One of the UN Open GIS Initiative goals is to identify and develop an open-source GIS bundle that meets the requirements of UN operations, taking full advantage of the expertise of the Organization’s partners.

The working group 2 (Capacity Building) of the UN Open GIS Initiative, co-chaired by Dr Ivan Henrico and Dr Susan Henrico from Stellenbosch University and Diego Gonzalez Ferreiro from the UN Global Service Centre (UNGSC), was established with the aim to deliver training programs based on geospatial open-source software to UN personnel and the mapping community at large.

The courses can be accessed through the UN Maps Learning Hub, the capacity building self-training platform accessible to anyone discovering the OpenStreetMap world and wishing to improve their technical skills in geospatial open-source software. The users of the platform are mainly UN staff specialized in GIS technology supporting peacekeeping and political missions. These software packages provide a skill’s boost in support of daily activities, operations, and mandates.

The platform currently includes a series of courses to learn the basics of OpenStreetMap, its main editors and how to map its main geographic objects, including those encountered by UN Mappers on the territories of UN Peacekeeping missions covered by the UN Maps initiative. They are released under a CC-BY-SA 2.0 free license.

In the future, UN Maps Learning Hub will also offer everyone the possibility to obtain a certification on selected OSGeo software and libraries, such as QGIS, PostGIS, GeoNode, GeoServer, Leaflet, OpenLayers, etc.

Past activities:

OSGeo members and Geo4All were involved in the UN Open GIS initiative through the OSGeo United Nations Initiative [1] (formerly OSGeo United Nations Committee [2]) .

Training Programs

1. WG1 Training Material
2. WG3 Training Material
3. WG4 Training Material - UN Open GIS OpenData
4. QGIS Training Material
5. PostGIS Training Material