The OneMap Initiative, its concept was born in FOSS4G 2018 in Dar es Salaam, has been established to improve or produce and share geospatial information data over the countries, where accurate and up-to-date geospatial information is not available or insufficient, in a coordinated/cooperated manner through the development of common framework, including common operational geodatabase, among the participating organizations. The aim of the OneMap Initiative is to create and operate a suitable and sustainable mechanism on joint production and sharing of geospatial information for various stakeholders to work closely together as One team in order to avoid duplication of efforts and resources and to synchronize and integrate them within a streamlined approach for a maximum benefit to all. Together with the Geo-referenced Infrastructure and Demographic Data for Development (GRID3) initiative, OneMap pilot project in South Sudan is being implemented.

With an aim of developing and delivering open source geospatial solutions to the UN, the UN Open GIS Initiative was established in March 2016, taking full advantage of mission partner expertise from UN member states, technology contributing countries, international organizations, academia, NGO’s and private sector.

In order to fulfil the diverse requirements of UN field operations, the scope of the UN Open GIS Initiative covers the geospatial software of the UN Spatial Data I nfrastructure. The activities are organized into four working groups, referred to as ‘spirals’; Spiral one for geo-portal and system infrastructure, Spiral two for capacity building, Spiral three for geo-analytic functions, and Spiral four for geospatial data collection.

This talk will cover an overall introduction of the UN Open GIS initiative including the vision, strategies, technical roadmaps, and achievements of each working group. The experiences and lessons learned from the initiative will be shared during the talk, which we hope will be helpful to the UN as well as developing countries. We will also discuss how to leverage the FOSS4G community and the UN Open GIS Initiative.

The United Nations is an international organization mandated by its Member States with maintaining international peace and security, promoting economic and social development, and promoting and protecting human rights. The United Nations System consists of six subsidiary bodies which are responsible for the coordination and activities of the United Nations Secretariat and Specialized Agencies, Funds and Progremmes related to food security, agriculture stability environment, refugees, human rights, gender, sustainable settlement, protection of children and others.

The UN Secretariat and the Agencies extensively use GIS technology to enhance their operations, planning and organizing, monitoring, and decision-making activities. To provide the United Nations with the open-source tools, the UN Open GIS Initiative was established in 2016. The aim is to identify and develop Open Source GIS bundle that meets the requirements of the United Nations, taking full advantage of the experience of the partners. The Initiative consists of four active spirals (or working groups) where Spiral One is focusing on the development of core GIS applications, mobile applications and system integrations; Spiral Two is focusing on building capacity at the United Nations on use of open-source GIS technology; Spiral Three is focusing the development of geospatial analysis solutions; Spiral Four is focusing on developing tools for collecting and processing geospatial data. New Spirals are being considered to establish on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) for geospatial analysis, 3D Globe solutions and Indoor GIS.

The UN Open GIS Initiative provides a unique opportunity to the open-source community for their contribution to United Nations operations in assisting peacekeeping operations, humanitarian response, refugee, promoting human rights and overall maintenance of international peace and security, and socio-economic development.