What is the OGC?
OGC Newsletter - April 2006
April 2006
CONTENTS
President's Message
News From the Huntsville Meeting
Interoperability Course Materials Available to OGC Members
News and Opinion From The Blogosphere
Website of the Month
DEPARTMENTS:
IP Update, New Members, OGC In The News, Events, Contact, Subscribe/Unsubscribe
Back issues of OGC News are available.
PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
Like many others in our industry, I was saddened to hear that Fritz Petersohn died in March. He was 83.
Fritz was born and raised in Germany, where he studied to become an engineer. He moved to the United States after World War II and eventually settled near Boston. With two colleagues, he founded the Boston-based engineering firm BSC Group Inc. in 1965. A strong education advocate, in 1978 he created the survey engineering program at the University of Maine, which eventually grew into a regional program and a leading center for spatial information science and engineering.
Fritz believed strongly in our industry's potential to help humanity, and he understood that fulfilling this potential requires international cooperation and lifelong education and growth. Because of that conviction, he was an early supporter of the OGC and he was instrumental in convening the first Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) conference in Bonn, Germany, in 1996. Since that time, he steadfastly promoted the GSDI vision and helped fan the spark from that conference into the GSDI Association.
Upon learning of Fritz's passing, I immediately thought of the losses we in the OGC family have suffered recently. Dedicated OGC members John Vincent and Bill Lalonde shared not only their important technical and professional contributions with us, but also their dedication to the importance of our work to the greater social good. Losing colleagues like these is hard, but the memory of them makes us more committed to our best values.
Mark Reichardt
President
OGC
NEWS FROM THE HUNTSVILLE MEETING
More than 150 members and invited guests attended the 56th OGC Technical and Planning Committee Meetings in Huntsville, Alabama. Sponsored by Intergraph, the US Space and Rocket Center, and the UAH Geospatial Applications and Training Center, the meetings were considered a success by all. Below are some of the highlights.
The meeting played host to a sensor standards coordination meeting with representatives from the OGC, OASIS, IEEE, and other organizations focused on sensor nets and sensor web enablement.
Brenda Smith, EPA, offered a special presentation on the Geospatial Profile of the Enterprise Architecture. Judith Woodhall, COMCARE, spoke about COMCARE's activities related to the use of standards for emergency services and management.
More than 25 document actions were taken including:
- The GML Simple Features Profile was approved by the members for official release as an adopted OpenGIS® Implementation Specification.
- The candidate specification titled "Web Processing Service" was approved for electronic vote for adoption as version 0.
- The Sensor Observation Service, Sensor Planning Service, TransducerML, and SensorML candidate specifications were approved for release for a 30 day public comment period.
- The document "Catalogue Service - Best Practices for Earth Observation" was approved for release as an OGC Best Practices document.
- The draft Geospatial Digital Rights Management Reference Model (GeoDRM RM) was approved to be released for a 30 day public comment period followed by an electronic vote for adoption as a new topic volume of the OGC Abstract Specification.
The next OGC TC meetings will be held in Edinburgh, Scotland the last week of June.
Carl Reed
Chief Technical Officer
OGC
INTEROPERABILITY COURSE MATERIALS AVAILABLE TO OGC MEMBERS
The OGC has licensed a set of geospatial interoperability training materials from Global Science & Technology, Inc. (GST). These materials will be of value to member organizations in educating managers and technologists about the need for and implementation of geospatial interoperability.
GST provides technical services and support to worldwide government, industry, and academic clients. The company has produced a set of training materials titled "Geospatial Interoperability for Managers". These materials are now available for use by OGC member organizations on a royalty-free basis, for internal, non-commercial use. The license also allows the OGC to create an updated derivative version of these materials for unrestricted use by all OGC members, and this work is in progress.
OGC members can download the training materials from the OGC portal.
NEWS AND OPINION FROM THE BLOGOSPHERE
Discussions of OGC specifications and interfaces are popping up all over the blogosphere (the world of blogs). A few posts worthy of note follow.
