OGC Press Releases

 2 May 2013 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) and the OpenMI Association (OA) have announced a call for public comment on the Open Modelling Interface Version 2 (OpenMI) and its accompanying reference manual. This standard defines a means by which independently developed computer models of environmental processes, or indeed any processes, can exchange data as they run and hence facilitates the modelling of interacting processes.

The original driver for the standard was the European Water Framework Directive and its requirement for an integrated approach to water management. It was foreseen that implementing the Directive would be very challenging and that there would be a need to provide help, in the form of decision support systems (DSS), to environmental managers. As Earth systems are complex and interrelated, these DSS would need to bring together many models in order to better understand and predict the environmental impacts of events and policies. To make it feasible to link together models of different processes from different suppliers and hence simulate process interaction, the European Commission therefore co-funded the research and development of a generic model interface, the outcome of which is the OpenMI.

Roger Moore, chairman of the OpenMI Association, said, “The OpenMI Association sees huge opportunities ahead for many stakeholder groups if the linking of models of different processes as they run can be made simple and reliable. Our immediate goal is to facilitate the integrated modelling needed to understand Earth system processes and hence help scientists, policy makers and managers find sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. By publishing the OpenMI as an adopted OGC standard, we seek to make the OpenMI standard available and accessible to the worldwide modelling community.”

Environmental modelling is not the only application of integrated modelling. For example, a possible shorter term application will simply be in enabling developers to convert their existing large, and often unmanageable, applications into sets of linkable components. This could change the modelling market from one for complete systems into one for components and services. It could make it much easier for products to be brought to market, widen participation and dramatically drive up the rate of innovation.

The documents being released for comment have been specially prepared so that the description of the OpenMI matches the OGC style. They can be viewed and downloaded at http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/101. Comments are due by June 1 2013. More information is available on the OpenMI website at www.openmi.org.

“Progress toward a sustainable future depends on our improved understanding of Earth systems and our collective ability to act from the local to global levels," said Mark Reichardt, President and CEO of the OGC. This partnership with OpenMI enables our organizations to work more closely to assure that open standards-based  modelling capabilities can be seamlessly and rapidly integrated into processing environments." 

The OpenMI Association is an entirely open not-for-profit international group of organizations and people dedicated to taking the OpenMI (Open Modelling Interface) forward into the future. Its primary objectives are to develop, maintain and promote the OpenMI and integrated modelling. Learn more about the OpenMI Association at http://www.openmi.org.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 475 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, sensors and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.

10 April 2013 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) announces the OGC Student Map App Challenge, sponsored by Google, an OGC Principal Member. The Student Map App Challenge is a contest for students who have programming skills and an interest in maps and location services. 

Open standards from the OGC unlock the potential of the "spatial Web," creating opportunities for app developers to make all kinds of location information available to users, independent of platform. The OGC has launched the Student Map App Challenge to make entrepreneurial students aware of the enormous social and commercial potential of these open standards.

Three winning applicants will receive an OGC Student Map App Challenge Award and the opportunity to have their apps featured on the OGC website and in other media channels. The first place winner will:

• Receive the award at their choice of the next year's OGC Technical Committee meetings (http://www.opengeospatial.org/event?category=ogctcpc), held quarterly in cities around the world. OGC will pay for travel, accommodations and meals.
• Receive a Nexus Tablet donated by Google.
• Receive a two-year OGC membership for the student's academic institution
• Have a dedicated award page on the OGC website and be cited in an OGC press release.

Applicants and their apps will receive the attention of the OGC's 480 public sector and private sector members – government organizations, NGOs, corporations and universities around the world.

Apps can make use of hundreds of public and private sector map data sources that are accessible through server-side implementations of OGC standards. These include weather, navigation, demographics, sensors, webcams, commercial establishments, hydrology, bird counts, accident statistics and many other kinds of data. The OGC Student Map App Challenge page provides search tools that can be used to find these existing OGC service instances. Most of these have no restrictions or few restrictions on their use, and thus they provide countless opportunities for mapping apps and location service apps.

