OGC Press Releases

Sam Bacharach
Executive Director, Outreach and Community Adoption
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc
tel: +1-703-352-3938
sbacharach@opengeospatial.org

January 30, 2009, Wayland, Mass. - The membership of the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) is requesting comments on the candidate standard OpenGIS(R) GeoLinking Service (GLS) Interface.

The candidate GLS standard defines an interface for services that provide the ability to "link" data that contain information about geographic objects, such as census tract population statistics, with data in another repository that contains the actual geometry (points, lines, polygons). For example, a table of populations of cities on one server may not contain the geometry information that describes the cities' locations and boundaries, while a second server may house the cities' geometry. The candidate GLS standard describes a set of interfaces for both servers that lets the city name be used as a "common geographic identifier" to join the population data to its geometry, so the user can create a map or perform geospatial analysis on the linked data.

Sam Bacharach
Executive Director, Outreach and Community Adoption
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc
tel: +1-703-352-3938
sbacharach@opengeospatial.org

January 28, 2009, Wayland, Mass. - The members of the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) have submitted a Request for Comments (RFC) on version 0.2.2 of the Earth Observation (EO) Products Extension Package for ebRIM (ISO/TS 15000-3) Profile of CSW 2.0 (OGC document 06-131). (ebRIM is the electronic business Registry Information Model from the OASIS standards organization. CSW ("Catalog Services - Web") is an OGC standard that specifies a catalogue application profile based on ISO19115:2003/ISO19119:2005 metadata with support for XML encoding per ISO/CD TS 19139  and HTTP protocol binding.)

Sam Bacharach
Executive Director, Outreach and Community Adoption
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc
tel: +1-703-352-3938
sbacharach@opengeospatial.org

Sydney, Australia. 20 January 2009. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) have announced a Climate Change Integration Plugfest (CCIP) to be launched at the FOSS4G conference, 20-23 October 2009, http://2009.foss4g.org.

The CCIP will demonstrate standards based interoperability between geospatial applications based on a Climate Change scenario.

Raj Singh, Director of Interoperability Programs at OGC, explained that, "The CCIP is a server with multiple virtual machines providing a number of different geospatial Web services that implement the OGC's open interface and encoding standards. It will be used in the coming months to demonstrate open Web-based geoprocessing at conferences, testbeds, classes and other events around the world."

Sam Bacharach
Executive Director, Outreach and Community Adoption
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc
tel: +1-703-352-3938
sbacharach@opengeospatial.org

*** Win a 1.5TB Hard Drive, an Apple iPod, or Noise Canceling Headphones! ***

Dear geospatial technology user:

This is the final reminder for the Business Benefits of Using OGC Standards Survey. We thank those of you who have responded to the survey. The information we have collected will help us understand OGC standards effectiveness and improve OGC programs.

The survey will be closed on Friday January 31. Please take the survey before that date because each additional response makes the data more significant. The link again is:
http://www.surveyshare.com/survey/take/?sid=79356.

Sam Bacharach
Executive Director, Outreach and Community Adoption
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc
tel: +1-703-352-3938
sbacharach@opengeospatial.org

Wayland, Mass., January 7, 2009 - In Valencia, Spain, at the December Technical Committee meetings of the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC), the OGC and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to coordinate in advancing open geospatial standards (OGC's mission) and open source geospatial software and data (OSGeo's mission).

Mark Reichardt, CEO and President of the OGC, explained that, "Openness benefits markets. Vendors of proprietary software have found that today's more open and complex "business ecosystem," which includes both open source software and open standards, is good for their businesses. It's also good for technology users. It makes sense for the OGC to work with the OSGeo."

Athina Trakas
OGC - Business Development Europe
Tel: +49 - 228 - 909038-22
Fax: +49 - 228 - 909038-11
mobile: +49 - 173 - 211 26 23
atrakas@opengeospatial.org
http://www.opengeospatial.org

Orleans, France, December 10, 2008: An OGC Interoperability Day was held Tuesday, 9 December, 2008, at BRGM in Orleans, France. This event, organized by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) France Forum with the support of the Conseil Régional du Centre, followed the OGC Technical Committee meeting, an international event held last week in Valencia, Spain.

OGC Interoperability Days provide opportunities for business, government and academic organizations working in areas such as environment, urban planning, defense, construction, water, and earth observation to learn about the current state of interoperability in the field of geographic information.

Sam Bacharach
Executive Director, Outreach and Community Adoption
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc
tel: +1-703-352-3938
sbacharach@opengeospatial.org

Wayland, MA, December 8, 2008. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) (http://www.opengeospatial.org) announced that GeoVirtual, SL (Spain) (http://www.geovirtual.com) has joined the OGC as a Strategic Member. Strategic Membership is the highest level of membership in the OGC. To advance OGC program objectives, Strategic Members provide significant resources in the form of funding and other in-kind resources.

Sam Bacharach
Executive Director, Outreach and Community Adoption
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc
tel: +1-703-352-3938
sbacharach@opengeospatial.org

Wayland, Mass., November 24, 2008 -  The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC(R)), the Fisheries & Marine Institute of Memorial University of Newfoundland, and the Alliance for Coastal Technologies organized a one day workshop "From Sensors to Applications: Advancing the Interoperability of Ocean Sensors." The workshop was convened as part of the Ocean Innovation 2008 "World Summit - Ocean Observing Systems" Conference October 19-22 in St. Johns, Newfoundland. Workshop attendees included ocean sensor manufacturers, researchers and government officials in the ocean observation community.

Sam Bacharach
Executive Director, Outreach and Community Adoption
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc
tel: +1-703-352-3938
sbacharach@opengeospatial.org

Wayland, MA, November 24, 2008.   The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC(R)) and GeoConnections announce the release of a video that documents last year's successful interoperability demonstration, a major output of the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure Interoperability Pilot (CGDI IP) (http://www.geoconnections.org/en/communities/developers/technologies/fa=developersCorner.cgdiv2).  GeoConnections sponsored the Pilot, which concluded with a Web Conference that was witnessed live and online by more than 500 people. GeoConnections is a Canadian partnership program whose primary objective is to evolve and expand the CGDI. The CGDI IP was an OGC Interoperability Initiative.

Sam Bacharach
Executive Director, Outreach and Community Adoption
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc
tel: +1-703-352-3938
sbacharach@opengeospatial.org

November 17, 2008, Wayland, Massachusetts.  The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) announced the completion and availability of Version 2.0 of the OGC Reference Model (ORM) at http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/orm. The ORM provides a framework for the ongoing work of the OGC and a guide for those who seek to implement interoperable solutions and applications for geospatial services and data. The ORM focuses on relationships between the documents in the OGC Standards Baseline (SB), which consists of the approved OpenGIS® Abstract and Implementation Standards (Interface, Encoding, Profile, Application Schema) and OGC Best Practice documents.