OGC Student Map App Challenge 2013 Sponsored By Google

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) announces the OGC Student Map App Challenge, sponsored by Google, an OGC Principal Member. The Student Map App Challenge is a contest for students who have programming skills and an interest in maps and location services.

Open standards from the OGC unlock the potential of the "spatial Web," creating opportunities for app developers to make all kinds of location information available to users, independent of platform. The OGC has launched the Student Map App Challenge to make entrepreneurial students aware of the enormous social and commercial potential of these open standards.

Three winning applicants will receive an OGC Student Map App Challenge Award and the opportunity to have their apps featured on the OGC website and in other media channels. The first place winner will:

    - Receive the award at their choice of the next year's OGC Technical Committee meetings (http://www.opengeospatial.org/event?category=ogctcpc), held quarterly in cities around the world. OGC will pay for travel, accommodations and meals.

   - Receive a Nexus Tablet donated by Google.

   - Receive a two-year OGC membership for the student's academic institution

   - Have a dedicated award page on the OGC website and be cited in an OGC press release.

Applicants and their apps will receive the attention of the OGC's 480 public sector and private sector members – government organizations, NGOs, corporations and universities around the world.

Apps can make use of hundreds of public and private sector map data sources that are accessible through server-side implementations of OGC standards. These include weather, navigation, demographics, sensors, webcams, commercial establishments, hydrology, bird counts, accident statistics and many other kinds of data. The OGC Student Map App Challenge page provides search tools that can be used to find these existing OGC service instances. Most of these have no restrictions or few restrictions on their use, and thus they provide countless opportunities for mapping apps and location service apps.

Students don't need to rely on others' data, however. Sources of spatial data that are not now accessible through OGC's open interfaces and encodings can be made accessible by students who develop server interfaces as well as client apps.

Students must register by 15 June 2013 and submit their apps by 15 July 2013. Contestants and the public will be notified of the results on 30 August 2013.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 480 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 Student Map App Challenge page for details.

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Free Health Mapping Webinar from OGC

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 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.

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OGC and EuroGeographics cooperate to advance European Spatial Data Infrastructure

OGC and EuroGeographics cooperate to advance European Spatial Data Infrastructure

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and EuroGeographics recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to promote interoperability through open standards to benefit the European geospatial community. The two organisations both seek to promote compatible, standards-based Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) from the local to global level, and the OGC is positioned to help EuroGeographics support a broad range of European stakeholders responding to Europe's INSPIRE Directive.

Both organisations will work cooperatively on outreach and communications to raise the awareness, acceptance, and implementation of open standards and related educational programs and best practices. This will include activities such as participation in international webinars; publishing papers on implementations; documenting Return on Investment; and examination and discussion of legal and policy issues associated with the use of spatial information and associated technologies. The two organisations will also work to identify, plan and convene joint workshops, conference sessions and symposia.

In addition, EuroGeographics and the OGC will seek funding and in-kind resources to advance joint OGC testbeds, pilot projects, and interoperability experiments, with a focus on advancing the European Location Framework.

"As an international standards organisation, OGC recognises the importance of regional requirements for interoperability," said Mark Reichardt, President and CEO of the OGC.

"This partnership will help OGC better understand and address the interoperability challenges facing leading mapping, land registry and cadastre organisations across Europe as they work to provide timely, accurate and useful geospatial information in support of a range of local to international challenges."

"With technology driving geographical information into the mainstream, the development of SDIs to underpin services is crucial and this partnership will play an important role in maximising the use and benefits of the authoritative, definitive and high quality data provided by our members,” commented EuroGeographics’ Secretary General and Executive Director, Dave Lovell.

“It builds upon a well established and productive relationship between the two organisations, most recently seen in an interoperability experiment built on the ESDIN project’s best practice which demonstrated that Shibboleth, which is open source software based on open standards, can be used to set up secure geospatial services that comply with the INSPIRE Directive and OGC standards."

EuroGeographics

EuroGeographics is a not-for-profit organization and the membership association for the European national mapping, land registry and cadastral agencies. It currently brings together 56 members from 44 countries. EuroGeographics‘ members are developing an infrastructure to integrate their national data – including topographic and land information – to deliver the definitive pan-European location framework for a wide range of uses.

By sharing best practice and creating standard data specifications and policies, EuroGeographics aims to ensure that members’ individual geographical databases are compatible and can interact with one another. This will provide Europe with the high quality geographical information it needs to develop policies and legislation for the environment, business competitiveness, public services, legal systems, security and more.

Visit EuroGeographics‘ website at: http://www.eurogeographics.org

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Open Geospatial Consortium Needs Public Comment

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 here. 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.

