What happens at 52N? an open source approach to education and research

In late 2004, the free and open source software initiative 52°North (http://www.52north.org) has been founded by the Institute for Geoinformatics at the University of Muenster and con terra GmbH in order to face the aforementioned challenge. The International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) in Enschede (The Netherlands) has joined 52°North as a principal partner at the beginning of 2005. This conjoint initiative aims at developing free and open source software for the acquisition, analysis and visualization of geospatial data within open Geospatial Data Infrastructures. From an educational perspective Enschede put emphasis on introducing the open source software in its GeoInformatics master and Muenster puts its main focus on Sensor Web Enablement and Web Service Security research.