Content

• News
  • New members of staff
• News from the network
  • Research project between the University of Bonn and terrestris
• SHOGun - A GIS-solution for everybody and everything
  • SHOGun 2
• art.mundialis
  • Exhibition in the foyer of the Stadthaus Bonn
• Calendar of events
  • FOSS4G 2017, FOSS4G Europe
• Satellite picture of the month
  • Satellite Picture of April 2017

News

New members of staff

At terrestris we are happy to introduce two new members of staff. We extend a warm welcome to our colleagues Andreas Schmitz and Stefan Cerfontaine.    Since May 1st 2017, terrestris has received support in the area of application development by Andreas Schmitz. As a software developer, Andreas has been working on open source software in the GIS-sector for 13 years. Among other things, he has made an essential contribution to the development of "degree" and "mapbender". He owns a diploma in information science and has contributed to many projects in government agencies and private enterprises. We at terrestris extend a warm welcome to Andreas Schmitz and are looking forward to a good and successful collaboration.   We also welcome our new colleague Stefan Cerfontaine, who supports the terrestris team since April 1st 2017. Since 1994, following his training in graphic design and communications management, Stefan has worked for various advertising agencies in Germany and Great Britain. In this line of work, his main areas of expertise were layout, final artwork, image processing, customer service and production processing. He was able to gain much experience in the design and production of a great variety of advertising media, from calling cards to ship banners. Stefan is experienced in working in teams; he is diligent and knowledgeable about all common graphic and Office programs. In 2016, he topped himself by the acquiring an instructor's license and finishing a degree as a state-certified designer. In April 2017, he finally joined our company. At terrestris, Stefan is the contact person in the area of graphics and image processing.

News from the network

Research project between the University of Bonn and terrestris

„Cropwatch – information system for process control and analysis in plant production“   The aim of the research project between the University of Bonn (the Institute of Geodesy and the Institute of Crop Science and Resource Protection) and the company terrestris, is to show the enormous amount of possibilities that digitization offers for agriculture. We are aiming for an extremely precise information system that can be used by farmers in order to acquire up-to-the-minute information about condition and growth prognosis of every single plant in their fields. On the one hand, this requires a range of data and sensors related to agricultural work. On the other hand, it presupposes intelligent data management, as well as data editing that is comprehensible for the farmer. Digital cameras are to record the plant populations in the fields a height of approximately 20 meters at regular intervals. Thereby, there are supposed to provide locally precise information about their vitality. The time series provided by these high-resolution photographs, which basically make every single plant recognizable, form the basis for the extraction of geometric and radiometric data. They also provide important vegetation parameters such as coverage, plant height, density of ears, or degree of ripeness. The institute of Crop Science and Resource Protection of the University of Bonn provides technical contributions and is at the same time responsible for the overall project management of the 2-year reasearch project. The company terrestris has the task to make the information available on the Internet in an automatic and user-friendly fashion. The new information system is also supposed to visualize the complex variations in the agricultural soil and predict a variety of scenarios, for example on how plant populations react to environmental influences. In this manner, the farmer ca use his computer to simulate possible consequences that planned cultivation measures will have on the crop yield - and he can do so way in advance. Additionally, the project wants to provide important insights in relation to past processes. This will be achieved, for example, through the analysis of quantity and quality of the crop yield in view of the cultivation measures actually taken. terrestris wants to coclude the research project in 2019 with a functioning demonstrator of the information system. The idea is to create a server-based data management system that processes georeferenced image- and sensor data as well as external information transmitted via data services, such as information about the weather. For the user, in turn, we have in mind a form of web-based access, which always provides him or her with current, georeferenced, high-resolution data and information about state and development of his or her plants.

SHOGun - A GIS-solution for everybody and everything

SHOGun 2

The following segment is based on the presentation "SHOGun2 - the modern WebMapping framework" that was given by our CEO Till Adams at the FOSSGIS 2017 in Passau. Link to the presentation   SHOGun2 is an open source WebMapping framework and the successor of SHOGun. For the last couple of years, terrestris has been in charge of its development. Properly speaking, SHOGun2 consists of the SHOGun2-back-end and the SHOGun2-client, which are connected via standardized interfaces.   Via an administrative interface, SHOGun2 can be used to orchestrate the classic "functional triangle" consisting of users/groups, content and WebGIS-applications. Functionally, as well as in terms of areas of application, SHOGun2 is on par with other well-known (open source) WebMapping frameworks.   We are convinced, however, that every imaginable function can be developed nowadays, and that a consideration based on functionality cannot form the basis for a well-founded comparison between different frameworks. Every project tat aims towards the application of a WebMapping framework in any kind of form, has certainly passed through a decision-making process that lead to the selection of the software to be employed. And, despite the IT-world's fast-moving nature, projects such as these are normally intended to run for several years, with the option to further develop the resulting platform in terms of content and function.   Open source software SHOGun2 is open source and therefore opens up the possibility of free use without licensing fees and restrictions. SHOGun2 can be operated with any amount of installations and on any kind of upgraded hardware. Added to this is free access to developers' resources, support, maintenance and change of version without licensing obstacles. By the way, the source code of SHOGun2 can be accessed here.   Content-related openness SHOGun2 offers the possibility to upload geodata (raster & vector) into the system and publish it via the secondary GeoServer. Vector data can also be shaped with the help of an SLD-Styler. The layers within SHOGun2 have properties that determine their behavior in the GIS-client. It is always the same way as geodata that is being opened in a standard GIS.   Functional openness Of course, a SHOGun2 instance carries with it a set of functionality that is already quite large by itself. As in other frameworks, the expansion of functionality must be developed from the bottom up and also requires, as long as a WebMapping framework is concerned, deep knowledge about the framework itself. To faciliate this, SHOGun2 can be expanded functionally via server-sided processes (WPS) and client-sided plugins. For server-sided functions, the WPS-standard is supported. Via the configuration, WPS can be embedded - also in chained form - into a SHOGun2-client. In regard to client-sided development, e.g. the provision of special formulas or input masks, the SHOGun2 plugin interface can be used. A plugin can then be assigned to an application and, linked to this, to a user group. Freedom to choose the client Currently, the standard-client of SHOGun2 (which we have referred to above as the SHOGun2-client) is based on BasiGX. But as the SHOGun2-back-end-consigns only a user-driven configuration file to the GIS-client, every other GIS-client can also be used. Presently, terrestris develops a GIS-Client that is based on the JavaScript frameworks reacts.js and OpenLayers.