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OGC Spatial Law and Policy Summit 2009

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) announces that it will hold a Spatial Law and Policy Summit at The Westin Washington, D.C. City Center on October 7, 2009. Professionals from the government and private sector whose work involves laws and policies related to geospatial technology are invited to register and attend.

This unprecedented event will feature talks and panel discussions by experts familiar with the wide range of legal and policy issues associated with growth in consumer and business applications of geospatial systems, software and services. The growing use of Earth browsers, satellite navigation devices in cars and PDA’s, location-based services associated with cell phones, business intelligence, social networking and satellite tracking of vehicles and equipment raises a number of issues concerning privacy, intellectual property rights, liability, and national security. As the speakers will explain, in many cases, the existing legal and policy framework is inadequate to provide governments, businesses and consumers clear guidance on these issues.

The Summit will be chaired by OGC director and Executive Committee member Kevin Pomfret, a Richmond, Virginia based attorney who has written and spoken extensively on spatial law and technology.

To learn more, visit the OGC Spatial Law and Policy Summit website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/event/091007ets.

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European Space Agency: OGC Standards in Major Program

The European Space Agency (ESA) has implemented OGC’s geospatial interoperability standards in interfaces and encodings that are essential parts of the Heterogeneous Mission Accessibility (HMA) initiative. HMA is ESA's interoperability framework for coordinated data discovery and access set up in collaboration with the European and Canadian Space Agencies of the GSCB. HMA will be exploited within the Global Monitoring for the Environment and Security activity (GMES) to ensure interoperability among some 40 different Earth Observation satellite missions. GMES is the European Initiative for the establishment of a European capacity for Earth Observation. The main objective of GMES is to monitor and better understand our environment.

ESA's most recent HMA contract, awarded to EOX IT Services GbmH -- an Austrian company leading a consortium that includes GIM from Belgium, Jacobs University Bremen from Germany and Spot Image from France -- is "HMA Follow On – Online Data Access." Under this contract, an Earth Observation extension to the OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS) Interface Standard will be submitted to the OGC, possibly leading to a community-specific profile.

To foster industrial implementation of the standard in products and broad uptake of those products in the marketplace, the contract has as one of its deliverables an open source software implementation of the EO-WCS.

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Free Webinar Demo of OWS-6 Interoperability Testbed Results

On Wednesday, April 29, 2009, from 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. EDT, the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) will conduct a free webinar demonstrating results from the OGC Web Services, Phase 6 (OWS-6) testbed activity.

In October, 2008 OWS-6 participants began a set of parallel development activities organized around geospatial interoperability requirements in the following areas:

1) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE)

2) Geo Processing Workflow (GPW)

3) Decision Support Services (DSS)

4) Aeronautical Information Management (AIM)

5) Compliance and Interoperability Test and Evaluation (CITE).

The webinar will demonstrate OWS-6 achievements involving Web services architecture and interoperability solutions that are documented in OGC Engineering Reports. The plan is to release the Engineering Reports as OGC public documents in July, 2009. The SWE, GPW and DSS portions of the demo will show how standards-enabled interoperability supports coordinated responses to a hypothetical disaster scenario involving an airport hostage crisis.

OWS-6 sponsors include:

US Dept. of Defense Joint Program Executive Office - Chemical and Biological Defense (JPEO-CBD)
Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) GeoConnections
US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA)
EUROCONTROL - The European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation
EADS N.V. Defence and Communications Systems (DCS)
US Geological Survey (USGS)
BAE Systems
ERDAS, Inc.
Lockheed Martin Corporation

For more information and to register for the free webinar, go here.

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NOAA: Principal Member in the OGC

The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announced that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has become a Principal Member of the OGC.

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

Mark Reichardt, President, OGC, said "NOAA's move to Principal Membership in the OGC reflects the significant value the Agency places on the OGC international standards and programs as a means of improving information sharing and reducing costs. By becoming a Principal Member, NOAA increases its leadership role among the OGC's government, industry, academic and research members, who are working worldwide to tackle interoperability challenges related to monitoring, forecasting and predicting of weather, climate, and ocean processes."

Ken McDonald, Data Management Architect of NOAA's Satellite and Information Service, Technical, Planning & Integration (TPI) Program Office, said, "the motivation to raise our level of membership was really driven by the widespread and growing interest in OGC specifications and activities found in numerous NOAA programs and projects from across the agency. As a Principal Member, we look forward to becoming more engaged with OGC's many relevant and important initiatives."

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PCI Geomatics, OGC Strategic Member

The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announced that PCI Geomatics has upgraded their OGC membership level to Strategic membership. PCI Geomatics (as PCI Remote Sensing) was one of the eight charter members of OGC at its founding in 1994.

