OGC Press Releases

Wayland, MA, 28 July 2010. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) recently concluded the OGC Web Services, Phase 7 (OWS-7) Testbed initiative. Interoperability architectures, enhancements to existing OGC standards, and candidate standards developed in the testbed for sensors, video change detection, database synchronization, information cataloguing, web processing services, event architecture and aviation will be presented in a 2 hour webinar. The webinar will start at 10:00 pm US EDT on August 19, 2010 for the Asia/Australia time zones, and at 10:00 am US EDT on September 8, 2010 for the North America/Europe time zones. For information and registration, see http://www.opengeospatial.org/event/ows7webinars .

The OGC has also issued a call for sponsors for the upcoming OGC Web Services, Phase 8 (OWS-8) Testbed. OWS-8 will build on OWS-7 and explore new requirements in areas such as data fusion, augmented reality, cloud computing, security architecture, aeronautical information systems, and compliance testing. Activities will address interoperability in emergency management, homeland security, defense, Earth observation, transport, logistics, e-commerce and other domains.

Potential sponsors are invited to a planning meeting on 12 August 2010 in the Washington, DC area to review OGC standards, discuss OWS-7 results and document OWS-8 requirements. Attendance does not constitute a commitment to sponsor OWS-8. Sponsor and participant commitment will be solicited in a subsequent Request for Quotation / Call for Participation (RFQ/CFP).

The OGC is also seeking partnerships with other Standards Development Organizations to develop sponsorship of the OWS-8 Testbed.

If your organization is interested in this initiative, contact David Arctur at darctur [at] opengeospatial [dot] org or George Percivall at gpercivall [at] opengeospatial [dot] org.

OGC testbeds, pilot projects and interoperability experiments are part of OGC's Interoperability Program, a global, hands-on collaborative prototyping program designed to rapidly develop, test and deliver proven candidate specifications into OGC's Specification Program, where they are formalized for public release.

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 395 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/.

Wayland, MA, 28 July 2010. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) recently concluded the OGC Web Services, Phase 7 (OWS-7) Testbed initiative. Interoperability architectures, enhancements to existing OGC standards, and candidate standards developed in the testbed for sensors, video change detection, database synchronization, information cataloguing, web processing services, event architecture and aviation will be presented in a 2 hour webinar. The webinar will start at 10:00 pm US EDT on August 19, 2010 for the Asia/Australia time zones, and at 10:00 am US EDT on September 8, 2010 for the North America/Europe time zones. For information and registration, see http://www.opengeospatial.org/event/ows7webinars .

The OGC has also issued a call for sponsors for the upcoming OGC Web Services, Phase 8 (OWS-8) Testbed. OWS-8 will build on OWS-7 and explore new requirements in areas such as data fusion, augmented reality, cloud computing, security architecture, aeronautical information systems, and compliance testing. Activities will address interoperability in emergency management, homeland security, defense, Earth observation, transport, logistics, e-commerce and other domains.

Potential sponsors are invited to a planning meeting on 12 August 2010 in the Washington, DC area to review OGC standards, discuss OWS-7 results and document OWS-8 requirements. Attendance does not constitute a commitment to sponsor OWS-8. Sponsor and participant commitment will be solicited in a subsequent Request for Quotation / Call for Participation (RFQ/CFP).

The OGC is also seeking partnerships with other Standards Development Organizations to develop sponsorship of the OWS-8 Testbed.

If your organization is interested in this initiative, contact David Arctur at darctur [at] opengeospatial [dot] org or George Percivall at gpercivall [at] opengeospatial [dot] org.

OGC testbeds, pilot projects and interoperability experiments are part of OGC's Interoperability Program, a global, hands-on collaborative prototyping program designed to rapidly develop, test and deliver proven candidate specifications into OGC's Specification Program, where they are formalized for public release.

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 395 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/.

27 July 2010.  The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) will develop conforming documentation for key OGC standards and geospatial open source application descriptions. Both sets of documentation will be available online and on the OSGeo-Live DVD, to be released at the international conference for Free and Open Source Software, FOSS4G, in September 2010 in Barcelona, Spain (http://2010.foss4g.org).

"We are happy to work with OSGeo to meet the needs of open source developers," explained Steven Ramage, Executive Director, Marketing and Communications, OGC, "because wider use of OGC standards increases interoperability, innovation and market growth, and this benefits developers and users of both open source and proprietary software."

According to Cameron Shorter, coordinator of the OSGeo-Live project, "OGC standards underpin our geospatial Open Source applications, and hence OGC this support from the OGC will greatly enhance the Open Source documentation being developed."

About OSGeo-Live

OSGeo-Live is a DVD, USB drive and Virtual Machine based upon Ubuntu Linux that is pre-configured with a wide variety of robust, open source, geospatial software. The applications can be trialed without installing anything on your computer, simply by booting the computer from the DVD or USB drive. OSGeo Live is handed out at conferences around the world, and is regularly used by students in geospatial workshops and tutorials.

