Tag: foss4g

It’s been a couple of busy weeks, with the QGIS 4.2 release and meetings and conferences all over the place before a few, hopefully quieter, weeks of summer break.

QGIS

The Austrian QGIS user group met online on 25 June to exchange experiences with different webmapping solutions, ranging from QGIS+Lizmap to QGIS Cloud.

A few days later, QGIS 4.2 was released on 3 July 2026. This release is named Belém do Pará, after the Brazilian city that hosted both FOSS4G and a QGIS user meeting back in 2024. MundoGEO has the details on the naming, if you’re curious about the backstory. Worth noting: 4.2 “Belém do Pará” will be the next LTR, so if you’re using the long-term release, this is the one to watch for.

What I found interesting while designing the Belém splash screen was that historic maps of Belém don’t have north at the top. Instead, they’re rotated with north pointing either left or right. A nice little reminder that “north-up” is just a convention and not a law of cartography.

AGIT 2026

This week, I made my way to Salzburg for AGIT, my favorite Austrian GIS conference.

On the first day, I took part in the AGEO Podium discussion, together with Andreas Hocevar (the father of OpenLayers), Clemens Portele, and Soyol Marksteiner on the OGC API standards, since many users aren’t even aware of these new standards yet.

Thursday was talk day for me: I presented MobiML, a new Python library designed to streamline the development of machine learning workflows for trajectory data. I hope this library can help make Mobility Data Science more approachable and results more reproducible.

Right after my talk, Michael Szell presented “Assessing the Danish Bicycle Node Network”, building the data and algorithm foundation for active mobility planning and research. If you want to dig into the tools behind it, check out bikenetwork.dk and bikenetkit.org.

Michael is giving a full talk on this on Tuesday at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna, if you want to hear more.

FOSS4G Europe, from the sidelines

Unfortunately, I missed FOSS4G Europe in Timișoara the week before, so I followed along via the #foss4ge2026 hashtag instead. Iván Sánchez’s talk on the BOSCO ruling, arguing that all government software must be explainable, is just one example of the talks I would have loved to see in person. There was also the already traditional QGIS Feature Frenzy by Kurt Menke and a QGIS hydrological analysis workshop by Hans who also has a full FOSS4G Europe 2026 summary worth reading.

Also relevant: the Birds of a Feather session on AI in OSGeo projects has spilled over onto the OSGeo discuss mailing list. Definitely a thread worth following or getting involved in if you maintain or contribute to open source geospatial projects.

What’s next

Besides MobiML, work also continues on the MovingPandas front. There are a few open pull requests I want to work through ahead of the next release.

After the summer break, the conference season picks back up quickly: FOSS4G 2026 in Hiroshima (30 August–5 September), Spatial Data Science across Languages (SDSL) 2026 in Jena (16–17/18 September), and the QGIS conference 2026 in Switzerland (5–6 October), where I’ll be speaking about AI in the QGIS ecosystem.

For a more complete picture of what is going on in geospatial worldwide, check out (and don’t forget to bookmark) Jakub‘s comprehensive list of geospatial conferences at github.com/Nowosad/geospatial-conferences.

Throughout the week, in workshops, presentations, and project showcases, a consistent theme emerged: QField is not just “the mobile companion to QGIS,” it is production infrastructure for complete field-to-cloud-to-desktop workflows.

It was incredible to see how present QField was throughout FOSS4G 2025 in Auckland. With around 20 presentations and workshops featuring QField, the conference showcased a wide range of real-world, production-grade use cases across many sectors.

What stood out was not just the number of talks, but how consistently QField was presented as a trusted, operational tool rather than an experiment.

The QField Ecosystem in Practice

QGIS Desktop for project design, analysis, and quality assurance QField for field capture, with offline-first capabilities when connectivity is limited QFieldCloud for real-time synchronization, team coordination, and project management Plugins and APIs for integration into broader organizational systems

This ecosystem approach transforms field data collection from an isolated task into an integrated workflow. It’s the difference between “collecting points” and “running a programme.”

QField Day: A Community Deep Dive

Early in the conference, QField Day brought together practitioners, developers, and decision-makers for a focused exploration of the platform’s capabilities. The day emphasized practical implementation—what’s possible now, and what organizations are already achieving in production environments.

Workshops

Complete Lifecycle Management

The QField & QFieldCloud workshop covered the full data collection cycle: project setup in QGIS Desktop, field deployment with QField, synchronization through QFieldCloud, and integration back into desktop workflows for analysis and quality control. Participants worked through the entire pipeline, from initial design to final deliverables.

Field-to-Analysis Integration

One workshop demonstrated the speed of modern field-to-cloud-to-analysis workflows by using Auckland itself as a live laboratory. Participants collected ground truth data with QField, then fed it directly into machine learning workflows running in Digital Earth Pacific’s Jupyter environment.

Plugin Development

For developers, the plugin authoring workshop signaled platform maturity. QField’s plugin framework—built on QML and JavaScript—enables organizations to extend core functionality for specific operational requirements. Custom forms, specialized integrations, and domain-specific interfaces can be developed to address the edge cases that real field programmes encounter.

Operational Workflows: Digital Earth Pacific

• QField participatory mapping integration into Digital Earth Pacific demonstrated the technical workflow connecting field data collection to analysis infrastructure, using Digital Earth Pacific’s open data cube and Jupyter tooling.
• Identifying Forest Invasive Species in Fiji and Tonga Using Machine Learning showed this workflow in action. Field teams collect confirmed invasive species locations using QField, then train detection models using time-series satellite data, iterating with domain experts and local partners to refine results.

Production Deployments

Conservation Operations

Zero Invasive Predators showed QField and QFieldCloud integrated into operational fieldwork for predator eradication programmes across New Zealand. Planning happens in QGIS, capture in QField, and coordination through QFieldCloud—enabling systematic management of conservation campaigns across remote terrain.

Government-Scale Implementation

Finland’s National Land Survey presented their use of QField as part of national topographic data production infrastructure, deployed alongside QGIS and PostGIS. This represents enterprise validation: a national mapping agency selecting QField for production topographic surveying.

Precision Agriculture

Smart vineyards with QGIS & QField demonstrated advanced symbology, map themes, and structured capture workflows supporting precision agriculture operations—showing that the platform handles the level of detail and complexity that professional workflows require.

Developer Infrastructure and Sustainability

• QFieldCloud API — programmatic integration for organizations with existing systems, enabling automation, custom integrations, and connection to enterprise infrastructure
• Who Pays Your Bills? — a transparent discussion of sustainable open-source business models
• [Re]discover QField[Cloud] — platform maturity often manifests as steady capability growth driven by real field workflows

Context: Open Tools for Public Good

• Mapping the World, Empowering People: QField’s Vision in Practice connected QField’s technical capabilities to public-good outcomes
• Open-source road infrastructure management and digital twin direction demonstrated that open standards and open tooling are increasingly part of serious infrastructure conversations

Looking Forward

FOSS4G 2025 Auckland was all about the conversations, and our small booth quickly became a popular meeting point — the QField caps were gone within half a day. We demonstrated the tight integration of Happy Mini Q GNSS with QField, showing how sub-centimeter positioning can be used seamlessly in real field workflows. The booth also featured EGENIOUSS , an EU project where QField complements GNSS with visual localisation for accurate positioning in challenging environments like urban canyons.

Thank you to everyone who shared your workflows, challenges, and stories — whether in presentations, workshops, or over coffee. These conversations remind us that we’re building tools for real people doing important work, and that’s what keeps this community moving forward together.