OGC Press Releases

19 September 2012 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) has completed the 3D Portrayal Interoperability Experiment (3DPIE). The 3DPIE was designed to test and demonstrate different approaches for service-based 3D visualization using the candidate OGC standards for 3D portrayal: the OGC Web 3D Service (W3DS) and Web View Service (WVS) Interface standards.

Results have been published as an OGC Public Engineering Report (https://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=49068). This report will provide the basis for further standardization efforts in service-based 3D portrayal.

The OGC members participating in the 3DPIE worked to identify, test, and further develop technology standards and workflows for spatial data infrastructure that supports rapid visualization of very large and complex 3D geospatial data sets. The objective of the candidate W3DS and the WVS standards is to make it as easy to integrate and visualize 3D urban and landscape models in web applications as it is easy to integrate 2D maps in web applications. The 3DPIE clarified specifics of 3D portrayal services and provided a proof of concept as well as best practices and guidelines for the candidate standards' implementation, integration, and use. The experiments demonstrated the feasibility of 3D portrayal services using massive real-world 3D data, including a complete textured 3D city model of Paris.

New image- and vector-based streaming and visualization methods have been integrated into established software products and research prototypes. By linking various solutions for serving geospatial 3D assets with web and mobile applications using the 3D portrayal services, interoperability was successfully demonstrated. Of particular interest is the Extensible 3D (X3D) Graphics International Standard, which is the open standard for real-time 3D communication developed and administered by the non-profit Web3D Consortium (www.web3d.org). Also, the upcoming HTML5 web standard was addressed by using WebGL and declarative X3DOM technology for directly embedding 3D spatial data in modern web browsers.

Members of the Web3D Consortium worked to help identify key technological issues and develop common integration strategies. Prof. Volker Coors, one of the OGC representatives in the Web3D Consortium, comments: “I was really impressed by the results of the experiment, especially how well OGC services and Web3D technologies complement each other.”

The initiators of the 3DPIE were:
-- Hasso-Plattner-Institut at the University of Potsdam (HPI)*
-- GIScience at the University of Heidelberg*
-- Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research (IGD)*

The other OGC members that participated were:
-- Bitmanagement Software GmbH
-- CACI
-- Institute for Geodesy and Geoinformation Science at Technical University Berlin (IGG)
-- Institut Geographique National (IGN)
-- Laboratoire des Sciences de l’Information et des Systémes (LSIS)
-- Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), representing Web3D Consortium Members as part of the joint partnership agreement between OGC and Web3D Consortium
-- Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VT)

The 3DPIE was jointly managed by Benjamin Hagedorn (HPI), Arne Schilling (GIScience), and Volker Coors (Fraunhofer IGD / HFT Stuttgart).

About the Web3D Consortium:
The Web3D Consortium is a member-driven organization involved in many technical initiatives across the 4D value chain. The Web3D Consortium is a member-funded industry consortium committed to the creation and deployment of open, royalty-free standards that enable the communication of real-time 3D across applications, networks, and XML web services. Web3D works closely with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and has active projects with W3C, OGC, DICOM, IMS, KHRONOS, and MPEG standards-development organizations to maximize market opportunities for its membership. More information on Web3D Consortium membership is available at http://www.web3d.org.

About the OGC:
The OGC is an international consortium of more than 465 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.

17 September 2012 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) has become an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Telecommunications Standardization Sector (ITU-T) Member, following the decision of the ITU Council 2012 in July.

"OGC and ITU-T share a common commitment to improving the interoperability of ICTs through an open, consensus-based approach to the development of international standards," said Malcolm Johnson, Director, Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, ITU. "I am incredibly pleased to welcome the OGC to our membership ranks as I am certain that, just as within ITU-T’s JCA IoT, our shared goals will guide the collaboration required to realize the Internet of Things on a global scale.”

Mark Reichardt, President and CEO, OGC, said, "Collaboration between standards development organizations becomes increasingly important as information technology evolves. We are committed to providing focused, timely coordination between ITU and the OGC to maximize the value that derives from our global membership's geospatial and location interoperability expertise.  This formal arrangement will ensure that our collective work is coordinated and optimized for the global community of technology developers and users."

