By A Staff Reporter
Kathmandu, Oct. 7: The international conference on Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial “FOSS4G-Asia 2021” was recently organised at Kathmandu University (KU), Dhulikhel.
The conference was organised by the Department of Geomatics Engineering with support from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and in partnership with Nepal Academy of Science and Technology and Land Management Training Centre.

The conference aimed at supporting the global agenda of sustainable development goals including land management and contributing to Artificial Intelligence and IoT (Internet of Things) by bringing researchers, professionals, developers, students, and other stakeholders on a common platform in Asia.
The conference was coordinated by Dr. Reshma Shrestha, Assistant Professor at Department of Geomatics Engineering, KU, and Natraj Vaddadi, Executive Director (Centre for Education and Research in Geosciences) with a core team members consisting of Uma Shankar Panday (Assistant professor Kathmandu University)

Altogether 230 national and international participants and delegates from India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Korea, Japan, China, Germany, France, and Canada attended the conference held on October 1 and 2. This event remained successful in enhancing the awareness on the importance of FOSS4G in the wider community in Nepal including private organisations and academic sectors.
Seven workshops were organised during pre-event of the conference.
An encouraging number of scholars attended the conference onsite as well as virtual rooms, in which 50 scholars had presented their works in the virtual mode. There were eight key note speakers from China, Japan, Sri Lanka, India, Korea, and Thailand.