Baltic GIS Portal

A new Open Source SDI Server Linux OS released

A new Open Source (Linux) operating system solution for building Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) servers is available after extensive testing by the FP7 Geoland-2 project. The code-name of this product is "AGI SDI Server 2009" after the company, which developed and released this product - the Institute of Aerial Geodesy in Kaunas (Lithuania). This re-mastering of Debian (Lenny) operating system includes the best open source SDI and web mapping software tools in the marked, all pre-installed and pre-configured along with spatial database containers and much more...

The latest version of AGI SDI Server 2009 ISO files for 32 and 64-bit versions of the operating system, as well as installation Manual and a short presentation are available for download at http://www.agi.lt/sdi-iso . Please read the manual carefully before you install the server, and go ahead with broadcasting you GIS data on-line!

Advantages of using GIS Services

A sound understanding of geography is needed in every step of a petroleum industry starting from locating a place to drill a well, route a pipeline from the exploration site to the refinery plant, finding an ideal location for a refinery and lot more.

The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is gathering momentum in Oil and petroleum industry as a powerful tool for analyzing and displaying data.

GIS services can be applied in various stages during the development of projects, including: Petroleum Exploration, Production, Managing Facilities & Pipeline Management

GDSK GEOPLATFORM Workshop at JIDEE 07

GDSK GEOSPATIAL will hold a hands-on session on its WEB 2.0 technology in the Galicia Congress and Exhibitions Palace as part of the IV Conference on the Spatial Data Infrastructure of Spain (JIDEE2007).

EU INSPIRE Directive entered into force

Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 March 2007 establishing an Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE) entered into force on the 15th May 2007. See the official announcement and full text of the directive (EN).
This is indeed a great day for all those in Europe, who were fighting for freedom of spatial information, including us here in Lithuania :)

Data on the protected areas added to the portal

The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) provides the most comprehensive dataset on protected areas worldwide and is managed by United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) in partnership with the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) and the World Database on Protected Areas Consortium. The WDPA is a fully relational database containing information on the status, environment and management of individual protected areas. We created regional extracts from the latest (2006) version of WDPA database and projected them into ETRS89_LAEA CRS.

Data gallery and Forums closed on the portal

Yesterday we switched the Data Gallery (albums of data previews) and Forums sections on the Baltic GIS Portal. The decision was made due to the following reasons: (1) maintenance of the Gallery requires too much time and effort (in fact, a double work - the same meta-data info has to be loaded both into Downloads and Gallery sections, also there must be a cross-linking between both of them) and (2) Forums were used very little by our users, while loading this component with every access to the portal makes it work much slower, also imposes certain security and spamming threats. However, we will certainly continue maintenance of the data preview functionality on the Portal, and it is already fixed all over the Downloads section. We supplied an additional DATA PREVIEW link for each of the dataset in the Downloads section, where users can get fast 600x600 pixels preview pictures of the real data. Also, if there will be a special interest of our users, we will certainly activate Forums on our portal again in future.

GDSK starts offering free licenses of GDSK GEOPLATFORM to universities and NGOs

The license model GDSK GISERS Program allows the implantation of a Web 2.0 GIS infrastructure in universities, research centers and non-governmental organizations.

Catalogs of on-line GIS/RS datasets now available

Comprehensive catalogs of on-line GIS/RS datasets available on the Baltic GIS Portal have been released. They contain dataset names, descriptions and internet links for direct download - supplied with albums of prefiew snapshots of all datasets. We hope that those PDF documents will be useful for those who need fast overview of our archives in order to find exactly what they need. You can find those documents in the [Documents] section of our [Downloads].

Catalog of Institutional Users of the Baltic GIS Portal

In order to strengthen the regional GIS users network and analyse the potentials of regional GIS market in Europe, we carried out the analysis of e-mail addresses of individual users who have registered themselves on the Baltic GIS Portal. So far we have more than 600 registered users, and about 1/3 of them have indicated their institutional e-mail addresses, which made it possible to track back their affiliation. We identified more than 200 organizations and split them into 8 categories. It became obvious that our main users come from education, research and industry sectors (see full text for details). Full information on institutional users is available on the LINKS section of the Portal.

Regional GMES Workshop took place in Vilnius on 12-13 May

A Regional Workshop "GMES Contribution to Environmental Policy in New EU Member Countries of the Baltic Region" took place in Vilnius (Lithuania) on May 12-13, 2006. It was organized by Lithuanian Academy of Sciences together with Institute of Ecology of Vilnius University and National Land Service of the Ministry of Agriculture. The official Sponsor of the event was SME HNIT-Baltic Geoinfoservisas located in Vilnius.

It was a practical meeting of active GMES service providers and institutional users, instead of a large public GMES event, attheded by representatives from Lithuanian and Latvian research institutes, agencies and private companies, as well as GMES Information Centers of Poland and Bremen (Germany), European Space Policy Institute (ESPI), German Aerospace Center (DLR), Infoterra Geoland and Metria Sweden.