GPS World

Tag: OGC

  • OGC seeks interoperability testbed participants

    T-13_Planning_Figures_OCG-testbed

    The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) invites interested organizations to respond to its just-released Call for Participation (CFP) in the OGC Testbed 13 Interoperability Testbed. Responses to the CFP are due by Feb. 17.

    Organizations selected to participate in Testbed 13 will develop prototype solutions based on the sponsors’ use cases, requirements and scenarios. These are described in detail in the CFP. Participants’ prototype solutions will implement existing OGC standards as well as new prototype interface and encoding specifications introduced or developed in Testbed 13. Prototype specifications may ultimately become official, member approved OGC standards, revisions to existing OGC standards, or best practices for using OGC standards.

    OGC testbeds are part of OGC’s Interoperability Program, a global, hands-on and collaborative prototyping program designed to rapidly develop, test, innovate and deliver proven candidate standards into OGC’s standards program where they are formalized for public release.

    In OGC’s Interoperability Initiatives, international teams of technology providers work together to solve specific geoprocessing interoperability problems posed by the Initiative Sponsors. OGC Interoperability Initiatives include testbeds, pilot projects, interoperability experiments and interoperability support services — all designed to encourage rapid development and mobilization of OGC standards.

    This leading-edge standards work has enormous potential and value for testbed stakeholders — both technology users and technology providers. Shared investment in spatial standard prototype solutions brings improved sharing and integration of spatial information, which has widespread and longstanding value for the testbed sponsors and for society at large.

    Technology providers gain market exposure, market intelligence and a chance to quickly take advantage of the business opportunities that arise with the introduction of new standards and associated technical capabilities.

    Anyone interested in learning more about this opportunity should contact Scott Serich, Director Interoperability Programs ([email protected]). See www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/programs/ip for more information about the Interoperability Program in which OGC testbeds, pilot projects and interoperability experiments are organized, planned and managed.

    Further information regarding Testbed 13 is available here. The CFP is available here.

  • New Cesium Consortium offers open-source virtual globe

    Bentley Systems has been named a co-founder of the new Cesium Consortium, along with Analytical Graphics Inc. (AGI).

    Cesium is an open source, browser-based virtual globe, first developed by AGI in 2011 for the aerospace and defense communities.

    HUB-Robeson Center at Penn State. (Image: Cesium Consortium)
    HUB-Robeson Center at Penn State. (Image: Cesium Consortium)

    Cesium’s performance in streaming very large datasets through a browser to desktops, tablets, and smart phones has enabled it to become the virtual globe of choice for geospatial viewing. The consortium will now enable AGI and Bentley to collaborate on the Cesium roadmap to better accelerate and support the requirements for building infrastructure modeling (BIM) and for owners of infrastructure assets.

    In addition, the consortium will support feature development, priority bug fixes, expansion of outreach efforts, and the hosting of social coding events such as code sprints and bug bashes.

    Beaver Stadium at Penn State. (Image: Cesium Consortium)
    Beaver Stadium at Penn State. (Image: Cesium Consortium)

    Bentley Systems is adopting Cesium to visualize and interact with highly detailed infrastructure engineering models set in the reality context of their surrounding environment. The digital engineering models are created with Bentley’s MicroStation and BIM applications, and the context is provided through reality meshes, created from digital photography and scanning devices using Bentley’s ContextCapture.

    “We are thrilled to join the Cesium Consortium as a founding member,” said Keith Bentley, founder and CTO of Bentley Systems. “I commend AGI for their leadership and vision, not only for creating an open source solution for highly performant 3D web-based applications but, more importantly, for fostering an ecosystem to leverage it. I expect Bentley and our users will build Cesium-based Web clients for immersively viewing BIM models, reality context, asset databases, IoT streams, and myriad other geo 3D services. We look forward to working hand in hand with AGI and future members of the consortium to expand Cesium as an open standard.”

    Bentley’s work to date illustrates the advantages that the infrastructure community can expect from Cesium. Data created with both MicroStation and ContextCapture can be exported to 3D Tiles, an open format developed by the Cesium team to stream massive geo-coordinated 3D datasets. Cesium will enable Bentley users to stream their digital engineering models over the Web to desktop and mobile devices with unprecedented performance and precision.

    “We are very excited to collaborate with Bentley. Bentley shares our vision and technical approach and has already done some fantastic work with Cesium and 3D Tiles,” said Patrick Cozzi, Cesium founder. “Bentley’s support will be key within our submission team proposing 3D Tiles as an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Community Standard.”

