OGC Press Releases

Wayland, Massachusetts, 22 April 2011. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is launching a 3D Portrayal Interoperability Experiment (IE) on 26 May 2011 to advance best practice for implementing standards for publishing and streaming 3D geospatial assets related to urban planning and landscape visualization.

The 3D Portrayal IE will focus on the use of recently developed draft 3D portrayal service interface specifications within the context of the OGC standards baselines. These are the Web 3D Service (W3DS), which streams geospatial 3D models using interactive web formats, and the Web View Service (WVS), which generates images of projective views on massive, complex 3D worlds.

Objectives for the 3D Portrayal IE are to test and further develop these services and workflows that support rapid visualization of extremely large and complex 3D geodata. Such services and workflows are anticipated to be major building blocks of spatial data infrastructures. The IE will include digital landscape models, city models, and interior models, e.g., in the CityGML data format, as well as different client configurations such as thin clients and web portals. The IE will clarify the specifics of 3D portrayal services; provide best practices and guidelines for their implementation, integration, and usage; and directly support current standardization efforts.

The 3D Portrayal IE is initiated by OGC members Hasso Plattner Institute at the University of Potsdam, GIScience Group at the University of Heidelberg, and Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research.

A summary of the activity plan, requirements for participation, schedule, and kick-off meeting details are available at  http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/initiatives/3dpie. Expressions of interest in participating are due by 22 May 2011. 

Contact Benjamin Hagedorn (Benjamin [dot] Hagedorn [at] hpi [dot] uni-potsdam [dot] de) for further details or to register as a participant.

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

An OGC Interoperability Experiment is a rapid, low-overhead, formally structured OGC-facilitated activity, where members achieve specific technical objectives that further the OGC Technical Baseline. A key outcome of this activity will be an OGC Engineering Report.

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 415 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/. 

April 20, 2011 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) announced that the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) has approved the OGC Web Feature Service (WFS) Interface standard as an International Standard. This approval was the result of joint activity in the ISO Technical Committee: ISO/TC211 Geographic Information/Geomatics.

WFS was approved by a ballot of the national bodies that make up the ISO membership. The ballot was in parallel with the Comité Européen de Normalisation (CEN), a major provider of European technical standards. CEN/TC 287, the CEN committee working closely with ISO/TC211, has adopted many of the International Standards developed by ISO/TC 211 and also those that result from the ISO/TC211 committee’s joint work with the OGC. The OGC's WFS standard (now also ISO 19142:2010) enables clients with interfaces implementing the standard to access geospatial data and services of many types available on a wide variety of servers that also implement the standard.

"I am very happy that once again, based upon the excellent co-operation with the OGC, we have been able to provide the geospatial community with an important International Standard," said Olaf Østensen, chairman of ISO/TC211. "The WFS Standard will enable sharing of geospatial information in an interoperable way, and it is already a core component in any spatial data infrastructure. Sharing and re-use of information are among the most important objectives of our standards development."

In 1995, the OGC established a Class A Liaison with ISO/TC211 and in 1999 the two organizations signed an agreement that allows both organizations to take full advantage of the contributions of the other and that calls for the alignment of ISO and OGC procedures.

Several other standards have received joint approval, including: ISO19125-1:2004 (Geographic information - Simple Feature Access - Part 1: Common Architecture); ISO 19125-2:2004 (Geographic information - Simple feature access - Part 2: SQL Option); ISO 19128 Web Map Service (WMS) and ISO 19136 (Geographic information - Geography Markup Language (GML).

About the OGC

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 415 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.

Wayland, Massachusetts, 19 April 2011 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) membership has approved the OGC Network Common Data Form (netCDF) Core Encoding Standard, and netCDF Binary Encoding Extension Standard - netCDF Classic and 64-bit Offset Format as official OGC standards. These standards are available for free download at http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/netcdf.