Students don't need to rely on others' data, however. Sources of spatial data that are not now accessible through OGC's open interfaces and encodings can be made accessible by students who develop server interfaces as well as client apps.

Students must register by 15 June 2013 and submit their apps by 15 July 2013. Contestants and the public will be notified of the results on 30 August 2013.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 480 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.

8 April 2013. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) recently held its biennial election of directors. Of the 18 elected members of the consortium’s 2010-2012 Board of Directors, 15 serving members were re-elected and three new members have been seated. The new OGC board members are Christopher Holmes, Walter Scott and Geoff Zeiss.

Chris Holmes is the Chairman and Founder of OpenGeo, a social enterprise that builds web-based geospatial technology. Chris is a Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association (GSDI) Board Member, an Open Internet Tools Steering Committee Member, and the Chairman of the Project Steering Committee of GeoServer. He has given keynote addresses at geospatial and open source conferences around the world. Chris is a Stanford graduate and a 2005 Fulbright Scholar.

Dr. Walter S Scott is Executive Vice President and Chief Technical Officer of DigitalGlobe, which he founded in 1992. Dr. Scott is responsible for the development of its spaceborne imaging systems, US Government strategy, leadership of DG Labs (DigitalGlobe’s R&D efforts), and technical oversight for engineering and technology across DigitalGlobe. He has been responsible for a number of industry “firsts” in commercial and defense related Earth imaging. A member of the National Research Council Committee on Implementation of a Sustained Land Imaging Program, Dr. Scott is also on the Committee on Earth Science and Applications from Space (CESAS) and was a member of the Committee on Earth Studies in 1997-98.

Geoff Zeiss, Ph.D., is Principal at Between the Poles, a thought leadership consulting firm. Geoff has more than 20 years experience in the geospatial industry and 15 years experience working in enterprise geospatial infrastructure management with some of the largest utilities and communications organizations in the US and around the world, primarily as Director Utility Industry Program, Autodesk, Inc. Geoff has served on the boards of directors of the Geospatial Information & Technology Association (GITA US), Geospatial Industry Association of Canada (GIAC) and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGEO). He has participated on the Public Advisory Committee for the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI), and supported open standards through several organizations, including the OGC, in which he represented Autodesk at Technical Committee meetings. Geoff is a frequent speaker at major geospatial industry events around the world.

Returning to the OGC board are: Philippe Delclaux, Steve Hagan, Jeffrey Harris, Mike Jackson, Michael Jones, Sanjay Kumar, Vanessa Lawrence, Jacqueline McGlade, Jack Pellicci, Jeff Peters, Kevin Pomfret, Francois Robida, Velu Sinha, Christopher Tucker, and Rob van de Velde.

Two OGC staff members, Jeff Burnett and Mark Reichardt, are members of the Board by appointment.

Jeffrey Harris, Chairman of the OGC Board of Directors, said, “We are delighted that Walter Scott, Geoff Zeiss and Chris Holmes have joined our Board. Their expertise and comprehensive understanding of geospatial technologies will allow the OGC Board to anticipate and address the needs of the consortium in this dynamic, global, interoperable marketplace.  It's important for our Board to have intimate knowledge about the markets we serve. We look forward to Chris, Walter and Geoff’s leadership as members of the OGC Board.”

The OGC Board and staff thank Dr. John Curlander and John Olesak for their valuable service as they depart the Board. The Board and staff and the whole OGC community mourn the passing of Board member Stefano Morisi, who died 13 January 2013.

About the OGC

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 480 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.

5 April 2013 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) announced a call for public comment on the OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS) Coordinate Reference System (CRS) Extension Standard. 

WCS defines an open standard interface to easily access multi-dimensional, spatio-temporal coverages, such as sensor data, satellite imagery, image time series, simulation data, point clouds, and meshes.

