Pushing forward - next steps towards a geoCommunity Galapagos

After gathering at GI-Forum Salzburg and discussing the preliminary findings of the first phase of the initiative, the project team agreed upon following areas of actions that will be tackled in the second half of 2014 in order to meet the project goals:

• establishing stable and continuos communication channels between project members in Galapagos and the participating (inter-)national institutions
• Prototyping of easy-to-use ArcGIS Server/OpenSource Applications as pilot projects of the proposed GSDI Galapagos
• Dissemination of preliminary results amongst all project members and the GIS-community at Galapagos
• Preparation of follow-up capacity building at Galapagos with long-term project partners such as WWF and the Galapagos National Park
• Connecting Schools and Citizen Initiatives at Galapagos with similar partners in Ecuador and Austria

With this framework we hope to establish tight relations between project partners and other (GI-)stakeholders fostering exchange of know-how and building up capacity and providing ready-to-use GI-applications for and with Galapagos.

GI-Forum Workshop 'GIS for Vulnerable Environments'

As a next step in order to establishing the GeoCommunity Galapagos as a persistent and sustainable initiative connecting the scientific community with GI-practitioneers and the inhabitants of the Galapagos Islands, preliminary findings of the workshop held on Galapagos were presented at GI Forum Salzburg 2014 (www.gi-forum.org), and further steps in order to promote the use of GIS at Galapagos in general, and to design and implement ready-to-use GI-solutions (mobile apps, collaborative GSDI) were discussed amongst the workshop participants. A preliminary analysis of the questionnaires that were handed out to our project partners, mainly GIS-practitioners at Galapagos, can be accessed here.

Following posters were presented by the project team at the GI-Forum poster session:

• "Organizational Approach to a Common Data Catalogue for Galapagos" by Victoria Achatz and Manfred Mittlböck (rewarded with the 3rd prize)
• "Simulate to learn - a Galapagos Case Study of Guava Invasion" by Gudrun Wallentin and Fritz Baier
• "How to decide - Spatial Decisions for the Environment: a framework for the Galapagos Islands" by Stefan Kienberger and Barbara Riedler
• „A concept for a collaborative SDI for theGalapagos Islands” by Adrijana Car and Francis Harvey

On behalf of the project steering commite we would like thank all project members for contributing to this successful event!