art.mundialis

Exhibition in the foyer of the Stadthaus Bonn

From Monday, June 12th 2017 until Friday, June 30th 2017, you can visit an exhibition by art.mundialis in the foyer of the Stadthaus Bonn, Berliner Platz, 53111 Bonn. The exhibition is accessible daily from 8am to 6pm. A variety of satellite pictures, providing artistic design for commercial and private interiors, are on display here. You can also visit us online on art.mundialis.de - we are looking forward to meeting you there!

Calendar of events

FOSS4G 2017, FOSS4G Europe

FOSS4G Europe 2017 18-22nd July 2017 Cité Descartes campus of Marne-la-Vallée Paris, France Topic Talks Till Adams:  „SHOGun 2 – Yet another WebGIS framework?“ „Visions of FOSS4G – why the community needs business (and business the community)   FOSS4G Boston 2017 14-19th August 2017 Seaport Hotel & World Trade Center Boston, MA Topic Talk Marc Jansen: „AnOl, GeoExt, MapStore 2, ngeo, ... — An overview of extensions, plugins, libraries & frameworks around OpenLayers“ Link to the Topic Talks

Satellite picture of the month

Satellite Picture of April 2017

(Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2016)/ESA – created by mundialis) This time around, the satellite picture of the month depicts an area that is right at our doorstep: the Rhine and the Siebengebirge. In the west of the picture, one can see the two river islands of Grafenwerth and Nonnenwerth. Grafenwerth is a Rhine island located in the town of Bad Honnef (situated at Rhine-kilometer 642). It lies opposite the island of Nonnenwerth and is part of a natural region which the river widens in the Honnef valley. Geologically, it belongs to the Younger Low Terrace of the Rhine, whose deposits for the most part consist of sand and gravel. Two bridges, the Grafenwerth Bridge (1912) in the north and the Berck-Sur-Mer-Bridge (1977) in the south, as well as two separating embankments (or groins) in the island's center and at its southern end, lead across the oxbow lake that separates the island from the mainland. The southern dam extend all the way to the Lohfelder Fähre. Opposite Grafenwerth lies the island of Nonnenwerth - also a Rhine island and situated between Bad Honnef and Rolandswerth. Since the beginning of the 12th century, the island has been home to a Capuchin monastery, which was taken over by Franciscan nuns in 1854. Since that time, the monastery also houses a Franciscan educational institution, which began as a finishing school and was later turned into a high school. In the northwest of the picture one can see the Drachenfels - amountain in the Siebengebirge. It is located near the Rhine, between the towns Königswinter and Bad Honnef. Due to its castle ruin, its prominent position above the Rhine valley, its appropriation as a subject for Rhine Romanticism, and its early touristic development, the mountain is well-known - despite the fact that its peak is only 321 meters above sea level. The Drachenfels was formed by rising magma that did not penetrate the surface of the earth. Instead, it solidified below ground and formed dome-like structures. These are referred to by volcanologists as mamelons. There is documentation going as far back as Roman times that proves the existence of quarries (quartz trachyte) at the Drachenfels. Especially in the Middle Ages, the Drachenfels trachyte was an often used buidling stone in the Rhine area, used for example for the construction of the Cologne Cathedral. In the northeast of the picture, one can see the Hühnerberg. Located near Willmeroth, it is the only active basalt quarry in the Siebengebirge. Characterized by its concical crater, the quarry extends for more than 900 meters from north to south and 500 meters from west to east. Originally, the Hühnerberg's peak was situated at 336 meters. However, due to blasting operations, its height is now only 175 meters. The basalt, whose color ranges from black to dark gray, is a basic eruptive rock and has formed as a result of volcanic activity from magma that penetrated the surface and quickly solidified. The basalt deposit in the Siebengebirge dates back to volcanic activity over 20 million years ago.