Chapter 1. Introduction
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# Chapter 1. Introduction

PostGIS is a spatial extension for the PostgreSQL relational database that was created by Refractions Research Inc, as a spatial database technology research project. Refractions is a GIS and database consulting company in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, specializing in data integration and custom software development.

PostGIS is now a project of the OSGeo Foundation and is developed and funded by many FOSS4G developers and organizations all over the world that gain great benefit from its functionality and versatility.

The PostGIS project development group plans on supporting and enhancing PostGIS to better support a range of important GIS functionality in the areas of OGC and SQL/MM spatial standards, advanced topological constructs (coverages, surfaces, networks), data source for desktop user interface tools for viewing and editing GIS data, and web-based access tools.

## 1.1. Project Steering Committee

The PostGIS Project Steering Committee (PSC) coordinates the general direction, release cycles, documentation, and outreach efforts for the PostGIS project. In addition the PSC provides general user support, accepts and approves patches from the general PostGIS community and votes on miscellaneous issues involving PostGIS such as developer commit access, new PSC members or significant API changes.

Raúl Marín Rodríguez

  MVT support, Bug fixing, Performance and stability improvements, GitHub curation, alignment of PostGIS with PostgreSQL releases

Regina Obe

  Buildbot Maintenance, Windows production and experimental builds, documentation, alignment of PostGIS with PostgreSQL releases, X3D support, TIGER geocoder support, management functions.

Darafei Praliaskouski

  Index improvements, bug fixing and geometry/geography function improvements, SFCGAL, raster, GitHub curation, and bot maintenance.

Paul Ramsey (Chair)

  Co-founder of PostGIS project. General bug fixing, geography support, geography and geometry index support (2D, 3D, nD index and anything spatial index), underlying geometry internal structures, GEOS functionality integration and alignment with GEOS releases, alignment of PostGIS with PostgreSQL releases, loader/dumper, and Shapefile GUI loader.

Sandro Santilli

  Bug fixes and maintenance, buildbot maintenance, git mirror management, management functions, integration of new GEOS functionality and alignment with GEOS releases, topology support, and raster framework and low level API functions.

## 1.2. Core Contributors Present

Nicklas Avén

  Distance function enhancements (including 3D distance and relationship functions) and additions, Tiny WKB (TWKB) output format and general user support

Loïc Bartoletti

  SFCGAL enhancements and maintenance and ci support

Dan Baston

  Geometry clustering function additions, other geometry algorithm enhancements, GEOS enhancements and general user support

Martin Davis

  GEOS enhancements and documentation

Björn Harrtell

  MapBox Vector Tile and GeoBuf functions. Gogs testing and GitLab experimentation.

Aliaksandr Kalenik

  Geometry Processing, PostgreSQL gist, general bug fixing

## 1.3. Core Contributors Past

Bborie Park

  Prior PSC Member. Raster development, integration with GDAL, raster loader, user support, general bug fixing, testing on various OS (Slackware, Mac, Windows, and more)

Mark Cave-Ayland

  Prior PSC Member. Coordinated bug fixing and maintenance effort, spatial index selectivity and binding, loader/dumper, and Shapefile GUI Loader, integration of new and new function enhancements.

Jorge Arévalo

  Raster development, GDAL driver support, loader

Olivier Courtin

  (Emeritus) Input/output XML (KML,GML)/GeoJSON functions, 3D support and bug fixes.

Chris Hodgson

  Prior PSC Member. General development, site and buildbot maintenance, OSGeo incubation management

Mateusz Loskot

  CMake support for PostGIS, built original raster loader in python and low level raster API functions

Kevin Neufeld

  Prior PSC Member. Documentation and documentation support tools, buildbot maintenance, advanced user support on PostGIS newsgroup, and PostGIS maintenance function enhancements.

Dave Blasby

  The original developer/Co-founder of PostGIS. Dave wrote the server side objects, index bindings, and many of the server side analytical functions.

Jeff Lounsbury

  Original development of the Shapefile loader/dumper.

Mark Leslie

  Ongoing maintenance and development of core functions. Enhanced curve support. Shapefile GUI loader.