    For more information on how to join and accelerate the Cesium Consortium, contact [email protected].

  • New Cesium Consortium offers open-source virtual globe

    Bentley Systems has been named a co-founder of the new Cesium Consortium, along with Analytical Graphics Inc. (AGI).

    Cesium is an open source, browser-based virtual globe, first developed by AGI in 2011 for the aerospace and defense communities.

    HUB-Robeson Center at Penn State. (Image: Cesium Consortium)
    HUB-Robeson Center at Penn State. (Image: Cesium Consortium)

    Cesium’s performance in streaming very large datasets through a browser to desktops, tablets, and smart phones has enabled it to become the virtual globe of choice for geospatial viewing. The consortium will now enable AGI and Bentley to collaborate on the Cesium roadmap to better accelerate and support the requirements for building infrastructure modeling (BIM) and for owners of infrastructure assets.

    In addition, the consortium will support feature development, priority bug fixes, expansion of outreach efforts, and the hosting of social coding events such as code sprints and bug bashes.

    Beaver Stadium at Penn State. (Image: Cesium Consortium)
    Beaver Stadium at Penn State. (Image: Cesium Consortium)

    Bentley Systems is adopting Cesium to visualize and interact with highly detailed infrastructure engineering models set in the reality context of their surrounding environment. The digital engineering models are created with Bentley’s MicroStation and BIM applications, and the context is provided through reality meshes, created from digital photography and scanning devices using Bentley’s ContextCapture.

    “We are thrilled to join the Cesium Consortium as a founding member,” said Keith Bentley, founder and CTO of Bentley Systems. “I commend AGI for their leadership and vision, not only for creating an open source solution for highly performant 3D web-based applications but, more importantly, for fostering an ecosystem to leverage it. I expect Bentley and our users will build Cesium-based Web clients for immersively viewing BIM models, reality context, asset databases, IoT streams, and myriad other geo 3D services. We look forward to working hand in hand with AGI and future members of the consortium to expand Cesium as an open standard.”

    Bentley’s work to date illustrates the advantages that the infrastructure community can expect from Cesium. Data created with both MicroStation and ContextCapture can be exported to 3D Tiles, an open format developed by the Cesium team to stream massive geo-coordinated 3D datasets. Cesium will enable Bentley users to stream their digital engineering models over the Web to desktop and mobile devices with unprecedented performance and precision.

    “We are very excited to collaborate with Bentley. Bentley shares our vision and technical approach and has already done some fantastic work with Cesium and 3D Tiles,” said Patrick Cozzi, Cesium founder. “Bentley’s support will be key within our submission team proposing 3D Tiles as an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Community Standard.”

    For more information on how to join and accelerate the Cesium Consortium, contact [email protected].

  • OGC seeks public comment on conceptual hydrography model

    The membership of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) seeks public comment on its WaterML 2 – Part 3, Surface Hydrology Features Conceptual Model.

    The OGC WaterML 2 – Part 3, Surface Hydrology Features Conceptual Model (HY_Features) is part of an intended ‘OGC WaterML 2’ suite of standards that groups water-related OGC standards. The candidate standard follows Part 1: Timeseries, and Part 2: Ratings, Gaugings and Sections.

    The candidate standard is available for review at portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=72353&version=3. Comments are due by Feb. 16 and should be submitted to [email protected].

    The candidate HY_Features standard defines a common feature model for the identification and description of surface hydrologic features. The feature model is based on established models and patterns in use in the Hydrology domain and endorsed by WMO and UNESCO, such as those documented in the “International Glossary of Hydrology.”

    The candidate HY_Features standard also defines a common conceptual information model for surface hydrologic features independent of their geometric representation and scale. The model describes fundamental relationship types that exist among major components of the hydrosphere. This includes relationships such as hierarchies of catchments, segmentation of watercourses, and topological connectivity of hydrologic features based on the flow and conservation of water.

    The standard is intended to be used to document and share information about real-world objects that are studied in a wide range of hydrologic study types. The original design goal for HY_Features was to link hydrologic information across the scientific and technical programs of organizations with local to global scope, and to assist in discovery, access, and use of hydrologic data from different sources.

    The HY_Features model is designed to support many types of hydrologic information and sub-disciplines. The model supports referencing information about a hydrologic feature across disparate information systems or products, thereby improving data integration within and among organizations.

