OGC Press Releases

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

Wayland, MA May 1, 2008 - The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.® (OGC) announced that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) program Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) is implementing a number of OGC standards. IOOS is a multidisciplinary system that will provide data and information on the oceans and Great Lakes, at both local and national scales, for use by a wide variety of decision makers.

"NOAA is proud to lead this national effort to link ocean observations in an easy-to-use standard format that provides accurate and timely information so people can make informed business and recreational decisions," said Zdenka Willis, director of the NOAA Integrated Ocean Observing System Program. "NOAA and our partner organizations will use the integrated data to improve forecasts of severe weather and natural hazards, enhance pollution tracking models, and create a more complete picture of our ocean planet."

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

Wayland, Mass., April 14, 2008 - The members of the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) today announced the approval of the OpenGIS® KML Encoding Standard (OGC KML), marking KML's transition into an open standard which will be maintained by the OGC. Developers will now have a standard approach for using KML to code and share visual geographic content in existing or future web-based online maps and 3D geospatial browsers like Google Earth^TM.

"We are pleased to see the adoption of KML as an OGC standard," said Ron Lake, chairman and chief executive officer of Galdos Systems Inc. "We believe that this is a major step forward for the OGC and for the entire geographic information community, as it provides the first broadly accepted standard for the visualization of geographic information."

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

Wayland, Mass. April 9, 2008 - The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.® (OGC) membership has approved the OASIS ebRIM (electronic business Registry Information Model) application profile of the OpenGIS® Catalogue Service 2.0.2 standard. The Catalogue Standard specifies a design pattern that allows for the definition of interfaces called application profiles based on different standards, such as ZF39.50, ebRIM, UDDI, or ISO metadata, that support the ability to publish and search collections of descriptive information (metadata) about geospatial data, services and related information objects.

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

Wayland, MA, April 9, 2006. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) has issued calls for sponsors of two interoperability initiatives: the OGC Web Services, Phase 6 (OWS-6) Testbed, and the OGC Pilot in support of GEOSS. OGC also seeks to establish alliances with standards bodies having technology relevant to the two initiatives.

The OWS series of Testbeds has been an effective mechanism for organizations to meet their interoperability needs through development of open geospatial standards. OWS-6 will develop interoperability specifications in the areas of Sensor Web Enablement, geoprocessing workflows, 3-dimensional information management including indoor location, aeronautical information systems, enterprise web services, mass-market geoservices and compliance testing of OGC standards. These "threads" address interoperability issues affecting emergency management and homeland security, defense, Earth observation, transport and logistics, e-commerce and other domains. Interested organizations are invited to a planning meeting on 30 April 2008 in Herndon, Virginia. The 30 April Sponsor Meeting will review the OGC standards baseline, discuss OWS-5 results, and identify OWS-6 requirements and plans.

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

Carol Geyer
Director of Communications
OASIS
Tel: +1 978 667-5115 x209
carol.geyer@oasis-open.org

Boston and Wayland, MA, USA; March 12, 2008 - Progress on ongoing collaborative efforts was announced today by two international standards consortia, the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) and OASIS (the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards). The groups have fostered an active commitment to cooperation since signing a Memorandum of Agreement in 2006.

"OASIS Standards enable a broad set of capabilities, and OGC's standards apply wherever 'where' and 'when' are included," explained Mark Reichardt, President and CEO of the OGC. "For the members of both organizations and for the broader global community of IT developers and users, it's important that the two organizations work together to strengthen open standards-based interoperability."

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

March 11, 2008. Wayland, MA. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) announced that the OGC's founder and Chairman of the OGC Board of Directors, David Schell, has been appointed to a three-year term on the recently formed US National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC).

The NGAC is a Federal Advisory Committee sponsored by the Department of the Interior. The NGAC reports to the Chair of the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) (Secretary of the Interior or designee) and provides advice and recommendations related to management of federal and national geospatial programs, the development of the NSDI (National Spatial Data Infrastructure), and the implementation of Office of Management and Budget Circular A-16 and Executive Order 12906. The Committee reviews and comments upon geospatial policy and management issues and provides a forum to convey views representative of non-federal stakeholders in the geospatial community.

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

Wayland, Massachusetts, February 28, 2008. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) announces OGC Interoperability Day, an all-day event to be held on March 28 at the Westin St. Louis Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri. The demonstration will showcase results from the OGC Web Services 5 (OWS-5) Testbed. OGC Interoperability Day is sponsored by the OGC, Northrop Grumman and the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).

Representatives from agencies, organizations and companies are invited to attend OGC Interoperability Day to learn about, witness and discuss the use of OpenGIS® Standards that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream information and communications technology. Vendors of GIS and other geoprocessing systems will showcase their products working together on the network, showing the benefits of interoperability enabled by open interfaces and encodings that comply with OGC's OpenGIS Standards. The agenda ( see http://www.opengeospatial.org/event/080328ows5demo ) will include presentations and discussions of Sensor Web Enablement (SWE), Geoprocessing Workflow (GPW), Agile Geography, Compliance Testing (CITE) and other topics.

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

Wayland, MA, February 25, 2008. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) (http://www.opengeospatial.org) announced that Astrium has increased its level of membership in the OGC to become a Principal Member.

Principal Members have authority over the development, release and adoption of OpenGIS® Specifications through their voting rights in the OGC Planning Committee (PC). Principal Members also evaluate and provide guidance on market direction and Consortium focus, have approval authority for OGC policies and procedures, and vote to elect members of the OGC Board of Directors.

Mark Reichardt, President, OGC, said "Astrium's move to Principal Membership in the OGC reflects the importance of standards in the company's diverse business mission and customer base. As a Principal Member, Astrium is positioned to represent European requirements across the Consortium's programs."

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

Wayland, Mass., February 22, 2008 - The members of the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) have approved version 1.0 of the OpenGIS® Web Processing Service (WPS) Interface Standard.

The WPS standard defines an interface that facilitates the publishing of geospatial processes and makes it easier to write software clients that can discover and bind to those processes. Processes include any algorithm, calculation or model that operates on spatially referenced raster or vector data. Publishing means making available machine-readable binding information as well as human-readable metadata that allows service discovery and use.

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

Wayland, Mass., February 19, 2008 - The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) is requesting public comment on the candidate CityGML Encoding Standard. CityGML is a Geography Markup Language 3 (GML3) application schema for the storage and exchange of virtual 3D city models.

CityGML is a common information model for the representation of 3D urban objects. It defines the classes and relations for the most relevant topographic objects in cities and regional models with respect to their geometrical, topological, semantical and appearance properties. Included are generalization hierarchies between thematic classes, aggregations, relations between objects, and spatial properties. This thematic information goes beyond graphic exchange formats and allows users to employ virtual 3D city models for sophisticated analysis tasks in different application domains such as simulations, urban data mining, facility management, and thematic inquiries.