About the authors

Mayra Zurbarán is a Colombian geogeek currently pursuing her PhD in geoprivacy. She has a BS in computer science from Universidad del Norte and is interested in the intersection of ethical location data management, free and open source software, and GIS. She is a Pythonista with a marked preference for the PostgreSQL database. Mayra is a member of the Geomatics and Earth Observation laboratory (GEOlab) at Politecnico di Milano and is also a contributor to the FOSS community.

I would like to thank my mother for her patience and support, and my father and grandmother for their love and for teaching me awesome life skills. To Jota, the kindest person I have met and whose faith in me continues to push me forward. Thanks to Stephen for passing on the task. To my adviser, coauthor, and friend Pedro, and to Jorge Martinez for his help.

Pedro M. Wightman is an associate professor at the Systems Engineering Department of Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia. With a PhD in computer science from the University of South Florida, he's a researcher in location-based information systems, wireless sensor networks, and virtual and augmented reality, among other fields. Father of two beautiful and smart girls, he's also a rookie writer of short stories, science fiction fan, time travel enthusiast, and is worried about how to survive apocalyptic solar flares.

Thank you to my family and all the special people in my life for their love, support, and sacrifice; without them, this wouldn't have been possible. Thanks to my doctoral student for all effort and energy in her research and in life. Thanks to Universidad del Norte for their support in this project. Finally, thanks to my cat for hours of fun (and scratches) that make me forget bad times when things don't go as expected.

Paolo Corti is an environmental engineer with 20 years of experience in the GIS field, currently working as a Geospatial Engineer Fellow at the Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard University. He is an advocate of open source geospatial technologies and Python, an OSGeo Charter member, and a member of the pycsw and GeoNode Project Steering Committees. He is a coauthor of the first edition of this book and the reviewer for the first and second editions of the Mastering QGIS book by Packt.

Stephen Vincent Mather has worked in the geospatial industry for 15 years, having always had a flair for geospatial analyses in general, especially those at the intersection of Geography and Ecology. His work in open-source geospatial databases started 5 years ago with PostGIS and he immediately began using PostGIS as an analytic tool, attempting a range of innovative and sometimes bleeding-edge techniques (although he admittedly prefers the cutting edge).

Thomas J Kraft is currently a Planning Technician at Cleveland Metroparks after beginning as a GIS intern in 2011. He graduated with Honors from Cleveland State University in 2012, majoring in Environmental Science with an emphasis on GIS. When not in front of a computer, he spends his weekends landscaping and in the outdoors in general.

Bborie Park has been breaking (and subsequently fixing) computers for most of his life. His primary interests involve developing end-to-end pipelines for spatial datasets. He is an active contributor to the PostGIS project and is a member of the PostGIS Steering Committee. He happily resides with his wife Nicole in the San Francisco Bay Area.