There are many areas of common interest between ITU and OGC, such as location communication in the Internet of Things and location communication that uses Short Message Service (SMS). SMS is the open text communication service standard most commonly used in phone, web and mobile communication systems for the exchange of short text messages between fixed line or mobile phone devices. The lightweight and easy to implement OGC Open GeoSMS Standard facilitates interoperability between mobile applications and the rapidly expanding world of geospatial applications and services that implement OGC standard interfaces, encodings and best practices.

The OGC has previously participated in the ITU Joint Coordination Activity on Internet of Things (JCA-IoT). The JCA-IoT is open to ITU Members and designated representatives of relevant Standards Development Organizations and Forums. Over the next decade, the IoT is expected to grow to trillions of internet-connected devices. Many of these devices will involve sensors, and their locations will often matter. The inevitable mix-and-match of different IoT devices, applications and platforms will make IoT interoperability standards a key factor. The OGC is the principal international consensus standards development organization focused on open location standards and also open interface and encoding standards for sensor webs. In the future, the OGC will consider participation in the ITU Internet of Things Global Standards Initiative (IoT-GSI) and various ITU Study Groups that pertain to IoT. The ITU IoT-GSI is a coordination of ITU members from Study Groups that pertain to IoT. The OGC will coordinate with ITU on the OGC "Sensor Web for IoT" Standards Working Group.

About the ITU

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies – ICTs. The ITU allocates global radio spectrum and satellite orbits, develops the technical standards that ensure networks and technologies seamlessly interconnect, and strives to improve access to ICTs to underserved communities worldwide.

About the OGC 

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 460 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.

13 September 2012 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) announces the formation of a new OGC Land Information Domain Working Group (Land Info DWG) to address CAD, Land Information System (LIS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) interoperability challenges facing industry domains concerned with the built environment.

Organizations and individuals throughout the architecture/engineering/construction (AEC) industry need to be able to exchange detailed civil and survey engineering data within that industry. They, and others in fields as diverse as environmental sciences and location marketing, also need to be able use such data with geospatial data and geospatial applications. In general, geospatial systems have evolved from requirements for observation and analysis, whereas land information systems have evolved from requirements for design and legal property description.

To meet this data exchange need, over the past 10 years a group of volunteer organizations and individuals developed the LandXML model and associated XML schema. LandXML is a non-proprietary standard for data exchange among the land development, civil engineering and surveying communities. Over 70 registered software products support LandXML, and many organizations around the world, such as the Australian Department of Lands, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the US Army Corps of Engineers, rely on LandXML as a data exchange format for mission critical activities.

The goals of the Land Information DWG are to find the best approach for incorporating the LandXML schema into the OGC’s standards base and to explore ways to incorporate land related information into OGC standards. This is the first time the OGC membership is tackling comprehensive integration of survey, civil engineering, and other land based data stored in CAD and GIS databases. This new work complements a legacy of activities in the OGC dating from the CAD-GIS DWG (now the 3DIM DWG), the CityGML Standards Working Group (CityGML SWG), and other OGC DWGs and SWGs.

The draft charter can be downloaded from:  https://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=51125&version=1. Comments must be received by 15 October 2012. Please send comments to Gene Roe (gene.roe [at] lidarnews.com).

About the OGC

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 460 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.

Trevor Taylor joins the OGC as Director, Services for the Americas

4 September 2012 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) has appointed Trevor Taylor to the position of Director, Services for the Americas.

"The OGC community is indeed fortunate to have Trevor Taylor now on our staff," said Jeff Burnett, Vice President Operations and Finance, OGC. "As a member representative, he was a tremendous contributor, and now he will be working full time to ensure that all of our members in the Americas get the most out of their membership."

Trevor Taylor has over 24 years of private sector experience in the international Earth Observation community. With a background in Geography (Carleton University, Canada), Mr. Taylor has worked with Dipix Technologies, Interra (now InterMap) Technologies and, for the last 18 years, PCI Geomatics where his last position was Director, Business Development with a focus on Central and South America.

