GECO - Geospatial Engagement and Community Outreach
Title
Geospatial Engagement and Community Outreach
Acronym
GECO
Duration
February 2011 – February 2012
Website
Summary
The overarching purpose of GECO is to foster a community(ies) of users of geospatial resources (data, services, support). Geospatial, taken in its broadest sense underpins a vast array of academic endeavour - geography represents a fundamental organising axis for information. Space (and time) are fundamental aspects of most resources and activities and the purpose of GECO is to help:
- foster self-help within identifiable communities of interest that emerge form the recent JISC 15/10 funding call (in the Call itself this is referred to as 'Community Synthesis';
- increase the use of geospatial tools, infrastructure (data and services) and information for the wider benefit of the teaching, learning and research communities;
- to collate exemplars of use and to establish a trajectory for the future embedding of geospatial resources within research, teaching and learning landscapes;
- to identify and promote best practice (such as standards, interoperability, machine interfaces) and to provide a means for knowledge transfer from specialist to less spatially literate users and domains;
- assist with the maturation of the UK academic Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) and ensure that location (space/geography) is championed across sectoral domains;
- promote the JISC Geospatial Working Group's (GWG) Vision for geospatial resources in UK higher and further education;
- champion awareness raising of INSPIRE, ensuring that the sector is cognisant of the obligations and opportunities that this gives rise to;
- promote good data management principles, including data curation and stewardship ensuring transparency and reuse where practicable.
Project Deliverables
The key deliverables will be:
- The establishment of a nexus of (largely) self-sustaining communities that exploit geospatial information within a particular domain.
- Greater awareness of existing JISC investment in geospatial resources and a higher degree of awareness of key policy areas such as INSPIRE.
- Additional services and data with exemplar usage and best practice guidance.
EDINA Contact
Funders
Partnerships
Links
Contact us at: edina@ed.ac.uk
EDINA, Causewayside House
160 Causewayside, Edinburgh
United Kingdom EH9 1PR
EDINA is the Jisc-designated national data centre at the University of Edinburgh.