    Similarly, the model can be applied to cataloging of observations, model results, or other study information involving hydrologic features. The ability to represent the same catchment, river, or other hydrologic feature in several ways is critical for aggregation of cross-referenced or related features into integrated datasets and data products on global, regional, or basin scales.

    Agreement on common concepts and methods is necessary to enable semantic interoperability of hydrologic data and services. The HY_Features model was developed in order to formalize concepts and relationships of hydrologic and hydrographic features using the WMO/UNESCO “International Glossary of Hydrology” as a starting point.

  • OGC seeks public comment on Indexed 3D Scene Layers

    The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is considering start of a new work item for a Community Standard: Indexed 3D Scene Layers (I3S), and is seeking public comment on the work item proposal.

    The I3S delivery format is used to stream 3D geospatial content to mobile, web and desktop clients.

    I3S, initially designed by Esri, was publicly released in April 2015 as an open specification for streaming large, heterogeneous 3D geospatial data sets, including discrete 3D objects, large continuous meshes, 3D vector points, point clouds, and other content. I3S is designed from the ground up to be cloud, web and mobile friendly.

    The I3S conceptual model is implemented using JSON. There is also an I3S Scene Service REST API specification for accessing I3S resources as endpoints. I3S is designed to stream very large 3D datasets and is designed for performance and scalability.

    A document has been prepared that provides a justification to the OGC Technical Committee (TC) for consideration of I3S as a Community standard. This justification, along with the submitted candidate Community standard, will form the basis for TC review and vote to approve the start of the Community standard process.

    Comments should be submitted to [email protected] by December 16.

  • OGC requests comments on proposed Quality of Service and Experience DWG

    The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) requests comments on the charter for a proposed Quality of Service and Experience (QoSE) Domain Working Group (DWG).

    Spatial data now plays a critical role in the smooth functioning of contemporary society. From aiding emergency workers during crises to empowering businesses to make informed decisions, the reliable availability of the spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) that provide this critical spatial information is more important than ever.

    Yet, despite their critical nature, SDIs may suffer from sub-optimal configuration, malfunctioning hardware, or other factors that ultimately affect the accessibility of that data.

    The closely related fields of Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) deal with estimating, reporting, and improving the experienced quality of communication between the components of distributed systems to inform the SDI users of the suitability of the service for the users’ needs.

    Organizations must establish a reliable SDI and measure, improve, and communicate information about QoS criteria — such as availability, performance, and capacity of SDI components — to end users. Mature tools for measuring and analyzing the QoS of these SDI components do exist, but there is little to no support for a standardized way of communicating the expected QoS level of the services to the end users and/or their analysis tools.

    The OGC QoSE DWG will provide a forum for discussing the evaluation of the QoS and QoE of an SDI as whole, and, when appropriate, propose corrections and enhancements to the existing OGC Standards (or externally governed standards) and guidance to make it easier to improve the experienced quality of Spatial Data Services.

    Further, the QoSE DWG will provide a forum for presenting, discussing, and sharing knowledge about evaluating and improving the QoS and QoE of Spatial Data Services from the perspective of the applications and organizations relying on these services for delivering timely and accurate spatial information to the end users.

    The draft charter for the QoSE DWG is available for download. Comments are requested by Nov, 15 and can be submitted to [email protected].

  • OGC requests participation in its marine working group

    The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is calling for public participation in its newly established Marine Domain Working Group (Marine DWG).

    The Marine DWG was established to address applicability of the OGC standards baseline with regards to marine geospatial data, and to ensure knowledge is exchanged effectively between the relevant standards organizations, the OGC membership, and the broader geospatial community.

    Geospatial data in the marine domain has been successfully standardized for navigational purposes by hydrographic agencies for many years. This has allowed mariners to safely navigate oceans, ports and waterways anywhere on earth.

    However, the core data that support this activity is now in demand for a much wider range of applications, including environmental protection, emergency response, offshore energy, fisheries and more. As such, interoperability of this data is more important than ever before.

    While this group will not create new standards, it will be an open forum to discuss and understand any issues, concerns, or barriers to interoperability with the aim to ensure that marine data can be used effectively by the wider community.

    The OGC is looking for interested parties to assist the Marine DWG in achieving its goals. Details on the Marine Domain Working Group are available, along with the charter. Interested parties can join the email list.

