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The Apache Software Foundation provides support for the Apache Community of open-source software projects. Various recent Apache projects have a geospatial focus.

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) issued a Request for Quotations/Call for Participation (RFQ/CFP) in the OGC Testbed 12 Interoperability Testbed on 23 October 2015. Proposals for the Aviation thread are due by 5:00 pm EST on 20 November 2015; proposals for all the other threads are due by 5:00 pm EST on 11 December. This initiative stands to be one of the largest Testbeds conducted in the history of the OGC Interoperability Program (IP). Details about Testbed 12 and the RFQ/CFP are available at the following link:

A history of the OGC Interoperability Program was just published the the ISPRS International Journal of GeoInformation (IJGI).  The article was written by the four people who have served as Executive Directors of the program:  Jeff Harrison, Nadine Alameh, Terry Idol and George Percivall.

This is the abstract of the paper:

Interoperability is a major challenge for the Internet of Things (IoT). The real potential of  IoT, like the potential of the Internet itself, lies in “systems of IoT systems” rather than IoT systems that operate as isolated technology silos. Real interoperability requires layers of standards, and each layer addresses different interoperability challenges.  

Republished from the Sensorup Blog 29 October 2015

"So our rockstar dev team put together a little Halloween treat for IoT watchers today.

The FOODIE project (Farm Oriented Open Data in Europe (http://www.foodie-project.eu/) has the goal of building an open cloud-based agricultural specialized platform hub for the collection, management and processing of data related to the agri-food sector.

At the Polytechnic University of Catalunya, we have been advancing technology for interoperable marine sensor networks on the OBSEA cabled observatory in the Mediterranean Sea.

The advent of smartphones and the use of GPS technology has sky-rocketed in recent years. All of us have had the experience, however, of following the directions provided by the device and finding ourselves “not quite” at the destination. This is often because the geo-coordinates accessed by the device are usually rendered by satellite and represent a general approximation of home or business, not necessarily the “front door”.

ProgrammableWeb, an online news and directory for web-based application programming interfaces (APIs) references more than 13,900 APIs, which is up from 6,000 registered APIs in May 2012. This phenomenal growth! The number one category of web APIS by far is Mapping with more than 4,500 APIs. This is more than Social, Mobile or Finance! Perhaps this is why over the last 6 months there has been considerable discussion in the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) concerning APIs: What is an API, is there an ontology for classifying APIs, does the OGC develop APIs, and so forth.