Adena Schutzberg, the editor of this publication, writing at All Points Blog, wondered about the value of offering up data about the recent cyclone in Australia in a non-standard form.
"They are available in 'free Geospatial Session Files (GSFs).' GSFs seem to be a type of 'project file' (in the old ArcView sense, in that it points to servers) used by free Gaia, the company's viewer. Says the website: 'Please note that you'll need version 2.0.5 of the free Gaia geospatial web browser to view these files.' The data were collected from 'online OpenGIS® map servers accessing data from a variety of Australian and U.S. sources.'"
Jody Garnet offers up some insight into his work on GeoServer and Web Feature Service compliance testing.
"Up until this time GeoServer sufficed on a diet of Cite tests which only Chris Holmes managed to reliably run. Fixes involved poking the code, and then pinging an external test suite (called Cite) and asking it to perform 400 odd tests. Wash, rinse, repeat."
Matt Perry, writing at his PerryGeo blog, offers up a top ten of note, his top ten WMS layers.
"After many hours digging through WMS services to find the ones that suite my mapping needs, I've come across a number of gems that I use time and time again. Hopefully this will inspire some others to share their secret stash of WMS servers!"
WEBSITE OF THE MONTH
BeeldBlad
BeeldBlad (Dutch for "image sheet") is a Flash-based Web Mapping Service (WMS) client meant to be embedded in webpages. It was developed and is made available for free by the Space Department of the National Aerospace Laboratory NLR, The Netherlands.
Beeldblad's toolset alongside a bit of a MODIS layer highlighting populated places in South America.
BeeldBlad uses an interface to move WMS layers from a content list to a selected list. That interface hides itself when the user clicks on a map tool, allowing the map to fill the page. Because it's built on Flash the application can run on many different platforms and offers smooth panning and zooming. The developers offer a few samples of the client accessing different servers as well as detailed instructions on embedding the app in a website.
Know of a website that uses OpenGIS specifications to solve a real world problem or demonstrates an interesting use? Drop the adena [at] opengeospatial [dot] org (editor) an e-mail with the details including the URL, organization behind the website, specifications used, technology used and the goal of the website.
IP UPDATE
Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS)
The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) was established and began functioning in 2005. GEO members and participating organizations developed the GEO 2006 Work Plan to implement the previously approved GEOSS 10-Year Implementation Plan. OGC participated in the first GEO Architecture and Data Committee (ADC), March 2 & 3, 2006 that reviewed GEO 2006 Work Plan tasks assigned to the ADC.
OGC's role is to provide input on geospatial interoperability for the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS). OGC will lead one GEO Task using the developments of OGC members in the GEOSS Services Network. A call for OGC members to participate was previously sent to the OGC membership.
The GEOSS Services Network (GSN) is part of OGC Network? as an OGC Interoperability Program initiative. GSN is a persistent network of publicly accessible OpenGIS services for demonstration and research GEOSS interoperability arrangements. Fourteen OGC members are currently participating in GSN. GSN is the basis for OGC demonstrations in a series of workshops led by IEEE: "The User and the GEOSS Architecture." OGC members have volunteered to lead the demos: University of Nottingham in May, George Mason University (GMU) in July, University College of London (UCL) in September and Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in October. OGC members are needed to lead workshops in July and November.
OGC Web Services Phase 3 (OWS-3)
The OWS-3 demo is available as multimedia product on the OGC web site. The movie is now hosted by Google Video to meet the increased requests. DVDs of the movie are available for organizations that need a higher resolution version for presentation to an audience.
OGC Network
The OGC Network website is being redefined and revamped by a team led by Raj Singh. Anticipate more updates and use of OGC Network in the coming weeks and months.
OGC Web Services Phase 4 (OWS-4)
The OWS-4 RFQ/CFP is planned for release in April. Information will be posted on the OWS-4 Initiative page.
NEW MEMBERS
OGC welcomes new members who joined us recently.