  • OGC requests comment on revision of its GWML2 specification

    The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is requesting comments on the WaterML 2: Part 4 – GroundWaterML 2 (GWML2) candidate standard.

    GWML2 provides an encoding for data involved in the study and use of groundwater. The candidate standard includes conceptual and logical models as well as an XML-based encoding schema.

    GWML2 is part of the larger WaterML2.0 suite of standards coordinated in an initiative within the joint World Meteorological Organization (WMO) / OGC Hydrology Domain Working Group to address standards development and interoperability of hydrological information systems at an international level.

    The GWML2 standard is motivated by five usage scenarios that focus on commercial uses (drilling water wells), policy uses (managing aquifers), environmental uses (protecting ecosystems), scientific uses (groundwater modeling) and technical uses (data interoperability).

    GWML2 consists of six modules including:

    1. core entities (aquifers and groundwater bodies)
    2. groundwater constituents (biologic, chemical, and material)
    3. groundwater flow
    4. water wells and groundwater monitoring
    5. water well  construction, and
    6. aquifer testing.

    Two OGC Interoperability Experiments were performed to test and enhance GroundWaterML capabilities, which resulted in the first version of GWML2. Further content was developed in conjunction with contributors from North America,Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

    The document is available for public comment at this link. Comments are open until June 17.

  • OGC announces oil spill response recommended practice

    Oil-spill

    A new recommended practice has been issued for GIS and mapping professionals responding to an oil spill.

    The document — the final report of a joint project — guides professionals in using GIS technology and geospatial information to form a “common operating picture” for a spill response, so various organizations can deal with it effectively.

    According to the report, the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico showed the need for a coordinated response based on timely geographic data.

    The International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP) through the Geomatics Committee and IPIECA (the global oil and gas industry association for environmental and social issues) issued the recommended practice in cooperation with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and Resource Data.

    Officially named the OGC IOGP/IPIECA Recommended Practice for a Common Operating Picture for Oil Spill Response, the document is the final report of the IOGP/IPIECA Joint Industry Project to produce a recommended practice for GIS/mapping in support of oil spill response and for the use of GIS technology and geospatial information in forming a Common Operating Picture (COP) for management of the response.

    “The report lays the groundwork for coordinated activities by multiple stakeholders that need to come together quickly to respond to a spill,” said Rob Cox, Technical Director, IPIECA. “Having the report endorsed as an OGC Best Practice gives it the authority it needs to act as a focal point in support of that coordination.”

    As stated in the report:

    “Responding to an oil spill requires access to and understanding of many types of information. Effective, coordinated operations for the response are based on a shared, common picture of the situation. Interoperability provides shared situational awareness of the crisis and the response activities. What is needed is a common picture of reality for different organizations that have different views of the spill so that they all can deal with it collectively.

    “Recent oil spills have provided lessons learned and recommendations on forming a Common Operating Picture for oil spill response. Through a joint project, industry is responding to the call, moving from recommendations to reusable best practices supported by open standards that can be deployed quickly in any region of the globe.

    “This architecture report is part of the IOGP and IPIECA Oil Spill Response – Joint Industry Project (IOGP–IPIECA OSR-JIP) to produce a recommended practice for GIS/mapping in support of oil spill response and for the use of GIS technology and geospatial information in forming a Common Operating Picture to support management of the response.”

    About the players

    The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is an international consortium of more than 515 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.

    The International Association of Oil & Gas producers (IOGP) is a unique global forum in which members identify and share best practices to achieve improvements in every aspect of health, safety, the environment, security, social responsibility, engineering and operations. IOGP encompasses most of the world’s leading publicly-traded, private and state-owned oil & gas companies, industry associations and major upstream service companies. IOGP members produce more than half the world’s oil and about one third of its gas.

    IPIECA is the global oil and gas industry association for environmental and social issues. IPIECA was formed in 1974 following the launch of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). IPIECA is the only global association involving both the upstream and downstream oil and gas industry on environmental and social issues. IPIECA’s membership covers over half of the world’s oil production. IPIECA is the industry’s principal channel of communication with the United Nations. When IPIECA was set up in 1974 the acronym stood for the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association. In 2009, recognizing that this no longer accurately reflected the breadth and scope of the association’s work, IPIECA stopped using the full title. The association is now known as IPIECA, the global oil and gas industry association for environmental and social issues.

