OVERVIEW
OpenGeoportal.org is a new site that brings together geospatial professionals, developers, metadata specialists, and librarians to coordinate the Open Geoportal (OGP) project. The Open Geoportal is a collaboratively developed, open source, federated web application to rapidly discover, preview, and retrieve geospatial data. OpenGeoportal.io is also a collaborative effort to share resources and best practices in the areas of application development, metadata, data sharing, data licensing, and data sources in support of geospatial data repositories.
GeoData@Tufts is the Tufts University instance of Open GeoPortal
HISTORY
Both OpenGeoportal.org and the Open Geoportal (OGP) are lead by Tufts University along with Harvard and MIT. All three Boston/Cambridge area universities have worked together over the last fifteen years coordinating geospatial academic support services. The services typically include geospatial instruction, data management, and application development. All three universities have massive repositories of domestic and international, large and small scale geospatial, data and maps spanning multiple time periods. In 2010 Tufts began researching new products to manage its Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). Unsatisfied with the commercial offerings, Tufts decided to build its own geoportal software. Harvard and MIT both had pre-existing geoportals. Looking to increase application development and data resources, Tufts partnered with Harvard and MIT to build the first iteration of the Open Geoportal. The goal was to build one open source interface that provided access to all partner institution’s data. In April of 2012 MIT hosted the first annual Northeastern OGP Summit which received over 24 participants from MIT, Harvard, Yale, Tufts, Princeton, Columbia, Tufts, Cornell, and University of Connecticut.
In January 2013 Tufts University began receiving support support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for the development of The Open Geoportal Cloud Federation. One of the goals was to host the first Open Geoportal National Summit in Boston in October of 2013. The Summit was a huge success, bringing together both domestic and international geospatial professionals (developers, GIS specialists, and metadata librarians) to share innovative ideas and best practices around open source spatial data infrastructure (OSSDI).
Please see New Developments and Blogs for recent updates and news.
PARTNERS
Tufts University
Harvard University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Massachusetts State GIS Office
Baruch College – CUNY
California State University – Fresno
CIESIN
Columbia University
Cornell University
Emory University
GeoCat, GeoNetwork
New York University (NYU)
Purdue University
Stanford University
State of Wisconsin
State of New Hampshire
United Nations
University of California Berkeley
University of California Los Angeles
University of California Santa Barbara
University of Connecticut
University of Iowa
University of Maryland
University of Minnesota
University of New Hampshire
University of Virginia
University of Washington
University of Wisconsin Madison
USAID – GIST
Yale University