ABS Informatica S.L. (Spain)
Associate
National ICT Australia Ltd. (NICTA) (Australia)
Research Institution
Tetra Tech, Inc. (United States)
Associate
US Space and Rocket Center-Geospatial Training and Application Center (United States)
Government
VITO (Flemish Institute for Technological Research) (Belgium)
Research Institute
Western Kentucky University (United States)
University
OGC IN THE NEWS
- OGC in the Press
Government Gets Together on Geospatial Architecture
Sam Bacharach
Directions Magazine
March 22, 3006
GIS specialists should complement Google, Microsoft
March 14, 2006
Report on Geospatial Digital Rights Management Is Now Available (pdf)
March 12, 2006
Geospatial Digital Rights Management
Tina Cary
Geospatial Solutions
March 2006
Time Adds Another Dimension to GML
Ron Lake
GeoWorld
March 2006
- OGC Press Releases
OGC® Requests Public Comment on Sensor Web Enablement Specifications
April 5, 2006
The OGC® invites public comment on candidate Geospatial Digital Rights Management (GeoDRM) Reference Model
April 3, 2006
OGC® Offers Online Multimedia Presentations of Web Services Initiative
March 13, 2006
EVENTS
April 23-26, 2006
Tampa Florida
GITA's Annual Conference 29
May 8-10, 2006
Arlington, VA
GID 2006 ? The Geospatial Cross-Intelligence Conference For Defense
May 25-56, 2006
Orlando, Florida
ISO/TC 211 22th Plenary
CONTACT
Please send comments and suggestions to:
SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE
To subscribe send mail to: newsletter-request [at] opengeospatial [dot] org
with "subscribe" (no quotes) in the subject.
To unsubscribe send mail to: newsletter-request [at] opengeospatial [dot] org
with "unsubscribe" (no quotes) in the subject.
Visit our subscription page
CONTENTS
President's MessageNews From the Huntsville MeetingInteroperability Course Materials Available to OGC MembersNews and Opinion From The BlogosphereWebsite of the MonthDEPARTMENTS:
IP Update, New Members, OGC In The News, Events, Contact, Subscribe/Unsubscribe
Back issues of OGC News are available.
 |
PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
Like many others in our industry, I was saddened to hear that Fritz Petersohn died in March. He was 83.
Fritz was born and raised in Germany, where he studied to become an engineer. He moved to the United States after World War II and eventually settled near Boston. With two colleagues, he founded the Boston-based engineering firm BSC Group Inc. in 1965. A strong education advocate, in 1978 he created the survey engineering program at the University of Maine, which eventually grew into a regional program and a leading center for spatial information science and engineering.
Fritz believed strongly in our industry's potential to help humanity, and he understood that fulfilling this potential requires international cooperation and lifelong education and growth. Because of that conviction, he was an early supporter of the OGC and he was instrumental in convening the first Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) conference in Bonn, Germany, in 1996. Since that time, he steadfastly promoted the GSDI vision and helped fan the spark from that conference into the GSDI Association.
Upon learning of Fritz's passing, I immediately thought of the losses we in the OGC family have suffered recently. Dedicated OGC members John Vincent and Bill Lalonde shared not only their important technical and professional contributions with us, but also their dedication to the importance of our work to the greater social good. Losing colleagues like these is hard, but the memory of them makes us more committed to our best values.
Mark Reichardt
President
OGC
|
NEWS FROM THE HUNTSVILLE MEETING
More than 150 members and invited guests attended the 56th OGC Technical and Planning Committee Meetings in Huntsville, Alabama. Sponsored by Intergraph, the US Space and Rocket Center, and the UAH Geospatial Applications and Training Center, the meetings were considered a success by all. Below are some of the highlights.
The meeting played host to a sensor standards coordination meeting with representatives from the OGC, OASIS, IEEE, and other organizations focused on sensor nets and sensor web enablement.
Brenda Smith, EPA, offered a special presentation on the Geospatial Profile of the Enterprise Architecture. Judith Woodhall, COMCARE, spoke about COMCARE's activities related to the use of standards for emergency services and management.
