Darren Platakis founded Geospatial Niagara in 2013 to promote geographic awareness and access to geospatial technologies through open data. Geospatial Niagara's vision is for engaged citizens in Niagara through geographic literacy. Their mission is to promote literacy and participation through geography. Geospatial Niagara is launching a community initiative to crowd-source data about urban forests in Niagara's 12 municipalities, which will have environmental, educational, economic and social benefits by utilizing existing open data and creating new open data collected by volunteers.

1. GO Open Data Conference
May 1-2, 2015

2. Darren Platakis
(H)BSc. Geography – Brock University (2010)
P/G Certificate – GIS/Geospatial Management – Niagara College (2011)
Founded Geospatial Niagara – (January 2013)
College of Fellows – Royal Canadian Geographical Society – (2013)
Geospatial Niagara officially a not-for-profit – (June 2014)

3. Vision:
A Niagara in which all citizens are engaged citizens
through geographic awareness and access to geospatial
technologies and geospatial information.

4. Mission:
To promote geo-literacy and community participation
through geography.

5. Open Data – acquired plays a huge role in our ability
to engage students and invest them within their
communities.

6. Data Collected – plays a huge role in our ability to
educate and to contribute to broader data sets or
create new ones.

8. Community engagement initiative to crowd-source data
about the Urban Forests of Niagara’s 12 municipalities.
Environmental, educational, economic and social benefits.
Utilizes open data in the form of existing, possibly
incomplete tree inventories – municipal government,
community organizations to be completed via volunteers
Creates open data in the form of student/citizen collected
information
Database can be queried and results exported for use in
other applications