Mr. Taylor has significant global experience in a wide variety of technical, client services, project, business and strategic planning activities. Mr. Taylor was PCI Geomatics’ business contact to OGC for the past decade, representing PCI and OGC interests at the technical, principal, principal plus and strategic levels, particularly in South America, India, China and Western Europe. In addition, Mr. Taylor was involved at the start up phase of the OGC Global Advisory Council.

About the OGC

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 460 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.

29 August 2012 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®), in cooperation with Directions Media, invites the international health mapping community to participate in a free one-hour webinar on 26 September 2012, at 4:00 pm UTC (11:00 a.m. EST).  

This is the fourth GovFuture (http://www.ogcnetwork.net/node/1568) webinar presented by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and Directions Media. In this webinar, we look at how improved sharing of geospatial information plays an important role in improving public health.

Our featured presenter is Eddie Oldfield, BA, Director, NB Climate Change Hub at the New Brunswick Lung Association. He will describe his work in coordinating implementation of geospatial interoperability standards to exchange, integrate, and visualize distributed health and environmental information. Applications he has studied have addressed chronic illness, public health resources, critical infrastructure, pollution, meteorological information, and pandemic surveillance and control. 

Eddie Oldfield's current work involves creating a national portal to bring together climate and health resources for decision-makers in public health, municipal emergency management, and local climate adaptation. The portal will aid in expanding public health heat alert and response, community resilience / disaster risk reduction, and modeling of historical and forecast impacts from climate on public health. The portal will enable decision-makers to use diverse data sources through services that implement the OGC Web Map Service (WMS), Web Feature Service (WFS), and Web Processing Service (WPS) standards.

Please join us!

Webinar details and registration are available at: http://www.directionsmag.com/webinars/. The webinar will be in English.

This webinar is part of the OGC's GovFuture program for local and subnational governments. The OGC's affordable GovFuture-Local Government and GovFuture-Subnational Government membership levels offer local and sub-national governments unique online resources and an insight into global geospatial policy and technology developments. This OGC membership level focuses on the value of using standards to support civil government activities. GovFuture members have an opportunity to network with their peers worldwide, with representatives from other levels of government, and with suppliers and universities through OGC events and communication channels.

About the OGC

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 460 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.

About Directions Media

Directions Media's mission is to inform readers and serve advertisers. Directions Media strives to be the very best resource for geospatial professionals and information technology workers who want to understand and capitalize on location-based information. Directions Media was founded in 1998 as Directions Magazine, which continues to be the flagship publication. Directions Magazine was the first regularly published online magazine covering geospatial technology. Today Directions Media maintains several online publications including Directions Magazine and the All Points Blog and offers conferences including Location Intelligence and GEO Huntsville. 

August 22, 2012 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) membership seeks comments on an OGC candidate standard, the CF-netCDF Data Model extension to the existing OGC Network Common Data Form (netCDF) Core Encoding Standard version 1.0. 

The CF-netCDF Data Model is a flexible data model widely used in climate and weather forecast systems as well as for other types of environmental data. The candidate CF-netCDF Data Model extension to the existing OGC Network Common Data Form (netCDF) Core Encoding Standard version 1.0 is the latest step in establishing CF-netCDF as an OGC standard for binary encoding.  This will enable standard delivery of data in binary form via several OGC service interface standards.

The OGC netCDF encoding supports electronic encoding of geospatial data, specifically digital geospatial information representing space- and time-varying phenomena. NetCDF (network Common Data Form) is widely used internationally to communicate and store many kinds of multidimensional data, although it was originally developed for the Earth science community.  The netCDF data model is particularly well suited to providing data in forms familiar to atmospheric and oceanic scientists: namely, as sets of related arrays. 

The conventions for climate and forecast (CF) metadata are designed to promote the processing and sharing of files created with the netCDF API.  The conventions define metadata that provide a definitive description of what the data in each variable represents, and the spatial and temporal properties of the data. This enables users of data from different sources to decide which quantities are comparable, and facilitates building applications with powerful extraction, regridding, and display capabilities.

NetCDF was developed and is maintained and actively supported by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) (www.ucar.edu). UCAR and other OGC members introduced the first netCDF specification as a candidate OGC standard to encourage broader international use and greater interoperability among clients and servers interchanging data in binary form. 