Pierre Racine

  Architect of PostGIS raster implementation. Raster overall architecture, prototyping, programming support

David Zwarg

  Raster development (mostly map algebra analytic functions)

## 1.4. Other Contributors

Individual Contributors

  Alex Bodnaru | Gino Lucrezi | Matt Amos
  Alex Mayrhofer | Greg Troxel | Matt Bretl
  Andrea Peri | Guillaume Lelarge | Matthias Bay
  Andreas Forø Tollefsen | Giuseppe Broccolo | Maxime Guillaud
  Andreas Neumann | Han Wang | Maxime van Noppen
  Andrew Gierth | Haribabu Kommi | Michael Fuhr
  Anne Ghisla | Havard Tveite | Mike Toews
  Antoine Bajolet | IIDA Tetsushi | Nathan Wagner
  Arthur Lesuisse | Ingvild Nystuen | Nathaniel Clay
  Artur Zakirov | Jackie Leng | Nikita Shulga
  Barbara Phillipot | James Marca | Norman Vine
  Ben Jubb | Jan Katins | Patricia Tozer
  Bernhard Reiter | Jason Smith | Rafal Magda
  Björn Esser | Jeff Adams | Ralph Mason
  Brian Hamlin | Jelte Fennema | Rémi Cura
  Bruce Rindahl | Jim Jones | Richard Greenwood
  Bruno Wolff III | Joe Conway | Roger Crew
  Bryce L. Nordgren | Jonne Savolainen | Ron Mayer
  Carl Anderson | Jose Carlos Martinez Llari | Sebastiaan Couwenberg
  Charlie Savage | Jörg Habenicht | Sergei Shoulbakov
  Christoph Berg | Julien Rouhaud | Sergey Fedoseev
  Christoph Moench-Tegeder | Kashif Rasul | Shinichi Sugiyama
  Dane Springmeyer | Klaus Foerster | Shoaib Burq
  Dave Fuhry | Kris Jurka | Silvio Grosso
  David Garnier | Laurenz Albe | Stefan Corneliu Petrea
  David Skea | Lars Roessiger | Steffen Macke
  David Techer | Leo Hsu | Stepan Kuzmin
  Dian M Fay | Loic Dachary | Stephen Frost
  Dmitry Vasilyev | Luca S. Percich | Steven Ottens
  Eduin Carrillo | Lucas C. Villa Real | Talha Rizwan
  Eugene Antimirov | Maria Arias de Reyna | Tom Glancy
  Even Rouault | Marc Ducobu | Tom van Tilburg
  Frank Warmerdam | Mark Sondheim | Vincent Mora
  George Silva | Markus Schaber | Vincent Picavet
  Gerald Fenoy | Markus Wanner | Volf Tomáš

Corporate Sponsors

  These are corporate entities that have contributed developer time, hosting, or direct monetary funding to the PostGIS project. In alphabetical order:

  - Aiven
  - Arrival 3D
  - Associazione Italiana per l'Informazione Geografica Libera (GFOSS.it)
  - AusVet
  - Avencia
  - Azavea
  - Boundless
  - Cadcorp
  - Camptocamp
  - Carto
  - Crunchy Data
  - City of Boston (DND)
  - City of Helsinki
  - Clever Elephant Solutions
  - Cooperativa Alveo
  - Deimos Space
  - Faunalia
  - Geographic Data BC
  - Hunter Systems Group
  - ISciences, LLC
  - Kontur
  - Lidwala Consulting Engineers
  - LISAsoft
  - Logical Tracking & Tracing International AG
  - Maponics
  - Michigan Tech Research Institute
  - Natural Resources Canada
  - Norwegian Forest and Landscape Institue
  - Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO)
  - OSGeo
  - Oslandia
  - Palantir Technologies
  - Paragon Corporation
  - R3 GIS
  - Refractions Research
  - Regione Toscana - SITA
  - Safe Software
  - Sirius Corporation plc
  - Stadt Uster
  - UC Davis Center for Vectorborne Diseases
  - Université Laval
  - U.S. Department of State (HIU)
  - Zonar Systems

Crowd Funding Campaigns

  Crowd funding campaigns are campaigns we run to get badly wanted features funded that can service a large number of people. Each campaign is specifically focused on a particular feature or set of features. Each sponsor chips in a small fraction of the needed funding and with enough people/organizations contributing, we have the funds to pay for the work that will help many. If you have an idea for a feature you think many others would be willing to co-fund, please post to the PostGIS newsgroup your thoughts and together we can make it happen.

  PostGIS 2.0.0 was the first release we tried this strategy. We used PledgeBank and we got two successful campaigns out of it.

  postgistopology - 10 plus sponsors each contributed $250 USD to build toTopoGeometry function and beef up topology support in 2.0.0. It happened.

  postgis64windows - 20 someodd sponsors each contributed $100 USD to pay for the work needed to work out PostGIS 64-bit issues on windows. It happened.

Important Support Libraries

  The GEOS geometry operations library

  The GDAL Geospatial Data Abstraction Library used to power much of the raster functionality introduced in PostGIS 2. In kind, improvements needed in GDAL to support PostGIS are contributed back to the GDAL project.

  The PROJ cartographic projection library

  Last but not least, PostgreSQL, the giant that PostGIS stands on. Much of the speed and flexibility of PostGIS would not be possible without the extensibility, great query planner, GIST index, and plethora of SQL features provided by PostgreSQL.

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