    Resource Data, Inc. (RDI) has been supporting the oil & gas industry with information technology for spill response since 1989. RDI brings unparalleled experience to oil spill response, leading the geographic information system (GIS) and database teams for the Exxon-Valdez spill and more recently the GIS response team in the Macondo/Deepwater Horizon spill. RDI has developed numerous spill response data systems, participated in multiple drills, and developed risk analysis systems for major pipeline networks. Our depth and breadth of expertise in spill preparedness and response uniquely positions RDI to assist in the development of a Common Operating Picture for the oil and gas industry.

  • OGC seeks comment on land and infrastructure standard

    The membership of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) seeks public comment on its candidate OGC Land and Infrastructure Conceptual Model Standard (LandInfra). Deadline for comments is March 2.

    LandInfra defines concepts for land and civil engineering infrastructure facilities.This conceptual standard will provide a basis for one or more implementation standards for encoding infrastructure data. Developers will use the encoding standard to implement software and services that enable users of diverse technologies and vendor platforms to efficiently exchange information about land and civil engineering infrastructure facilities.

    The extended stakeholder community for this standard spans civil engineering (such as road and rail) and surveying; land parcel; facility and asset management; and government information communities. It is applicable throughout the entire facility lifecycle, including planning, design, construction, operations, maintenance, and removal. It represents a seminal venture into GIS-CAD-BIM integration.

    After evaluating the LandXML 1.2 schema, the OGC Land and Infrastructure Domain Working Group (LandInfraDWG) recommended the development of an alternative standard to be part of the OGC standards baseline. With shared interest by the buildingSMART International Infrastructure Room, it was agreed that this would be a concepts-only document — encodings such as GML, IFC, and possibly others would follow as separate implementation standardization efforts. An anticipated GML encoding will be compatible with other GML standards such as CityGML. Having a common underlying Conceptual Model across all LandInfra encodings will help ensure compatibility across multiple encoding standards.

    The OGC is an international consortium of more than 515 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.

  • OpenSensorHub: Tackling a modern geospatial ‘Tower of Babel’

    Last summer at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium, GEO Huntsville held its annual GEOINT workshop including a keynote by NGA (National Geospatial-intelligence Agency) Deputy Director Sue Gordon. One of the sessions, presented by Mike Botts, focused on the OpenSensorHub and related information published on GitHub.

    His topic: clearing the path for use of geospatial-capable devices via the Internet, thus preventing a geospatial Tower of Babel.

    In the mid-80s, I purchased my first personal computer from Sharper Image, a 286 with a monochrome monitor. The PC was not bad for its time, and I learned a lot about personal computing, but hooking up a dot-matrix printer at the time was a nightmare. There were numerous types of printer cables — 25-pin parallel, 36-pin Centronics, 15-pin, etc. Additionally, some printers needed changes to the pin configurations, so nothing about the process was easy.

    Then, after the mechanical connections were made, proper drivers had to be loaded, not to mention operating system and software configuration. Today, you simply plug in a USB cable or go wireless and are off and running thanks to “plug and play.” However, plug and play is only common in popular mass-market devices such as printers, scanners and cameras. Most other devices, even commercial consumer devices, can still present maddening connection challenges.

    One example: About five months ago, I tested more than a dozen different Internet video security cameras for a special project. All the cameras I tested touted quick and easy connection. Some were quite nice, while others were installation torture — I returned those after a few days.

    One well-known consumer brand was especially bad. I spent more than three hours with hard-to-understand tech support in India, and after countless different IP configurations and tests, I gave up. I decided that my remaining life is too short to waste that much time on a poorly designed camera system.

    (By the way, the FLIR FX and Netgear Arlo were my top choices. Both connected fast and easy, both have especially nice cloud applications and both are wireless, including power. The FLIR is rechargeable, but the battery life of the Arlo seems remarkable, although some reviewers differ, especially outdoors and in freezing weather. In my test, after three months of flawless operation indoors, the Arlo is still on the original set of batteries at 60 percent, so it gets my top nod.)

    OpenSensorHub

    What is OpenSensorHub, and what are they doing to help achieve universal plug and play? By their own definition:

    “OpenSensorHub is a license free, open source software platform for geospatial (FOSS4G) sensors that allows you to easily, rapidly and affordably network sensors into a seamless SensorWeb of real-time, location-aware, interoperable, web accessible services. With OpenSensorHub, these OGC compliant SensorWebs can be enabled across all manner of space-based, airborne, mobile, in situ and terrestrial remote sensors — including your basic mobile device. OpenSensorHub finally makes it possible to integrate location-aware sensors into the geospatial mainstream.”