About OSGeo

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation, or OSGeo (http://www.osgeo.org/), is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data.

About the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®)

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 395 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.

Wayland, Mass., 23 July, 2010 - The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC®) is seeking public comment on a Geography Markup Language (GML) XML encoding for describing the characteristics of a moving object, such as a GPS enabled car. This candidate standard provides a way of describing in simple terms the motion of an object, such as a car driving through city streets or a person walking in a park.

This candidate standard fills a need for "lightweight" packets of tracking information, such as direction and velocity that can be communicated between diverse platforms and applications supporting mobile location-aware devices. The GML encoding used in this candidate standard is compatible with a wide range of other standard encodings used in other communities, such as emergency services.

The candidate standard and information on submitting comments on this document are available at
http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/69.
The public comment period closes on August 23rd, 2010.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 395 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/.

July 20, 2010, Wayland, Massachusetts. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC(R)) announces the formation of an Open GeoSMS Standards Working Group (SWG) (http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/geosmsswg). The Open GeoSMS SWG will advance the OGC Candidate Open GeoSMS Standard (http://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=36261) as an OGC adopted standard. The GeoSMS candidate standard is currently an OGC “Discussion Paper”.

The candidate Open GeoSMS standard defines a short messaging service (SMS) encoding to exchange lightweight location information between different mobile devices or applications. Currently such devices or applications are often unable to share location information with each other because of technical incompatibilities between systems used by different device and platform vendors. This causes problems for users and imposes obstacles to industry growth. The GeoSMS encoding for location is compatible with other OGC standards, such as those for sensor webs and earth imaging. It is also compatible with standards such as the OASIS Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) standard and the IETF RFC Presence Information Data Format Location Object (PIDF-LO). The OGC works with OASIS, IETF and many other standards development organizations to make geospatial information and services an integral and fluid part of the world’s information infrastructure.

 The OGC is an international consortium of more than 395 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. 

Wayland, MA, July 1, 2010. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) (http://www.opengeospatial.org ) announced that the GIS Research Center, Feng Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan (GIS.FCU) has become a Principal Member of the OGC.

Principal Members evaluate and provide guidance on market direction and Consortium focus, and have oversight over the development, release and adoption of OGC standards through their voting rights in the OGC Planning Committee (PC).

GIS.FCU has been an active participant in the OGC since 2003 and has contributed to the development of OGC standards, interoperability initiatives and compliance tests. By the terms of the company's Principal Membership memorandum of understanding with the OGC, GIS.FCU will provide significant technical resources to support the OGC's Compliance Testing and Certification Program.

Mark Reichardt, President and CEO, OGC, said, "We are delighted that the GIS Research Center has joined OGC at the Principal level, and we are excited to receive their commitment of substantial resources and staff expertise to advance compliance tests for OGC's Sensor Web Enablement standards."

Prof. Tien-Yin (Jimmy) Chou, Director at GIS.FCU, said "The GIS Research Center at Feng Chia University (GIS.FCU) has dedicated R&D resources to OGC standard based applications in environmental monitoring for several years with fruitful results, and it is GIS.FCU's honor to have this opportunity to set up the first OGC Compliance Testing and Certification Center outside America or Europe and to join in international and interdisciplinary cooperation as one of the Principal Members of OGC."

About GIS.FCU

The GIS Research Center at Feng Chia University is an important domestic research institute in Taiwan that links geographic information resource systems with global positioning systems and satellite remote sensing technologies. These are used with digital, mobile and visualization techniques to address important environmental issues. Visit the GIS.FCU website at http://www.gis.tw/En/Introduction/ .

About OGC

The OGC(R) is an international consortium of more than 395 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OpenGIS® Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org .

Wayland, MA, June 16, 2010. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) (http://www.opengeospatial.org ) and AGISEE, the Association for Geospatial Information in South-East Europe (http://www.agisee.org) announced that they have established a cooperative relationship to promote the importance of open standards in the development of spatial data infrastructures and raise the awareness of interoperability in South-East Europe.

The ultimate goals of the relationship are to create a group of people who will advance innovation and use of standards in the geospatial domain and to present the interest and requirements of this South-East Europe group to international standardisation efforts.

The two organizations encourage interested persons to join a new mailing list that has been created to:
1. Inform members of the mailing list about issues of standardisation in the geospatial domain and related domains;
2. Inform members about new standards developments, innovations and implementations;
3. Provide a forum for the exchange of information and experience.

Interested people are invited to open the following link and register to the mailing list:
https://lists.opengeospatial.org/mailman/listinfo/agisee.forum . The mailing list will be mainly in English to enable participation from all countries in the region, but posts in national languages such as Bulgarian are nevertheless welcome.

Interested people are also invited to a workshop on Spatial Data Infrastructures on 16 June 2010 in Nessebar, Bulgaria, as part of the International Conference for
Cartography and GIS (ICCG3) (http://www.cartography-gis.com ). The workshop aims at informing participants about: requirements for geographic information systems and spatial data infrastructures, the benefits of standards and involvement in standards processes, and practical examples that show what can be accomplished.

