSOA research group will be presented at FOSSG 2009: "Geospatial BI with FOSS: an introduction to GeoMondrian and Spatialytics". This workshop will be prepared and given by Dr. Thierry Badard and Étienne Dubé. We are Looking forward to meeting you in Sidney!

Good news! Two Google Summer of Code 2009 projects relating to the geospatial Business Intelligence software stack developed by the GeoSOA research group have been approved:

1. Developing extension to thematic mapping capabilites of Spatialytics
   Adhyan Arizki
2. Spatialytics – GeoReport – CDF integration
   Giovanni Onofri

The latter will be achieved in the context of the ongoing collaboration with Inova.

Congratulations to Adhyan and Giovanni! Other 18 projects approved under the OSGeo umbrella can be found on the GSoC 2009 website at: http://socghop.appspot.com/org/home/google/gsoc2009/osgeo.

Like in 2008, the GeoSOA research group participates to the 2009 edition of the Google Summer of Code program under the umbrella of the OSGeo. Students interested in learning more and developing with open source Geospatial Business Intelligence (GeoBI) tools, could apply to the ideas proposed by the group. Please note that student applications are due no later than April 3, 2009!

The GeoSOA research group is proud to announce the release of a new version of GeoKettle as an open source contribution. GeoKettle v3.1.0-20081103 is still in alpha version but brought many new interesting features.

The GeoSOA research group was at OSBootCamp 6 / GeoCamp 2008 which was held in Ottawa at the Carleton University Campus on June 2-3, 2008. It was an opportunity for the group to present the ongoing works and developments on free and open source geo-BI (geospatial Business Intelligence) and geo-analyticial software. The slides and a video of the presentation (in English) given by Dr. Thierry Badard are now online. Have a good reading and video session! Do not hesitate to contact us if you require further details.

The GeoSOA research group is proud to announce the release of a first version of GeoKettle as an open source contribution. GeoKettle v2.5.2-20080531 is still in alpha version but demonstrates the potential of this ETL tool dedicated to spatial datawarehouses and Spatial OLAP.

See a video illustrating GeoMondrian in action through a prototype of geospatial analytical dashboard ...

You can now access to the slides of the presentation on GeoKettle and GeoMondrian the GeoSOA research team has performed at FOSS4G 2007 on September 26, 2007. This presentation has been a success!

Slides are available on the conference website but can also be downloaded in PDF file format here [ pdf ].

Do not hesitate to cantact Prof. Thierry Badard if you want further details about GeoKetlle and GeoMondrian.

GeoKettle will be soon released as an open source contribution. So stay tuned and come back shortly!

To follow the presentation of GeoKettle and GeoMondrian made at FOSS4G 2007 by the GeoSOA research team, you can now access a video which illustrates GeoKettle capabilities. GeoKettle is a geospatial extension of the open source ETL tool, Kettle.

Download the video in flash | wmv.

If you want to learn more about GeoKettle (or GeoMondrian), do not hesitate to contact Prof. Thierry Badard.

This workshop is organised by the members of the REGARD laboratory at Laval University, a component of the Center for Research in Geomatics (CRG). It is financially supported by the GEOIDE Network of Centres of Excellence.

More details can be found below. Do not hesitate to forward this announcement to potentially interested colleagues, students or contacts.

If you need further information, please visit the REGARD website available at: http://regard.crg.ulaval.ca or contact one of the program chairs of the workshop whose emails are mentionned below. They are all professors in the Department of geomatic sciences of Laval University.