Although it was originally developed for the Earth science community, netCDF can be used to communicate and store a wide variety of multidimensional data. The netCDF data model is particularly well suited to providing data in forms familiar to atmospheric and oceanic scientists, specifically, as sets of related arrays.

netCDF is self-documenting, which means it can internally store information used to describe the data. For example, the internal documentation can associate various physical quantities (such as temperature, pressure, and humidity) with spatio-temporal locations (such as points at specific latitudes, longitudes, vertical levels, and times). Climate and Forecast (CF) Metadata Conventions are often used in conjunction with netCDF as a means of specifying semantic information that promotes the processing and sharing of climate and forecast data created with the netCDF application programming interface (API). The semantic metadata is conveyed internally within the netCDF datasets.

netCDF was developed and is supported by the Unidata Program Center at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) (http://www.ucar.edu/ ) under sponsorship of the Atmospheric and Geoscience Division of the US Government National Science Foundation. It has been formally recognized by the US Government’s NASA and NOAA standards bodies. UCAR and other OGC members introduced netCDF into the OGC as a candidate OGC standard to encourage broader international use and greater interoperability among clients and servers interchanging data in binary form. Among other benefits, this will make the large collections of environmental netCDF data more readily accessible and usable by non-experts.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 410 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/contact.

11 April 2011 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) seeks comments on an OGC discussion paper, "Requirements and Space-Event Modeling for Indoor Navigation."  

Just as digital technologies such as GPS and Web mapping mediate our awareness of outdoor space, new indoor location and sensor technologies are beginning to mediate our awareness of indoor space. Connecting indoor location with outdoor location is becoming a critical requirement for emergency and disaster response, security, facilities planning and management, real estate finance, insurance, location-based marketing, Building Information Models, the smart grid, energy management, and management of fluid flows (air, water, gas, sewage etc.). The OGC seeks to facilitate the development of interface and encoding standards and best practices that enable seamless connection of indoor and outdoor location in applications of all kinds.

The discussion paper presents a model for indoor navigation that simultaneously addresses route planning, multiple localization methods, navigation contexts, and different locomotion types.  

Deke Smith, Executive Director, buildingSMART alliance(TM), explained that, "Few current standards efforts are as critical as having open, international consensus standards that connect indoor and outdoor location. The building industry is entering a period of unprecedented collaboration and transparency regarding finance, energy, security and environmental impact and safety. Makers of phones and apps have everything else in place for an explosion of indoor location services. We encourage all stakeholders to comment on this paper and get involved in not only this standards effort but also the NBIMS-US openBIM standards effort."

The Discussion Paper can be accessed at: http://portal.myogc.org/files/41727

Comments can be directed to OGC by visiting: http://portal.myogc.org/public_ogc/change_request.php

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 410 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.

7 April 2011 – The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) has announced a Call for Participation (CFP) in the 4^th phase of the GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot (AIP-4). The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC®) provides leadership in AIP-4 and invites OGC members and other organizations to respond to the CFP. The CFP document is available at: http://earthobservations.org/geoss_call_aip.shtml.

AIP-4 will improve access to GEOSS datasets that support the “Critical Earth Observation Priorities” that have been identified by the GEO User Interface Committee. It will increase the use of these data by building on the accomplishments of prior AIP phases. AIP-4 aims to:

• Increase on-line access to "Critical Earth Observation Priorities Data Sources";
• Ensure datasets are discoverable through the GEOSS Common Infrastructure; and
• Demonstrate effectiveness of general and specialized software tools for using data.

Responses to this CFP are requested by 8 May 2011. Discussion and clarification of the CFP and the initiation of AIP-4 will be the topic of weekly teleconferences. Agenda and logistics for these telecons are posted at http://www.ogcnetwork.net/AIPtelecons

The Point of Contact for the AIP task is George Percivall, percivall [at] opengeospatial [dot] org.

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 420 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.

GEO (Group on Earth Observations) is a voluntary partnership of 148 governments and international organizations, launched in response to calls for action by the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development and by the G8 (Group of Eight) leading industrialized countries. GEO is coordinating efforts to build a Global Earth Observation System of Systems, or GEOSS.
See http://earthobservations.org/about_geo.shtml.

