This project is currently in concept development.
 
What is it?  An inter-disciplinary, inter-agency and international virtual observatory system for water resources information from observations and forecasts in the U.S. and Canada, building on current networks and capabilities, designed to support these functions:
This project is currently in concept development.
 

This standard defines a protocol for RS232 and Ethernet connected instruments. PUCK addresses installation and configuration challenges for sensors by defining a standard instrument protocol to store and automatically retrieve metadata and other information from the instrument device itself.

Most sensor networks require careful manual installation and configuration by technicians to assure that software components are properly associated with the physical instruments that they represent. Instrument driver software, configuration files, and metadata describing the instrument and its ...

The OGC Open GeoSMS Standard provides developers with an extended Short Message Service (SMS) encoding and interface to facilitate communication of location content between different LBS (Location-Based Service) devices or applications. 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 Open GeoSMS Standard facilitates interoperability between mobile applications and the rapidly expanding world of geospatia...

In June 2011, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) opened an initiative called EarthCube in a partnership between the Geosciences Directorate (GEO) and the Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI). This seeks "transformative concepts and approaches to create integrated data management infrastructures across the Geosciences." A Charette was held near Washington DC, 1-4 November 2011, in which OGC staff, members, and over 100 others from the research community participated to define a set of capabilities the EarthCube program needs to address.
In December 2011, NSF released a Dear Colleague Letter with additional details on the process and requirements to explore ideas to receive funding in support of EarthCube goals (available at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2012/nsf12024/nsf12024.jsp).
See (and subscribe to) http://earthcube.ning.com/profiles/blog/list for the most current status reports from NSF on this initiative. Other pages on this website provide background materials and whitepapers submitted prior to the charette, as well as ongoing group discussion on various topics. Anyone interested can register and join these discussions at any time.
OGC staff are working with interested members and the broader geosciences research community on organizational framework and other proposals to support this initiative. If you are interested in coordinating with OGC on a proposal for EarthCube, please contact David Arctur on OGC staff (darctur AT opengeospatial.org).

This OGC® standard specifies the interfaces, bindings, requirements, conformance classes, and a framework for implementing extensions that enable complete workflows for ordering of Earth Observation (EO) data products.

The GeoBI Ad Hoc has been renamed to GeoBI DWG upon approval during the December 2011 TC/PC meetings.
Business intelligence (BI) aims to support better business decision-making using computer-based techniques used for identifying, extracting and analyzing business data. Geospatial Business Intelligence (GeoBI) adds geospatial technology to BI.

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) sees value in Web Services and Applications which make use of a RESTful approach to design. OGC believes that a common understanding and agreement on how to structure Resource Models and leverage uniform Web interfaces, in other words a common RESTful approach to the design and standardization of Web services, will lead to both improved interoperability and greater accessibility for these services. During the OGC Technical Committee (TC) meeting in Boulder in September 2011, the REST Subcommittee members recommended forming a standards working group to write such a policy standard. 

Summary

This interoperability experiment will advance the development of WaterML 2.0 and test its use in a forecasting context with various OGC service standards (SOS, SES, WFS, WMS and WCS). It will also contribute to a co-operation with the Met-Ocean domain working group. Where relevant to the forecasting context, it will contribute to the development and evaluation of a hydrology domain feature model and vocabularies, which are essential for interoperability in the hydrology domain, although these are not the main focus for the IE.
The use of O&M compliant WaterML 2.0 and OGC web services for data exchange is foreseen to improve real time operations between mutually dependent organizations by allowing easier access of frequently changing time series data. The ultimate use of the exposed data will depend on the context of participating organizations and their driving requirements. We expect the IE will result in further development of WaterML 2.0 and profiling of SOS to accommodate various time dimensions of a forecast as well as the ensemble capabilities. This may include a schema, example instances, and documentation describing the schema, a usage profile and best practice documents. It will also result in a documented evaluation of the compatibility of WaterML 2.0 with OGC services, which can feed back to OGC. In particular, the IE will implement and test WaterML 2.0 and OGC services within a real time forecasting context, addressing the time and ensemble dimensions of a forecast as well as the ability of the services to facilitate incremental data updates and notifications to trigger data exchange. capabilities.
This hydrologic forecasting IE will build on the work conducted in the Surface Water IE by adding the real time forecast context. We expect that the project will discover issues related to the forecast and ensemble dimension of the information model and the usage of event services for incremental data updates. New and upgraded web services amongst participants are also expected, increasing the overall availability of water data and the interoperability of water information systems. Development of client applications is a secondary concern; the focus of work is testing information models and service delivery mechanisms.
There have been some discussions toward the establishment of a joint experiment with the Met-Ocean DWG to include the incorporation of weather forecasts and ensembles.  However this has not let to a mature plan at this time.  We intend to continue this discourse and revisit a joint experiment in the future, perhaps as a follow-up activity to this Forecasting IE.

INITIATOR ORGANIZATIONS

The WMO is supporting the Interoperability Experiment within the scope of the existing MoU between OGC and WMO.
The OGC members that are acting as initiators of the Interoperability Experiment are:

• US National Weather Service (NOAA/NWS)
• Deltares USA Inc
• US Geological Survey (USGS)
• Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
• KISTERS Environmental and Resource Management Software Solutions (KISTERS, DE)

 Other organizations and their contributions, as they come on-stream, will be posted here. 
 

DESCRIPTION

Objectives
The aim of this IE is:
(1)       Extend and complement the work already underway in the Groundwater and Surfacewater IEs, with the goal of advancing the development of WaterML 2.0 to the sub domain of hydrologic forecasting
(2)       Test compatibility of WaterML 2.0 with modified and new services by NOAA/NWS, and USGS by implementation of the OGC SOS, SES, WFS, WMS standards;
(3)       Test compatibility of WaterML 2.0 for use with hydrological forecasting systems.
(4)       Establish a limited surface water feature model and vocabularies suitable for the provision of surface water forecast data using WaterML 2.0.
(5)       The data will be served by all participants using WaterML 2.0 and OGC services (SOS, SES, WFS, WMS).
(6)       Optional:  Test compatibility of O&M based weather forecast information model for use with hydrological forecasting systems.