Câmara, Gilberto (1956–)

Gilberto Câmara is a Brazilian researcher in the areas of geographical information science, spatial databases, spatial analysis, and environmental modeling. He was director for Earth observation (2001–2005) and general director (2006–2010) of Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and is internationally known for defending open access to geospatial data and software. Câmara is responsible for setting up the free and open policy for remote sensing images from the China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellites (CBERS) worldwide and for creating the Remote Sensing Data Center of INPE, which has made decades of imagery freely available on the Internet. This made Brazil the world's largest distributor of remote sensing imagery (2005–2008). He was also responsible for setting up a methodology for real-time detection and monitoring of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rain forest.

Câmara is a professor in INPE's graduate programs in remote sensing and computer science and has published several books and more than 100 papers in conference proceedings and journals. He led the development of SPRING, a free GIS that was innovative in the use of the concepts of object-oriented modeling within a GIS environment, and of TerraLib, an open-source GIS library. These contributions have made him one of the leaders in the establishment of the infrastructure of geospatial data and the GIS community in Brazil.