See http://www.agisee.org/sdiwsbg.php for more details. You will be welcome at this workshop and we are looking forward to meeting you there.

The Association for Geospatial Information in South-East Europe (AGISEE) (http://www.opengeospatial.org ) promotes geospatial data use and Spatial Data Infrastructures in South-East Europe. AGISEE is a non-for-profit organization which supports the needs of all groups in South-East Europe for access to, sharing and use of geospatial information (GI). To this end, AGISEE works towards the development of an infrastructure that will allow users globally and inter-regionally to access spatial data at a variety of scales from multiple sources that will ultimately appear seamless to the user.

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 395 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OpenGIS® 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/.

Wayland, MA, June 2, 2010. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) ( http://www.opengeospatial.org ) announced that lat/lon ( http://www.lat-lon.de ) has become a Principal Member of the OGC.

Principal Members evaluate and provide guidance on market direction and Consortium focus, and have authority over the development, release and adoption of OGC standards through their voting rights in the OGC Planning Committee (PC).

lat/lon has been active participant in the OGC since the company's founding and has contributed to the development of numerous OGC standards and compliance tests. By the terms of the company's Principal Membership memorandum of understanding with the OGC, lat/lon will provide significant resources to support the OGC's Compliance Testing and Certification Program.

Athina Trakas, OGC's Director, European Services, said, "lat/lon's move to Principal Membership in the OGC reflects their understanding of the importance of OGC knowledge and participation in meeting the business needs of the community. Their success is also a reflection of how Germany and Europe have committed to interoperability based on open standards."

Dr. Christian Kiehle, lat/lon's technical OGC representative, sees the commitment to standardization and compliance as an important milestone: "OGC standards have become the backbone of many productive spatial information systems. lat/lon is very happy that our long-term contribution to OGC's CITE initiative has laid the foundation for this promising collaboration."

About lat/lon

lat/lon GmbH is a Germany-based consulting and software engineering company founded in 2000 focused on Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), geospatial IT standards and Open Source software. lat/lon is the main developer of the deegree project ( http://deegree.org/ ), the most substantial implementation of OGC and ISO standards in the field of open software. It builds the foundation for numerous productive components of spatial data infrastructures - in Germany, Europe and all over the world.

About OGC

The OGC(R) is an international consortium of more than 395 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OpenGIS® Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org.

Wayland, Massachusetts, May 13, 2010.  The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) will launch a Hydrology Surface Water Interoperability Experiment (IE) on 15 June, 2010. The OGC is requesting participation by organizations that are interested in sharing surface water data.

The Surface Water IE will advance the development of WaterML 2.0 and test its use with various OGC service standards. The IE will also contribute to the development of a hydrology domain feature model and vocabularies, which are essential for interoperability within the hydrology domain.

The experiment will develop and test WaterML 2.0 to insure that three typical hydrological use case scenarios are supported:

-- Surface water data exchange across national and organizational jurisdictions

-- Surface water flow data discovery for forecast modeling

-- Quantifying the flow of surface water to coastal systems

The IE will also test implementations of OGC services and clients that are required to support these objectives. The results of the IE will be documented in OGC engineering reports and change requests to existing OGC standards.

The Interoperability Experiment initiators include these OGC Members: the International Office for Water - Service d'Administration National des Données et Référentiels sur l'Eau (Sandre); Service Centre Information Technology of the German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development (DLZ-IT BMVBS); US Geological Survey; Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation; KISTERS Environmental and Resource Management Software Solutions; and disy Informationssysteme GmbH. This IE is also supported by the World Meteorological Organisation.

A summary of the activity plan, requirements for participation, schedule, and kick-off meeting details are available at http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/initiatives/swie . Expressions of interest in participating are due by 12 June, 2010.

Contact David Arctur (darctur [at] opengeospatial [dot] org) for further details or to register as a participant.

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 395 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/.

Wayland, MA, USA, 6 May 2010. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) announced that Lance McKee has been appointed as a Senior Staff Writer for the Consortium.

As part of the OGC's Marketing and Communications team, Lance is responsible for communicating the OGC message through a variety of public relations and outreach activities in markets important to the OGC membership and the wider industry.

Lance McKee is a writer and corporate communications consultant. He was part of the original Open Geospatial Consortium start-up team and served on OGC staff from 1994 to 2000, when he left to start a small business. He continued to serve the OGC as a consultant until his recent appointment as Senior Staff Writer. His background includes teaching, technical writing and marketing communications in the areas of real-time computing and geospatial technologies. Lance has written and co-authored hundreds of articles for industry press and other publications over the last 20 years.

Steven Ramage, OGC's Executive Director, Marketing and Communications, commented, "Lance has an extensive history of working with the OGC and this makes him very knowledgeable and experienced in the IT world, notably around geospatial and location standards. We are very privileged to have someone so knowledgeable and capable on the marketing team and I am looking forward to working with him in his new capacity."

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 395 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/.