Growing Open Source and Open Standards in Spain

Looking for an Open Source/Open Standard Solution

At the end of 2002, the "Conselleria de Infraestructuras y Transporte" (Council of Infrastructure and Transportation) of the "Generalitat Valenciana" (Regional Government of the Comunidad Valenciana in Spain) began a global migration towards open systems under Linux. Due to its heavy use in the Conselleria, this process required a focused examination of GIS and CAD software migration. Further, GIS and CAD are relative newcomers to the Free and Open Source (FOSS) software world, meaning few widely used options are available.

The Conselleria began by defining their requirements and then did an evaluation comparing FOSS solutions to commercially developed proprietary software. A survey gathered information from current and future users about their requirements for working with spatial information. The survey collected a great deal of data including specifics on the type of tasks to be addressed and the performance of software and hardware of the surveyed users. It addressed both graphical and non-graphical data, GIS/CAD tools and integration, formats and data types, common operations, frequency of use and other considerations.

A Procurement

After reviewing the findings, the team concluded that there was no existing GIS/CAD software solution that would serve the Conselleria's needs. The decision was made to begin a new project to address the current deficiencies and support the transition to FOSS.

The Conselleria issued a public procurement for GIS development, with these requirements:

• Portable: provides support for multiple hardware / software platform, in particular support for Linux and Windows at the outset
• Modular: is extendable with new functionality
• Open Source: follows FOSS ideals, that is, is both free and the source code is available
• License "Free": includes an open source license with no limitation in the number of installations allowed
• Data Interoperable: can access data from proprietary programs without format conversion
• Standards-Supporting: follows the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and European Union directives

Participants in Development

The project, called gvSIG, pulled together many different players from the community:

• Generalitat Valenciana through the Conselleria served as the client, designing requirements and reviewing progress, and providing funding.
• Universidad Jaume I, a member of the TeIDE consortium and of OGC, served as coordinator and supervisor of the development, in particular regarding the implementation of international standards
• IVER Tecnologías de la Información won the public bid and served as developer.

Two pilot projects were developed; one in C and one in Java. Java was selected as the programming language, as it more easily fulfilled the platform requirements.

During the gvSIG development the team ran into an added requirement. The Conselleria was tasked with studying the nascent work on Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs). Exploration of the INSPIRE European initiative and the public SDIs turned gvSIG (essentially a GIS client) into an SDI client as well. In fact, the gvSIG project itself morphed into a Free Software SDI implementation.

The project grew in other ways. gvSIG became a "complete" GIS client incorporating the Web Map Service, Web Feature Service - Transactional and Web Coverage Service, and the Web Catalog Service. It thus gained the ability to integrate data from different origins together with local data, in the same view.

The team developed a spatial metadata generation protocol based on the International Standards Organization (ISO) 1915 standards and integrated work from the NEM (Núcleo Español de Metadatos) for the Spanish Spatial Infrastructure Data (IDEE) using a tool of Free Software (CATMDEdit).
http://catmdedit.sourceforge.net/

Because gvSIG is but a client, the Conselleria had to consider which map server to use. Currently, it is testing MapServer, GeoServer and Deegree (which are all open source and implement one or more OGC standards) and expects to use PostGIS (the spatial module for PostgreSQL) as the database manager.
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/
http://geoserver.sourceforge.net/
http://deegree.sourceforge.net/
http://postgis.refractions.net/

Beyond Open Source and Open Standards

In addition to solving the Conselleria's needs, the project has had other impacts. It provides a solution for tapping into nascent SDIs in Spain, Europe and worldwide. It serves as the foundation of a new Free Software area at IVER, enhancing that company's business opportunities.
http://www.gvsig.org/

The project and product also help highlight new ways of thinking about software:

• Independent control of the product: A user, not a vendor "called the shots."
• Investment is focused on development: The whole investment is dedicated to development and not licenses.
• Maximization of client rights: clients can do with the software what they like, not what the vendor requires.
• Maximizing users: The combination of free software, open source software and standard-supporting software into a single offering opens the doors to a whole new set of users, including those of limited means.

Figure 1: Unique Values Map

Figure 2: Visualizing raster and vector information

Figure 3: Labeling features