More than 25 document actions were taken including:
- The GML Simple Features Profile was approved by the members for official release as an adopted OpenGIS® Implementation Specification.
- The candidate specification titled "Web Processing Service" was approved for electronic vote for adoption as version 0.
- The Sensor Observation Service, Sensor Planning Service, TransducerML, and SensorML candidate specifications were approved for release for a 30 day public comment period.
- The document "Catalogue Service - Best Practices for Earth Observation" was approved for release as an OGC Best Practices document.
- The draft Geospatial Digital Rights Management Reference Model (GeoDRM RM) was approved to be released for a 30 day public comment period followed by an electronic vote for adoption as a new topic volume of the OGC Abstract Specification.
The next OGC TC meetings will be held in Edinburgh, Scotland the last week of June.
Carl Reed
Chief Technical Officer
OGC
|
INTEROPERABILITY COURSE MATERIALS AVAILABLE TO OGC MEMBERS
The OGC has licensed a set of geospatial interoperability training materials from Global Science & Technology, Inc. (GST). These materials will be of value to member organizations in educating managers and technologists about the need for and implementation of geospatial interoperability.
GST provides technical services and support to worldwide government, industry, and academic clients. The company has produced a set of training materials titled "Geospatial Interoperability for Managers". These materials are now available for use by OGC member organizations on a royalty-free basis, for internal, non-commercial use. The license also allows the OGC to create an updated derivative version of these materials for unrestricted use by all OGC members, and this work is in progress.
OGC members can download the training materials from the OGC portal.
|
NEWS AND OPINION FROM THE BLOGOSPHERE
Discussions of OGC specifications and interfaces are popping up all over the blogosphere (the world of blogs). A few posts worthy of note follow.
Adena Schutzberg, the editor of this publication, writing at All Points Blog, wondered about the value of offering up data about the recent cyclone in Australia in a non-standard form.
"They are available in 'free Geospatial Session Files (GSFs).' GSFs seem to be a type of 'project file' (in the old ArcView sense, in that it points to servers) used by free Gaia, the company's viewer. Says the website: 'Please note that you'll need version 2.0.5 of the free Gaia geospatial web browser to view these files.' The data were collected from 'online OpenGIS® map servers accessing data from a variety of Australian and U.S. sources.'"
Jody Garnet offers up some insight into his work on GeoServer and Web Feature Service compliance testing.
"Up until this time GeoServer sufficed on a diet of Cite tests which only Chris Holmes managed to reliably run. Fixes involved poking the code, and then pinging an external test suite (called Cite) and asking it to perform 400 odd tests. Wash, rinse, repeat."
Matt Perry, writing at his PerryGeo blog, offers up a top ten of note, his top ten WMS layers.
"After many hours digging through WMS services to find the ones that suite my mapping needs, I've come across a number of gems that I use time and time again. Hopefully this will inspire some others to share their secret stash of WMS servers!"
|
WEBSITE OF THE MONTH
BeeldBlad
BeeldBlad (Dutch for "image sheet") is a Flash-based Web Mapping Service (WMS) client meant to be embedded in webpages. It was developed and is made available for free by the Space Department of the National Aerospace Laboratory NLR, The Netherlands.
Beeldblad's toolset alongside a bit of a MODIS layer highlighting populated places in South America.
Know of a website that uses OpenGIS specifications to solve a real world problem or demonstrates an interesting use? Drop the adena [at] opengeospatial [dot] org (editor) an e-mail with the details including the URL, organization behind the website, specifications used, technology used and the goal of the website.
|
IP UPDATE
Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS)
The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) was established and began functioning in 2005. GEO members and participating organizations developed the GEO 2006 Work Plan to implement the previously approved GEOSS 10-Year Implementation Plan. OGC participated in the first GEO Architecture and Data Committee (ADC), March 2 & 3, 2006 that reviewed GEO 2006 Work Plan tasks assigned to the ADC.
