Asia's Biggest GIS Festival: FOSS4G-Asia 2024

Introduction

FOSS4G-Asia 2024 was held in Bangkok, Thailand, from December 15 to 18, 2024.

The event is one of the largest conferences in Asia, bringing developers, users, and researchers together around free and open source software for geospatial (FOSS4G). Participants came from across Asia, and a wide variety of FOSS4G presentations and workshops made it a lively place for technical exchange.

This article covers an overview of the event and the sessions related to QGIS.

What is FOSS4G-Asia?

FOSS4G (Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial) is an event about open source software for geospatial information technology. It is held not only as an international conference but also in individual countries and regions.

For a report on FOSS4G Japan, held in November, see the article below.

Among these events, FOSS4G-Asia is an event that focuses on FOSS4G users in the Asia region. The first one was held in Bangkok, Thailand, in 2004, and it has been held regularly since 2014.

The host has always been an Asian country, for example Thailand (Bangkok) in 2014, India (Hyderabad) in 2017, Nepal (Kathmandu) in 2021, and South Korea (Seoul) in 2023. The 2024 edition marked the 20th anniversary of FOSS4G-Asia, and it was moving to see it return to Bangkok, Thailand, where it was held 20 years earlier.

FOSS4G-Asia 2024 ran from December 15 to 18, 2024. December 15 was the workshop day, and December 16 and 17 were the core days, with poster sessions and oral presentations. December 18 was the code sprint day.

The venue was Srinakharinwirot University in Bangkok.

The program was packed: 50 General Presentations, 11 Academic Track sessions, 13 Poster Sessions, 9 Keynote Sessions, and 9 Workshops. Reportedly, more than 200 people attended.

Workshops

The workshops on December 15 were hands-on courses. Instructors explained various tools and software at the front while participants worked on their own PCs. Five courses ran in the morning and four in the afternoon.

None of the workshops was directly about QGIS, but one is fairly closely related: “Basic Python for Geospatial.” Python is used in all kinds of processing in QGIS, and it is also required for writing QGIS plugins.

The workshop was aimed at people who had never used Python. Using Jupyter Notebook, it covered how to run Python and write code, and then loaded GIS data such as GeoJSON files and Shapefiles, mapped it, and ran simple spatial analysis, all in Python.

Even Python beginners could follow along comfortably.

Main sessions

December 16 and 17 were the main sessions, with poster sessions, keynote sessions, and oral presentations.

Sessions ran simultaneously in four rooms, and attendees went to the room of whichever session interested them at the time to listen to the talk.

Below are summaries of four QGIS-related presentations given in the General Presentation sessions.

The QGIS Shredder Plugin Inspired by Banksy’s Shredder: Sustainable shredder with no waste

This presentation was by Naoya Nishibayashi of MIERUNE Inc. It introduced a plugin that shreds a layer in QGIS into pieces, as if putting it through a paper shredder.

The talk was by no means a showcase of advanced techniques or technology, yet the audience laughed along with the joke-filled plugin, just what you would expect from a Free and Open community.

Empowering Citizen Scientists for Safer and Resilient Communities: A Story of Creating a Metro Manila Climate and Disaster Risk Atlas through QGIS and OSM

Next was a presentation on creating a disaster risk map of Metro Manila by using QGIS and OpenStreetMap, given by students majoring in geography at the University of the Philippines.

The Philippines, including Metro Manila, is a region that frequently suffers disasters such as typhoons, earthquakes, and floods, and effective information sharing is becoming more important. Against this background, the presenters visualized various disaster risks and OpenStreetMap building data in QGIS and used the results to explain the dangers of densely built-up areas.

Although many academic datasets exist, the people who know an area best are the residents who live there. The presenters aimed to build a society better prepared for disasters by integrating that local knowledge with existing data, and they showed how effective QGIS and OpenStreetMap are as tools for doing so.

PWAGIS QGIS Plugins Development : Lessons learn to Free Open Source Solutions for Geospatial

This presentation was by the Provincial Waterworks Authority (PWA), a water utility in Thailand. PWA had used commercial GIS software for local water supply management for 30 years. The presentation covered its move to open source QGIS, along with the process and what it learned.

The biggest benefit of moving to open source GIS was, above all, license fees. PWA had been using paid GIS software at about 200 or more regional offices, so no longer having to pay those license fees appears to have made a big difference.

PWA also developed a dedicated QGIS plugin and gathered the data that had been scattered across its offices at a central management office. This made it possible to manage data quality efficiently there, and QGIS tools such as Topology Checker were very useful in that work. The presentation was a successful example of moving from paid GIS to FOSS4G.

Hyperspectral Remote Sensing Data Analysis for Oil Palm and Nipa Palm Plantation Using EnMAP-Box open-source plugin on QGIS

The last presentation covered automatic classification of farmland (oil palm and nipa palm) using the hyperspectral information in satellite data provided by the German Space Agency’s Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program (EnMAP).

Hyperspectral data captures wavelengths divided far more finely than conventional satellites do, and the technology apparently can separate even color differences that the human eye cannot distinguish.

EnMAP imagery is available as open data, and you can process hyperspectral data with the EnMAP-Box plugin for QGIS, so you may want to try it yourself.

Conclusion

Several presentations besides the four covered here also mentioned QGIS, a reminder that QGIS has earned a solid place within FOSS4G.

On the evening of the first core day, a gala dinner (networking reception) was held, with live traditional Thai music and dance. It was an experience you cannot get at FOSS4G events in Japan.

The next FOSS4G-Asia is scheduled for 2026 (venue to be decided). If this article made you curious about FOSS4G-Asia, consider joining.