The OGC WCS CRS Extension defines an extension to the WCS Core that enables requests to specify that coverages be returned in one of a number of different Coordinate Reference Systems. While the WCS Core defines access only in the coverage’s Native CRS (i.e., the one in which the coverage is stored on the server), the WCS CRS Extension defines how to request and obtain a coverage in a CRS different from the Native CRS. This flexibility is important, for example, in exchanging data between different environments.

The OGC WCS CRS Extension is free and can be downloaded from the OGC Request for Comment page at http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/100.

The OGC WCS Standards Working Group will consider all comments when preparing a final draft of the candidate standard. The comment period ends 5 May 2013.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 480 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.

25 March 2013 – The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) announced the establishment of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Forum during the 84^th Technical and Planning Committee meetings held in March 2013 in Abu Dhabi last week, hosted by the United Arab Emirates Ministry of the Interior.  

The MENA Forum will provide a platform for members to collaborate and meet the OGC outreach and education needs of government, academic, research and industry organizations in the region. In response to the growing interest and use of OGC standards throughout the region, the Ministry of the Interior hosted the OGC TC PC meetings to connect the existing OGC community to the region and to broaden awareness of the OGC within the Middle East. This is the first time the OGC Technical and Planning Committee meetings have been held in the Middle East. 

The Law Enforcement and Public Safety Domain Working Group, Emergency and Disaster Management Domain Working Group and other OGC groups met in Abu Dhabi to discuss geospatial interoperability issues of regional and international importance. These issues include not only security and public safety, but also issues such as water resource management, urban planning and "Smart Cities". A special Civil Summit was held during the week in partnership with buildingSMART International at which participants discussed new opportunities to improve information sharing between stakeholders in the civil engineering, geospatial and building information domains.

"Middle East involvement in the OGC's international process is important for a number of reasons," explained Mark Reichardt, President of the OGC. "The OGC provides essential technical infrastructure for sharing location information, and our open process brings together important players from many different nations and professional domains. Our process focuses on using shared requirements to drive innovation and lower the barriers to information sharing. Our members – technology users and technology providers – have a shared interest in making our process a truly global process in which all regions advance by leveraging lessons learned and solutions developed in other regions." 

 
The OGC is an international consortium of more than 480 companies, government agencies, research organizations and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, mainstream IT, and wireless and location-based services. OGC standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.

22 March 2013 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) announced that it will demonstrate the results of the OGC Climate-Hydrologic Information Sharing Pilot, Phase 1 (CHISP-1) at a webinar to be held from 11:00 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, April 16, 2013. The public is invited to register for the webinar. After the webinar, detailed CHISP-1 Engineering Reports will be made available to the public on the OGC Public Engineering Report website.

CHISP-1 is prototyping an innovative inter-disciplinary, inter-agency and international virtual observatory system for publishing water resources information collected from observations and forecasts in the U.S. and Canada, building on current networks and capabilities. CHISP-1 is designed to support:

-- Hydrologic modeling for historical and current stream flow and groundwater conditions. This requires the integration of trans-boundary stream flow and groundwater well data from the Canadian Groundwater Information Network and the US National Groundwater Monitoring Network, as well as national river network data from multiple agencies, including the US National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) and the Canadian National Hydrology Network (NHN). The demo focuses on cross-border communication about Souris River and Milk River water levels. The emphasis is on time series data and real-time flood monitoring.

-- Modeling and assessment of nutrient load into the Great Lakes. This requires accessing water-quality data from multiple agencies and integrating the data with stream flow information for calculating loads. The emphasis is on discrete sampled water quality observations, linking those to specific NHD stream reaches and catchments, and additional metadata for sampled data.

CHISP-1 demonstrates how adherence to open service interface and encoding standards from the OGC in proprietary and open source software makes it possible to link hydrologic observations data to the stream network, enabling queries of conditions upstream from a given location to return data from all relevant gages and well locations. This has previously not been practical with the diverse data sources available.

CHISP-1 also provides a model approach for bridging differences in semantics across information models and processes used by various data producers, to improve hydrologic and water quality modeling capabilities.