The candidate CF-netCDF Data Model extension to the existing OGC Network Common Data Form (netCDF) Core Encoding Standard version 1.0 and information about submitting comments on this document are available at http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/90. The public comment period closes on September 21, 2012.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 460 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.

21 August 2012 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) has appointed both Lew Leinenweber and Bart de Lathouwer to the position of Director, Interoperability Programs. These are key technical positions in the OGC Interoperability Program.

"OGC members will benefit greatly from the leadership that Lew and Bart will bring to OGC Interoperability Program (IP) initiatives," said George Percivall, Chief Architect and Executive Director, OGC Interoperability Program. "Lew brings a wealth of experience from leading prior OGC initiatives, including the fourth OGC Web Services Testbed (OWS-4) and the Geo-Decision Support Services (GeoDSS) activity. As the first member of the OGC IP Staff in Europe, Bart begins what we anticipate will be an exciting and broad-ranging program of OGC projects focused in Europe."

Lew will begin by leading the OGC Climatology-Hydrology Information Sharing Pilot, Phase 1 (CHISP-1) that will advance hydrology services using open standards in an operational, cross-border setting, creating a model for use around the world.  Lew brings exceptional experience with the OASIS Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) and NIEM (National Information Exchange Model). His experience will be a critical asset as the OGC works to advance open geospatial standards in the area of information sharing for intelligence and homeland security applications.  

Bart will lead the OGC element of the COBWEB ("Citizen OBservatory WEB") project recently awarded by the European Commission. COBWEB focuses on crowdsourcing of geospatial environmental information, addressing privacy and security elements.  Bart will also represent OGC in the EO2HEAVEN (Earth Observation and Environmental Modelling for the Mitigation of Health Risks) project and the GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems) Architecture Implementation Pilot. He leads project development in Europe on many fronts, with particular emphasis on Building Information based on his successful service at Autodesk. This work will support adoption of the OGC CityGML standard for storage and exchange of virtual 3D city models.

About the OGC

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 460 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 August 2012 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) announced the formation of a new OGC Energy & Utilities Domain Working Group (E&U DWG) to address geospatial interoperability challenges in the international energy and utility domains.

Communicating geospatial information is a critical requirement all along the diverse, complex and dynamic value chains related to energy and utilities. Such communication involves many different systems with different owners and purposes, and interoperation between these systems requires that they implement open standard data encodings and software interfaces. Many of these standards are now available to developers, but much work remains to develop profiles and application schemas based on the standards, and to harmonize the geospatial aspects of standards that have been developed by different standards organizations. This is the task of the E&U DWG.

Many of the OGC's standards activities – sensor webs, weather, indoor/outdoor location integration, 3D city models, location services, data fusion and others – have significance in the energy and utilities domain. Also, because energy and utilities infrastructure is embedded in our built and natural environments, there is a societal requirement for E&U businesses to communicate geospatial information with actors in domains such as environmental management, urban planning, and emergency response. The OGC provides a forum for such cross-community communication and standards coordination.

The E&U DWG's mission is broad ranging, with focus intentionally open to advance interoperability efforts among all market participants in the Energy and Utilities ecosystem. The group's efforts to date, driven by needs identified by diverse industry players, have included; harmonization of geospatial standards related to the Smart Grid; defining gaps, overlaps and collaboration opportunities across standards development organizations; fostering communication of advancements, successes and challenges across the international community; and defining approaches for the prioritization of industry use cases.

"Digital technology plays an increasing role in the management of all utility networks, including not only electric power grids but also water, sewer, thermal (as in district heating), and oil, gas & chemicals pipeline networks. The group's efforts will focus not only on data sharing in traditional grid operations, but also standards to communicate in real time the status of vast numbers of highly variable supply assets (wind, solar, e-vehicle batteries, etc.) that now fall within the increasingly complex generation umbrella," explained Renee Bogle Hughes, Synaptitude Consulting, chair of the E&U DWG. "The OGC E&U DWG has a mandate to investigate these domains, look at individual use cases, introduce these into the scenarios of testbeds, pilot projects and interoperability experiments, and work with the OGC Technical Committee and with other SDOs to resolve geospatial interoperability issues."

About the OGC

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 460 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.

Attend the OGC North American Forum Open Standards Technology Exposition!

