KomMonitor users and developers met and discussed

More and more municipalities and district administrations in North Rhine-Westphalia are introducing the open source product KomMonitor as a spatial observation tool. With the first Community Day, Bochum University of Applied Sciences and 52°North cordially invited users and developers to exchange ideas with KomMonitor in a relaxed atmosphere.

Introduction

On a sunny Thursday morning in September, over 100 participants gathered in the new building of the University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Coming mainly from all over North Rhine-Westphalia, the community was excited to reach an important milestone in KomMonitor’s young history. For the first time since KomMonitor started as a research project in 2017, the community came together to share experiences and best practices concerning the use of KomMonitor for municipal administration and to discuss the latest developments.

University President Andreas Wytzisk-Arens, one of the masterminds behind KomMonitor in the early project phase, opened the event with warm greetings. From there, Christian Danowski-Buhren from the Department of Geodesy, one of the main developers of KomMonitor, enthusiastically moderated the event. Three interesting thematic blocks structured the day’s program.

Talks

In the morning session, expert users from the City of Essen and the County of Recklinghausen explained how they use KomMonitor in their daily work. The software platform supports city planners and decision makers in urban planning and facilitates demographic monitoring in an intelligent way. This has been demonstrated in the past in the context of the smartdemography project.

The midday session focused on the integration of KomMonitor into social planning processes. First, G.I.B. NRW (Gesellschaft für innovative Beschäftigungsförderung mbH) presented the opportunities of interdisciplinary networking and geospatial analysis in the context of integrated social planning, which can be successfully addressed by KomMonitor. Afterwards, experts from the social sector discussed how KomMonitor contributes to the future of modern and interactive social reporting.

During the coffee breaks, participants took advantage of the opportunity to network. They exchanged the latest user tips among each other or discussed future developments with one of the KomMonitor developers.

The focus during the afternoon session was more on technical issues surrounding KomMonitor. In particular, this session was strongly influenced by 52°North related topics. Simon Jirka introduced challenges and opportunities for municipalities and the public sector when dealing with open source software. Sebastian Drost presented the development of KomMonitor from its start as a research project until today. Other presentations showed how the KomMonitor community can contribute to the development of the software platform.

Future Activities

Finally, the event ended with two talks that addressed future activities regarding synergy with other statistical software, such as DUVA, as well as research topics related to KomMonitor. In addition, an interactive poll to survey the community’s needs for new functional software features underscored that there will be several exciting activities and opportunities around KomMonitor in the future.

The organizers from Bochum University of Applied Sciences and 52°North as well as all active speakers would like to thank all participants of the first KomMonitor Community Day for making the event a great success. We all agree that this exciting event demands a follow-up for the lievelyKomMonitor community.