The following organizations sponsored CHISP-1:

• GeoConnections (Natural Resources Canada)
• US Geological Survey (USGS)
• US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

The following participants provided standards-based technology solutions:

• Explorus Data Solutions Inc., Calgary, Alberta, Canada
• Geographic Information System Research Center, Feng Chia University (GIS.FCU), Taichung, Chinese Taipei
• Natural Resources Canada
• RPS-ASA, South Kingstown, Rhode Island USA

Data and web services were provided by Environment Canada, the EPA, Natural Resources Canada and USGS.

OGC testbeds, pilot projects and interoperability experiments are part of the OGC Interoperability Program, a global, hands-on collaborative prototyping program designed to rapidly develop, test and deliver proven candidate spatial encoding and interface standards into the OGC Standards Program, where they are formalized for release as adopted OGC Standards.

The CHISP-1 Demo Webinar is being produced in cooperation with Directions Media.


The OGC is an international consortium of more than 480 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services and mainstream IT. OGC standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact. 

20 March 2013. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) requests implementations of the following OGC standards to be used in validating beta compliance tests: 

The OGC Compliance Program provides an online free testing facility, a process for certification and branding of OGC compliant products, and coordination of a vibrant community that develops and supports test scripts. Organizations that want to verify their implementations of OGC standards or that are seeking OGC certification use the compliance tests available in the testing facility. Before the tests are made available to the public, however, they must be validated against implementations. The beta testing web site and the CITE Roadmap provide more details about the tests that are currently in beta. 

Submitters of the first three implementations to pass the test for a particular standard, while the test is in beta, will have their trademark license fees waived for one year. This applies to both proprietary and open source implementations. Organizations are encouraged to offer their implementations as reference implementations. A reference implementation is software that exemplifies proper implementation of a standard and is free and publicly available for testing via a web service or download.

Developers must register their intent to submit implementations by 16 April 2013. OGC expects the implementations and new revisions of the tests to be ready by May 2013.

For more information about this opportunity, please contact: Luis Bermudez, OGC Director of Interoperability Certification, lbermudez AT opengeospatial.org.

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 480 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact/.

20 March 2013 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) has adopted as an official OGC Best Practice a document titled, "OGC EO Product Collection, Service and Sensor Discovery using the CS-W ebRIM Catalogue."

This OGC Best Practices Document describes the relations that exist between several metadata conceptual models: Earth Observation (EO) Product, EO Product Collections, Sensors and Services. Specification of the linking between artifacts of these types is important for the process of cataloguing and discovering those artifacts.

CSW, or "Catalog Service – Web," is one profile of the OGC Catalog Service Standard, which defines common interfaces to discover, browse, and query metadata about data, services, and other resources. Electronic Business using eXtensible Markup Language, or ebXML, is a family of XML based standards sponsored by OASIS and UN/CEFACT providing an open infrastructure that enables global use of electronic business information in an interoperable, secure, and consistent manner. ebRIM is the accompanying electronic business Registry Information Model. 

During the Heterogeneous Missions Accessibility (HMA) series of projects managed by the European Space Agency (ESA), the HMA stakeholders defined a minimal set of metadata elements that are required to describe a collection of EO products. The stakeholders also defined a minimal set of metadata elements required to describe the different Web service instances that are being deployed throughout the Ground Segments of the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) Contributing Missions. These Web services include catalogue services for discovery of EO products, EO product collections and EO services, ordering services, feasibility analysis, Web map services and Web coverage services. This OGC Best Practice is a result of their efforts and discussions about these issues among the OGC membership. The document was finalized in the ESA General Support Technology Programme (GSTP) "Semantic-Web for Mediated Access Across Domains" (SMAAD) project.

The OGC EO Product Collection, Service and Sensor Discovery using the CS-W ebRIM Catalogue document is available and free to the public at http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/bp. 

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 480 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.

March 2013. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) Land Development Domain Working Group in partnership with buildingSMART International http://www.buildingsmart.org/ will host the inaugural Civil Summit as part of the OGC Technical and Planning Committee meeting in Abu Dhabi. The Summit will be held Monday, 18 March 2013, 08:00 – 17:00.


