Franchu’s Lair

Last year I attended GEOSTAT 2009, and it was a great experience! This is the reason why I think that if you are into geostatistics you may want to take a look at the call for participation for this years edition that will take place in Plasencia, Spain.

The original call for participation read like this:

GEOSTAT focuses on important aspects of statistical analysis of spatial and spatio-temporal data using open source / free GIS tools: R, SAGA GIS, GRASS GIS, Quantum GIS, GDAL, Google Earth and similar. The course participants learn how to move data back and forth between different environments, how to produce scripts and automate analysis. We welcome also R beginners and users needing refresh courses in
programming. This year, we would also like to introduce/promote topics such as: web-based computing, WPS client-server environments, 3D and 4D geostatistics, combining R+SAGA/GRASS. This is a 5-day course with two parallel sessions, which means that there will be total 7 full-day blocks (three days with parallel sessions) of lectures; the last day of the summer school participants can present their research problems and ask for feedback from the whole summer school. For more info see:

http://geostat2010.info/Info

In order to get some more information, I ran a short Q&A with Tomislav Hengl, the guy who started all this GEOSTAT thing and keeps organising them

Why are you doing GEOSTAT 2010?

Tomislav Hengl: The first such event I have organized was in 2004 in Zagreb, Croatia. I just came back from ITC, Netherlands (where I defended my PhD in pedometrics) and wanted to transfer and share some of my knowledge/experiences locally to colleagues in Croatia, who obviously had limited resources to follow international activities. In the meanwhile the event became international, and is now mainly dedicated to the open source spatial data analysis tools, primarily R and open source GIS (SAGA, GRASS). So my original motive to run it is the knowledge-sharing (’spread the word’). I also see it as a good investment – young researchers and people working on small projects get to see the benefits of using open source tools. They become a part of community, so that there is a bigger momentum to do even more ambitious projects. Sounds a bit as Jehovah’s Witnesses, but open source academic software is definitively a noble mission.

Are you going to do another edition of GEOSTAT in 2011?

Tomislav Hengl: Of course. As long as there is interest, there will be GEOSTAT (by looking at the number of registrations we get every year – we should do it at least 3 times in 2011!).

So… why should I try to go to GEOSTAT this year? What makes it special this time?

Tomislav Hengl: The GEOSTAT 2010 is special because of three things:

• this is the first time where both main developers of GRASS GIS, R spatial tools and SAGA GIS will come together (we have 7 lecturers in total!)
• this year we will run parallel training blocks, so that participants will have more flexibility to select topics that interest them the most
• Spanish beer feels great when you listen for a whole day about R commands on 35 degrees C!

I already have your book, is there something new for me at GEOSTAT?

Tomislav Hengl: But I bet you that you have many questions on things in the book that the book cannot answer. No seriously, every year the program is at least 30% new. This is simply because R+OSGeo tools evolve at increasing paste. If you really want to be on the edge, you should come and listen to Roger Bivand, Edzer Pebesma, Gerard Heuvelink, Markus Metz, Victor Olaya…

I don’t have publications, or I’m not a PhD student, but I really love geospatial… what are my chances of attending?

Tomislav Hengl: They can still be high. The selection criteria for this year are:

• time of application
• distance to the venue (more distant applications have an advantage – for simple reason of solidarity with people that have to invest a lot to reach Spain)
• contributions to the open source activities (R-sig-geo traffic, number of packages and plugins developed)
• publication record/academic level

So you see – even if you were a MSc student, you could have got in if you have applied on time and made some contributions to the community.

Is GEOSTAT about learning how to use tools or will I also get the theory behind it?

Tomislav Hengl: We really let the participants decide about this (democratically). About 40% of the programme is flexible, so lecturers can decide whether to take some steps back and re-discuss theoretical grounds (in most cases people have such grounds already, so the focus in typically more on mastering the software). My experience is that people like to learn things that are critically difficult to understand without getting detailed instructions (tips-n-tricks) from people who developed the tools (or theory) originally. In most cases this leads to understanding why was some algorithm designed in such way, what are its bottle-necks and how to go around them, and how to interpret results of analysis for various case studies. At the end, I do not think that you can completely separate between the tool and theory: you need tools (R+GIS) to be able to implement some theory, and you need theory that can fit your applications, so these are actually closely connected.

Why is GEOSTAT oriented to open source tools? Can’t I get the same results with commercial software?

Tomislav Hengl: This is my most important point that I always make when asked about my motives to use R (some think we do it just because it is for free). I use R primarily because of the quality and diversity of algorithms. Take for example geostatistics. If you know how to use R+gstat/geoR you can do so many things – fit non-linear models, plot variograms with confidence limits, plot space-time variograms, predict or generate simulations using regression-kriging etc etc. Try doing this with ArcGIS. Did you know that the main creator of Geostatistical analyst for ESRI has been trying to bring R functionality to ArcGIS for years? And I do not see that vice-versa is happening. There is also the issue of confidence and transparency – R is open source so you can see and track exactly what goes on. With commercial software (which is usually close code) you have to be a blind believer. I am definitively not a one.

I don’t know how to use R/SAGA/… nor how to program, do you think I can still benefit from GEOSTAT?

Tomislav Hengl: I personally have full understanding for the coding beginners, so they are welcome. We actually run every year a small block for beginners called “baby-steps-in-R” (or how to start understanding R in 2 hours). The participants need to have some motive, talent and enthusiasm to begin with, we will take care of helping them master the code. Now about the benefits of the whole thing… I am really not the right person to say. This is more a question for you to comment, right?

Indeed, the baby-steps-in-R are really useful, and even if during GEOSTAT you are challenged by the lack of skills in R you always learn a lot of things. Last year when I attended GEOSTAT I had lots of troubles with R, but everybody was eager to help you understand the big picture. Still, if you want to get the most out of it… prepare before going there!

Last year I ran a short interview with Roger Bivand, one of the lecturers that will be again at GEOSTAT 2010.

The deadline for application is the 15th February 2010, so you better rush if you want to make it on time. If you are not accepted this year, keep an eye on Tomislav’s website for future editions of GEOSTAT as it is something worth attending.

Once more I had the chance to visit Vigo, a city in the north west of Spain. This time I was there for work, so not much time for sightseeing, but I think knowing where to stay and where to eat might be useful for someone. So there we go…

Hotels

The group was split in two hotels. They are not exactly the same quality, but both were ok and quite close to each other.

• Hotel América – I didn’t get to see the rooms, but the people who stayed there said they were ok for a three star hotel.
• Hotel Princesa – I stayed in this one, and even if the rooms are quite small they are clean. The people at the reception desk (Nestor) are really friendly, although they don’t speak english very well. You can check their website for pricing information.

Eating and party

As it is usual in Spain, there are many places where you can eat on a budget and the quality is good. If you like fish and sea food in general this is a great place to go to. Just walk around the center and try one of the many places that you will find.

If you want to play it safe though, we found a very nice place called “El Cortijo” on the street Rosalia de Castro 59. Pili, the waitress, took really good care of us. Ask her for help to know how much food to order and what are the best choices to cover the wide variety of regional specialities. She gave us some discounts for drinks at Marmara, a music pub on the same street walking towards the center. The average age was a bit high, but it was a fun place to finish the workshop.