5 April 2011 – The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) membership has approved the Sensor Planning Service (SPS) Interface Standard 2.0 Earth Observation Satellite Tasking Extension standard as an official OGC standard. This standard is available for free download at http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/sps.

The SPS 2.0 Earth Observation Satellite Tasking Extension Standard specifies extensions to the OGC Sensor Planning Service (SPS) 2.0 Interface Standard. The SPS configuration proposed in this extension is intended to support the programming process of Earth Observation (EO) sensor systems. 

This standard describes a consistent SPS configuration that can be supported by many satellite data providers, most of whom have existing facilities for the management of these programming requests.  The resulting extended web service interface can be used for 

•  Determining the feasibility of an intended sensor planning request
•  Submitting such a request
•  Inquiring about the status of such a request
•  Updating or canceling such a request
•  Requesting information on means of obtaining the data collected by the requested task. 

SPS is one of the OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) (http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/markets-technologies/swe) suite of standards.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 410 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 31, 2011 - OSCRE (the Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate) today announced that they have updated their Memorandum of Understanding with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to reflect OSCRE’s new global focus following last year’s merger between PISCES and OSCRE Americas.

OSCRE and the OGC organizations are now putting a new level of emphasis on collaborative standards development and are working specifically to enable and promote the interoperable use of Web based geospatial technologies in real estate and property management.

"There's a growing interest among OGC members involved in the built environment and we are fortunate to have the opportunity to work with OSCRE," said Mark Reichardt, President and CEO of the OGC. "There's a tremendous need for better information exchange among companies and government administrative bodies that buy, sell, own, occupy, insure, inspect, appraise, manage, design, build and protect real estate. Leveraging this information in a location and time context is critically important for decision-making. Advances in many other economic sectors await a strong indoor/outdoor location standards foundation, and we look forward to bringing diverse stakeholders together with OSCRE in a coordinated standards effort."

"The use of geospatial data is expanding rapidly among real estate stakeholders who seek information about demographics, crime, sales comparatives, foreclosures, and natural and man-made hazards," states Catherine Williams, OSCRE’s Chief Executive. "We expect enormous value for members of OSCRE and OGC from this working relationship, particularly as we are now able to bring significant international expertise to the real estate standards process."

OSCRE seeks to enable the real estate industry to work more effectively through the use of cost-effective, standardized and automated electronic information exchange. OSCRE is about bringing real estate professionals together with their solution providers to agree on intelligent and effective ways to exchange information over the Internet and within their businesses. We believe an open standard for real estate offers the potential to lower cost, stimulate innovation and grow markets whilst retaining a free choice of technology.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 410 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 OSCRE (the Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate)

OSCRE is a not for profit market led initiative that facilitates increased business productivity through the development and delivery of standards across the real property sector. OSCRE’s mission is to drive the standards development process among key real estate stakeholders, including owners, tenants/occupants, investors, operators, developers, service providers, regulatory agencies, consulting firms, vendors and suppliers - to benefit all stakeholders and enable the real estate industry to function more efficiently in the digital economy. OSCRE is the only global e-commerce standards body for the real property sector. Its members, whose valued financial and professional contribution enables the continuation of the work of OSCRE, fund the organisation.
For more information please visit our website at http://www.oscre.org.

30 March 2011, Wayland, Massachusetts. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) announced that GE Energy has upgraded its OGC membership from Technical Member to the Principal Member level.

GE plans to help drive the development of international standards for geospatial technologies, such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and mobile workforce applications. The Consortium’s Principal Members can exercise authority over the development, release and adoption of OGC standards through their voting rights in the OGC Planning Committee. They are also an integral player in the forward thinking strategy of the consortium and provide valuable industry expertise to support this role.

As an industry leader GE Energy has developed GIS, mobile workforce applications and communications management software to play a key role in constructing, managing and maintaining the critical infrastructure of the worlds' leading utilities.