This event will focus on the current need and future opportunities for open standards in Civil and Land Development. Representatives from buildingSMART International and buildingSMART Middle East Chapter will be providing an update from their USA meeting being held 12 March in Waltham and activities in the Middle East.

Recent years have seen a significant increase in demand for interoperability between Spatial, Civil and BIM in daily workflows. The aim of this industry gathering is to facilitate open discussion and actions for future development. Participants from industry-leading organizations around the world will engage in interactive discussions, lightning talks, and inspiring presentations. This event is free and open to all who would like to participate.

Join the conversation! This one-day Civil Summit is the best opportunity in 2013 to engage in Civil and Land Development standards.

Call for Presentations

We are seeking presentations on: existing workflows (what is working – what can be improved) from the viewpoint of civil engineers, from a BIM perspective, Planning and Operations, Policy and Law (Government), software vendors and more are welcome. What are the emerging best practices for data and services interoperability? Who is leading the way with technical innovation and market adoption? What is happening with LandXML? If you would like to present please make your submission no later than 12th March to Bart De Lathouwer at bdelathouwer [at] opengeospatial [dot] org.

Agenda

Draft Agenda can be found here.RegistrationPlease register via this link.This registration is for the Civil Summit only. If you are attending the OGC Technical and Planning Committee meetings you will need to register separately via the OGC website.

Key Dates

12 March 2013: Submissions for Presentations
18 March 2013: Civil Summit 2013

Venue

The summit will be held on Monday, March 18, 2013 in Abu Dhabi, UAE in conjunction with the OGC Technical Committee Meeting. For details on venue and accommodation information please check the Abu Dhabi Technical Committee information page on the OGC website: http://www.opengeospatial.org/event/1303tc.

Contact

Program organizers: Scott Simmons, CACI and OGC 3DIM  and Bart De Lathouwer, OGC

4 March 2013. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) announced the formation of a new OGC Technical Committee Standards Working Group (SWG). The purpose of this SWG is to progress the GeoSciML data model and application schema for geoscience information interchange to the state of an adopted OGC standard. The OGC members convening this group invite the public to comment on the GeoSciML 4.0 SWG charter (https://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=51418) and will consider comments received before 8 April 2013.

 The SWG will consist of interested parties from geological surveys, academic institutions, and commercial and government organizations that utilize geoscience information.

Beginning in 2003, GeoSciML development began under the auspices of the Interoperability Working Group of the Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information, a commission of the International Union of Geological Sciences.

To improve the ability to query and exchange digital geoscientific information between data providers and users, GeoSciML defines, not a database structure, but rather a format for geoscience data interchange. Organizations can provide a GeoSciML interface to their existing data base systems, with no restructuring of internal databases. The originators of GeoSciML first developed a common conceptual data model, to which data held in existing databases can be mapped. GeoSciML identifies the objects being described (e.g. ‘geological faults’), their properties (e.g. ‘displacement’) and the relations between objects (e.g. ‘faults are a type of Geologic Structure’) in a model that was developed using Universal Modeling Language (UML), an ISO standard. From this model, the GeoSciML data encoding was developed based on the OGC Geography Markup Language (GML – ISO DIS 19136) Encoding Standard for representation of features and geometry, and also the OGC Observations and Measurements Encoding Standard for observational data.

At present the scope is limited to the types of information generally shown on geological maps, along with boreholes and field observations.

Future enhancements to the GeoSciML 4.0 Encoding standard will allow OWS to support provisioning of GeoSciML 4.0s throughout an enterprise or information community.

The conveners of the GeoSciML SWG are Oliver Raymond of Geoscience Australia and Stephen Richard of the Arizona Geological Survey. 

The following people support this proposal and are committed to the Charter and projected meeting schedule. Others may join this list before the SWG is officially chartered, these members are known as SWG Founding or Charter members:

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 485 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.