GECO - Geospatial Engagement and Community Outreach

Title

Geospatial Engagement and Community Outreach

Acronym

GECO

Website

GECO Website

Duration

February 2011 – February 2012

Summary

The overarching purpose of GECO was 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 was to help:

• foster self-help within identifiable communities of interest that emerge form the JISC 15/10 funding call (in the Call itself this was 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;
• collate exemplars of use and establish a trajectory for the future embedding of geospatial resources within research, teaching and learning landscapes;
• identify and promote best practice (such as standards, interoperability, machine interfaces) and 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) was 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 was cognisant of the obligations and opportunities that this gave rise to;
• promote good data management principles, including data curation and stewardship ensuring transparency and reuse where practicable.

Project Deliverables

The key deliverables were:

• 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

James Reid

Funders

JISC (opens new window)

Partnerships

JISC (opens new window)

Links

jiscgeo website (opens new window)