OGC's role is to provide input on geospatial interoperability for the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS). OGC will lead one GEO Task using the developments of OGC members in the GEOSS Services Network. A call for OGC members to participate was previously sent to the OGC membership.
The GEOSS Services Network (GSN) is part of OGC Network? as an OGC Interoperability Program initiative. GSN is a persistent network of publicly accessible OpenGIS services for demonstration and research GEOSS interoperability arrangements. Fourteen OGC members are currently participating in GSN. GSN is the basis for OGC demonstrations in a series of workshops led by IEEE: "The User and the GEOSS Architecture." OGC members have volunteered to lead the demos: University of Nottingham in May, George Mason University (GMU) in July, University College of London (UCL) in September and Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in October. OGC members are needed to lead workshops in July and November.
OGC Web Services Phase 3 (OWS-3)
The OWS-3 demo is available as multimedia product on the OGC web site. The movie is now hosted by Google Video to meet the increased requests. DVDs of the movie are available for organizations that need a higher resolution version for presentation to an audience.
OGC Network
The OGC Network website is being redefined and revamped by a team led by Raj Singh. Anticipate more updates and use of OGC Network in the coming weeks and months.
OGC Web Services Phase 4 (OWS-4)
The OWS-4 RFQ/CFP is planned for release in April. Information will be posted on the OWS-4 Initiative page.
|
NEW MEMBERS
OGC welcomes new members who joined us recently.
ABS Informatica S.L. (Spain)
Associate
National ICT Australia Ltd. (NICTA) (Australia)
Research Institution
Tetra Tech, Inc. (United States)
Associate
US Space and Rocket Center-Geospatial Training and Application Center (United States)
Government
VITO (Flemish Institute for Technological Research) (Belgium)
Research Institute
Western Kentucky University (United States)
University
|
OGC IN THE NEWS
- OGC in the Press
Government Gets Together on Geospatial Architecture
Sam Bacharach
Directions Magazine
March 22, 3006
GIS specialists should complement Google, Microsoft
March 14, 2006
Report on Geospatial Digital Rights Management Is Now Available (pdf)
March 12, 2006
Geospatial Digital Rights Management
Tina Cary
Geospatial Solutions
March 2006
Time Adds Another Dimension to GML
Ron Lake
GeoWorld
March 2006
- OGC Press Releases
OGC® Requests Public Comment on Sensor Web Enablement Specifications
April 5, 2006
The OGC® invites public comment on candidate Geospatial Digital Rights Management (GeoDRM) Reference Model
April 3, 2006
OGC® Offers Online Multimedia Presentations of Web Services Initiative
March 13, 2006
|
EVENTS
April 23-26, 2006
Tampa Florida
GITA's Annual Conference 29
May 8-10, 2006
Arlington, VA
GID 2006 ? The Geospatial Cross-Intelligence Conference For Defense
May 25-56, 2006
Orlando, Florida
ISO/TC 211 22th Plenary
June18-21, 2006
Ottawa, Canada
GeoTec Event
June 21-23, 2006
Innsbruck, Austria
12th EC GI & GIS Workshop
June 26-30
Edinburgh, Scotland
OGC Technical and Planning Committee Meetings
July 24-28, 2006
Vancouver, Canada
GeoWeb 2006
For further info on events please contact gbuehler [at] opengeospatial [dot] org (Greg Buehler).
|
CONTACT
Please send comments and suggestions to:
adena [at] opengeospatial [dot] org (Adena Schutzberg)
Editor, OGC News
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.
35 Main Street Suite 5
Wayland MA 01778-5037
USA Phone: +1 508 655 5858
Fax: +1 508 655 2237
|
SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE
To subscribe send mail to: newsletter-request [at] opengeospatial [dot] org
with "subscribe" (no quotes) in the subject.
To unsubscribe send mail to: newsletter-request [at] opengeospatial [dot] org
with "unsubscribe" (no quotes) in the subject.
Visit our subscription page
|
Copyright 2006 by the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.
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