13 August 2012

The North American Forum (NAF) of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is organizing the first OGC North American Open Standards Technology Exposition. This free Exposition will be held on September 19 from 9 am to 3 pm in Reston, VA.  
You are invited to stop by any time during the Expo event to talk with the many leading technology providers who will feature products and solutions that implement the OGC's geospatial encoding and interface standards. The vendors will demonstrate how their systems interoperate, through open standards, with other vendors' systems. We want you to see how location interoperability can provide value to your agency in terms of cost reductions, faster implementation and deployment, cross-platform interoperability and better interoperability with legacy and future systems. 

The vendors will show how OGC standards are being used throughout U.S. Department of Defense, Intelligence Community and Civil Agencies.  A key objective in the development and deployment of OGC standards is to reduce the complexity, time and cost required to access, process, share, integrate and apply geospatial information sources, including sensor assets of all kinds. The end result is enhanced situational awareness and decision making across organizations and communities. Because the agency solutions you will see demonstrated at the Exposition are standards-based, the vendors can economically repurpose these solutions for use or integration in other agencies’ applications. This Exposition provides a great opportunity for you to explore such possibilities with the exhibiting vendors. 

The expo will be hosted by Oracle at their offices at 1900 Oracle Way in Reston, VA.  

Attendance is free, but those wishing to attend must register at http://myogc.org/nafregister no later than September 14, 2012. 

For more information please send an email to naf [dot] expo [at] opengeospatial [dot] org. 

About the OGC

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 460 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 geospatialy enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.

The OGC North American Forum was established in 2012 to address OGC standards requirements, OGC program coordination, outreach and education needs of government, academic, research and industry organizations in Canada, the US and Mexico. For more information, visit http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/regions/NAForum.

3 August 2012 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) has issued a Request for Quotations/Call for Participation (RFQ/CFP) to solicit proposals in response to requirements for the OGC Climatology-Hydrology Information Sharing Pilot (CHISP), Phase 1 (CHISP-1).

The RFQ/CFP is available at http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/87.

Responses are due by 31 August, 2012.

A bidders’ teleconference will be held on 15 August 2012. More information will be available at the URL above.

The Point of Contact is Lew Leinenweber (lleinenweber at opengeospatial.org).

The CHISP-1 sponsors are:

-- GeoConnections - Natural Resources Canada and Environment Canada

-- US Geological Survey (USGS)

-- US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Around the world, there is a critical need for improved sharing, accessing, and integration of hydrologic and climatic data.  To meet that need, CHISP-1 will engage leaders in the hydro-climatic community to collaboratively build a duplicable system that uses existing resources – including data portals, standards, technologies, activities, and expertise. These resources are available to stakeholders in all countries. 

CHISP-1 will create a virtual observatory system for water resources observations and forecasts in parts of the U.S. and Canada, building on current networks and capabilities to support:

1. Hydrologic modeling of Milk River and Souris River for historical, current and future streamflow and inundation conditions. 
2. Modeling and assessment of nutrient flux into the Great Lakes, which requires accessing and integrating water quality data from multiple agencies

Advantages of creating this system in an OGC Pilot Project include: 

• Management by a neutral organization
• Use of a mature and trusted vendor-neutral process led by experienced administrative and technical project managers
• Design and development best practices (iterative, agile approach to building a SOA-based system)
• Inclusive process, with open, international call for participation from potential sponsors, and recruiting of industry's best and brightest to staff the development team. 

CHISP-1 will exercise OGC encoding and service standards, including the OGC WaterML 2.0 Encoding Standard, the OGC Sensor Observation Service (SOS) standard and others.

CHISP-1 offers many benefits. In addition to leveraging the large body of existing related activities, those activities, and others like them around the world, will be enhanced by and benefit from the pilot outcomes. By pooling resources to accomplish a shared objective, the sponsors and participants in CHISP-1 reduce their development risks and leverage their investment. In addition to identifying and clarifying what is possible, the pilot will identify the key technical and non-technical barriers to continued progress in sharing and integrating hydrologic and climatic information. Because it is an international project with broad industry participation, it will promote understanding and strengthen ties within the existing hydro-climatic community.

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 460 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. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/.