Open standards open source projects for sharing geodata among provinces saves €4.5 million

18 July 2013 Geoff Zeiss

In 2006 the 12 provinces of the Netherlands developed Flamingo,
software for managing and viewing geographic maps. They plan to
publish a second tool, called CDS (Central Data and Service
environment) based around INSPIRE standards.  These applications were developed
as open source based on well-known open source tools including Postgis and Deegree, which are supported by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGEO).

The provinces estimate that since 2009 they have saved € 4.5 million by working together and using open source software solutions for their GIS applications.

The provinces have created a foundation to support the Flamingo community.  Next year, they plan to pursue a similar community development approach for CDS.  

INSPIRE logoThe provinces are now taking a similar approach for other applications that have been developed to be compatible with the European INSPIRE directive, a set of standards, many of which are also Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards, for sharing geospatial data about the environment. 

A presentation on this initiative was delivered at the INSPIRE conference this year in Florence.

Thanks to Derek Oswald for pointing me to this.

Geoff Zeiss

Geoff Zeiss

Geoff Zeiss has more than 20 years experience in the geospatial software industry and 15 years experience developing enterprise geospatial solutions for the utilities, communications, and public works industries. His particular interests include the convergence of BIM, CAD, geospatial, and 3D. In recognition of his efforts to evangelize geospatial in vertical industries such as utilities and construction, Geoff received the Geospatial Ambassador Award at Geospatial World Forum 2014. Currently Geoff is Principal at Between the Poles, a thought leadership consulting firm. From 2001 to 2012 Geoff was Director of Utility Industry Program at Autodesk Inc, where he was responsible for thought leadership for the utility industry program. From 1999 to 2001 he was Director of Enterprise Software Development at Autodesk. He received one of ten annual global technology awards in 2004 from Oracle Corporation for technical innovation and leadership in the use of Oracle. Prior to Autodesk Geoff was Director of Product Development at VISION* Solutions. VISION* Solutions is credited with pioneering relational spatial data management, CAD/GIS integration, and long transactions (data versioning) in the utility, communications, and public works industries. Geoff is a frequent speaker at geospatial and utility events around the world including Geospatial World Forum, Where 2.0, MundoGeo Connect (Brazil), Middle East Spatial Geospatial Forum, India Geospatial Forum, Location Intelligence, Asia Geospatial Forum, and GITA events in US, Japan and Australia. Geoff received Speaker Excellence Awards at GITA 2007-2009.

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