    (FOSS4G — Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial — is an annual recurring global event hosted by OSGeo growing out of the GRASS and MapServer communities. OSGeo — Open Source Geospatial Foundation — promotes open source software and resources. OGC — Open Geospatial Consortium — promotes open geospatial standards for both open source and proprietary software.)

    The OpenSensorHub evolved from the early work of Mike Botts of Botts Innovative Research and Alex Robin of Sensia Software for NASA. They very laboriously designed and developed systems and software to connect sensors and actuators into an interoperable and integrated environment. They also realized that this connectivity and integration process had to become streamlined and not a custom programming effort every time for every device. Thus was born the idea of Sensor Model Language (SensorML) and, thanks to NASA funding in 1999, it became a reality.

    Over the years, many scientists and engineers worked to develop connectivity for devices that could be queried and controlled through the Internet, called the Internet of Things (IoT). However, a key missing element of IoT was location awareness, so in 2000, SensorML was brought to the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and served as a catalyst for the creation of a suite of open standards to support location-enabled discovery, access and tasking of sensors through web services and XML encodings. They named it the OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards, or SWE for short.

    The SWE standards, now in version 2.0, have been adopted worldwide supporting scientists, emergency responders and the military. Although SWE opened the door to geospatial integration, much work still remains to achieve true plug-and-play connectivity of thousands of devices. In my mind, SWE is standardizing communication protocols between sensor and actuator devices, much like USB standardized interactions between disparate devices.

    However, what really enables us to plug in a USB cable and have instant and effortless communication between various devices, is the software and hardware that implement the USB standard protocols. This, in essence, is the focus of the OpenSensorHub community, to provide open software and hardware that fully implement the SWE vision and enable us to have effortless interaction between IoT devices.

    This is also where the OpenSensorHub community needs your help. In addition to helping improve the significant capabilities of the OpenSensorHub Core, the OpenSensorHub community is looking for those interested in deploying sensors and in developing adaptors and adaptor technologies for adding new sensors, actuators, and processes.

    If you’d like to learn more about the technology and ways that you can contribute, check out the OpenSensorHub website or contact the team at [email protected].

    Other useful links include demo videos and source code.

  • OGC announces Arctic Spatial Data Infrastructure Project

    The Arctic SDI Pilot is sponsored by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and Natural Resources Canada. The goal is to demonstrate to Arctic stakeholders the diversity, richness and value of a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) based on web services and standardized exchange formats in helping address critical issues impacting the Arctic.

    Stakeholders include national and pan-Arctic science and monitoring organizations and decision makers engaged in Arctic research, social and economic policy, and environmental management. The organizations participating in the ArcticSDI Pilot will document and publicize best practices that can support a rich network of web-accessible data and service resources for the Arctic.

    The pilot has two phases.

    Phase 1, an OGC Interoperability Program Concept Development study, began in December 2015. In Phase 1, project planners are building an inventory of currently available Arctic geospatial data layers and web services and defining the Arctic SDI architecture. This work will be supported by partners engaged in industry, research, and numerous jurisdictions. A Request for Information will be published in January 2016 to elicit further ideas, experiences, and projects in industry, research institutions and public administration to make maximal use of the ArcticSDI and to develop it further.

    The Arctic SDI Pilot Phase 1 will also provide direct input into OGC’s major Testbed 12 Interoperability Program initiative. USGS has indicated that sponsor funding will be made available for Testbed 12 to test and further develop components identified in the Arctic SDI pilot. Through this collaboration, arctic stakeholders and the Arctic SDI will leverage and benefit from the leading-edge interoperability research, development and outreach that is ongoing in the OGC’s series of major testbeds.

    All findings from Phase 1 will serve as input for Phase 2, which will be an OGC Interoperability Program Pilot Project. OGC pilot projects apply and test OGC Standards in operational applications using Standards Based Commercial Off-the-Shelf (SCOTS) products that implement OGC Standards. Pilot projects provide an operational implementation so that users and technology developers can collaborate and learn how to better address their requirements using standards-based architectures.

    To articulate the value of interoperability via standards, technology provider participants will implement the recommended Arctic SDI architecture in support of Arctic policy scenarios. A video will be produced to engage policymakers on the benefits of integrating diverse data utilizing Arctic SDI standards and information management best practices.

    The OGC is an international consortium of more than 515 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.