"GE Energy’s move to Principal Membership in the OGC reflects the company's recognition of the value of open standards in the markets they serve and for the customers they serve," said Mark Reichardt, President and CEO of the OGC. "We look forward to GE Energy's increased leadership in OGC programs to further advance the application and integration of geospatial information and sensor feeds that are so critical in the management of energy resources."

GE Energy has been involved with the Technical Committee of the OGC since it acquired the Smallworld^TM business in September 2000. Since then GE Energy has ensured its GIS software is certified as compliant with OGC standards.

"GE has been a member of the OGC since 1995," said John McDonald, Technical Strategy & Policy Development Director for Digital Energy. "GE is proud to serve as a Principal Member, and will work with the OGC to increase the value of geospatial technology for multiple industries by encouraging standards and certified compliance."

About GE

GE (NYSE: GE) is a diversified infrastructure, finance and media company taking on the world’s toughest challenges. From aircraft engines and power generation to financial services, health care solutions and television programming, GE operates in more than 100 countries and employs about 300,000 people worldwide. For more information, visit the company's website at www.ge.com. 

GE serves the energy sector by developing and deploying technology that helps make efficient use of natural resources. With nearly 85,000 global employees and 2009 revenues of $40 billion, GE Energy www.ge.com/energy is one of the world's leading suppliers of power generation and energy delivery technologies. The businesses that comprise GE Energy—GE Power & Water, GE Energy Services and GE Oil & Gas—work together to provide integrated product and service solutions in all areas of the energy industry including coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear energy; renewable resources such as water, wind, solar and biogas; and other alternative fuels.

About the OGC

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 410 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.

Wayland, Massachusetts, 28 March 2011. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) announces the formation of an OGC WaterML 2.0 Standards Working Group (SWG). (http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/waterml2.0swg).

WaterML 2.0 is a candidate OGC encoding standard for the representation of in-situ hydrological observations data. WaterML 2.0 is implemented as an application schema of the Geography Markup Language (GML) version 3.2.1 and makes use of the OGC Observations and Measurements (O&M) standard and the O&M eXtensible Markup Language (OMXML) GML Application Schema. OGC WaterML 2.0 will support encoding of hydrological and hydrogeological observation data in a variety of exchange scenarios.

Example areas of usage are: exchange of data for operational monitoring and forecasting programs; supporting operation of infrastructure (e.g. dams, supply systems); exchange of observational and forecast data for surface water and groundwater; release of data for public dissemination; enhancing disaster management through data exchange; and exchange in support of national reporting. WaterML 2.0 was developed by a group of hydrology and water professionals. It harmonizes concepts from a number of existing standards in use.

OGC WaterML 2.0 Standards Working Group Charter Members include:

• 52°North
• Australian Bureau of Meteorology
• Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia's national science agency
• Deltares (Netherlands)
• Geological Survey of Canada, Natural Resources Canada
• German Federal Institute of Hydrology
• KISTERS AG (Germany)
• University of California, San Diego, San Diego Supercomputer Center, working with the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI)
• US Geological Survey (USGS)
• US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Contact Peter Taylor < Peter [dot] Taylor [at] csiro [dot] au > for details.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 410 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.

25 March 2011 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) seeks public comment on the candidate OGC Open GeoSMS Standard - Core.

The candidate OGC Open GeoSMS Standard allows applications to location enable Short Message Service (SMS). SMS is the text communication service component of phone, web and mobile communication systems. SMS uses standardized communications protocols that allow the exchange of short text messages between fixed line or mobile phone devices.

Open GeoSMS enables developers to use extended Short Message Service (SMS) to facilitate communication of location content between different LBS (Location-Based Service) devices or applications. The encoding is extremely light weight and the standards document is quite short.

The Taiwan Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) contributed this candidate standard to the OGC. Open GeoSMS is already in use in a number of deployed commercial applications in Taiwan as well as in a number of disaster response applications such as those provided by Sahana.

The candidate OGC Open GeoSMS Standard can be found at: http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/76. The period for issuing comments expires on 24 April 2011.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 410 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.