Strategic Membership is the highest level of OGC membership. To help advance OGC programme objectives, Strategic Members provide significant resources in the form of funding and in-kind resources. As a Strategic Member, PCI Geomatics will contribute to the OGC process at a high level to help realise the full societal, economic and scientific benefits of integrating sophisticated but easy-to-use geospatial technology into consumer, commercial and institutional activities worldwide.

"Our original enthusiasm for the OGC vision of interoperability turns out to have been well-founded," said Dr. Robert Moses, President and CEO of PCI Geomatics, "and the business case for participation and leadership just keeps improving. We look forward to playing a larger role in the collaborative effort to expand the global consensus standards platform for a growing industry."

Mark Reichardt, OGC President and CEO of the OGC, comments, "We are extremely fortunate to have PCI Geomatics as a Strategic Member of the Consortium. In addition to their continued commitment to advancing OGC standards, PCI will mobilise significant energy and resources to help OGC further globalize its standards and programs in nations and regions where the OGC is underrepresented."

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Earth Observation extension for ebRIM needs comments

The members of the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) have submitted a Request for Comments (RFC) on version 0.2.2 of the Earth Observation (EO) Products Extension Package for ebRIM (ISO/TS 15000-3) Profile of CSW 2.0 (OGC document 06-131).

ebRIM is the electronic business Registry Information Model from the OASIS standards organization. CSW ("Catalog Services - Web") is an OGC standard that specifies a catalogue application profile based on ISO19115:2003/ISO19119:2005 metadata with support for XML encoding per ISO/CD TS 19139 and HTTP protocol binding.)

The EO Products Extension Package for ebRIM Profile of CSW 2.0 draft standard is an OGC Best Practice. It specifies an Application Profile of CSW 2.0 that is based on the OpenGIS Geography Markup Language (GML) Encoding Standard Application Schema for EO Products.

The 30 day public comment period begins January 28, and ends February 27. After the OGC's EO Extension Package Standards Working Group has addressed comments received in response to the RFC, the draft standard will be submitted to the OGC Technical Committee and Planning Committee for their review and possible approval as an adopted OGC Standard.

The RFC can be downloaded from the website.

Comments are due by February 27, 2009.

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Empire Challenge pilot effort -- Calling all researchers

Report: The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is seeking researchers from government agencies, private industry and academia to participate in a pilot programme to examine the suitability and performance of OGC Sensor Web Enablement and OGC Web Services standards for providing open management of and access to sensors of various types.

The Empire Challenge is an annual demonstration sponsored by the U.S. Joint Forces Command and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGIA). It seeks to improve the interoperability of joint and coalition intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance activities.

OGC is an international consortium of more than 365 companies, government agencies and research organizations that develop publicly available geospatial standards. The group demonstrated a common interface during last year’s Empire Challenge that allowed analysts to detect and access sensors from different sources.

The project for this year’s Empire Challenge is to bring those capabilities into the classified environment of the Distributed Common Ground System, the architecture that the armed forces use to share sensor information and other data within the intelligence community.

Proposals are due to OGC by Jan. 14, 2009. Technology deployments will be complete by July 17, 2009, followed immediately by a two-week demonstration phase.

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GEOVIRTUAL now a Strategic Member of OGC

GEOVIRTUAL takes pride in becoming the first European Strategic Member of the leading standards organization in the global geospatial market. The Spanish company GEOVIRTUAL announces at the Valencia OGC Technical Committee meetings, its partnership with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).

The OGC’s mission to advance the development of international standards for geospatial interoperability will be advanced by GEOVIRTUAL’s participation in this process. GEOVIRTUAL seeks to create a decentralized and democratic geospatial system based on the power to share information and on the freedom to choose such information.

The Strategic Member category is the highest level of membership in the OGC, and, apart from GEOVIRTUAL, only the following US institutions and companies participate at this level: NASA (US National Aeronautics and Space Administration), NGA (US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency), USGS (US Geological Survey), Lockheed Martin Corporation, Northrop Grumman Corporation, ERDAS Inc. and BAE Systems - C3i. Organizations including Google and Microsoft belong to OGC at the next level of membership, that of Principal Member.

The technology developed by GEOVIRTUAL is aimed at two different markets: the public in general, through a solution called Glinter, for local searches on the Internet, which puts companies at the forefront of the emerging GeoWeb and Web 3.0; and 3D visualization solutions for the professional GIS market.

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CGDI Interoperability Pilot video

The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC(R)) and GeoConnections announce the release of a video that documents last year's successful interoperability demonstration, a major output of the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure Interoperability Pilot (CGDI IP). GeoConnections sponsored the Pilot, which concluded with a Web Conference that was witnessed live and online by more than 500 people. GeoConnections is a Canadian partnership program whose primary objective is to evolve and expand the CGDI. The CGDI IP was an OGC Interoperability Initiative.

The CGDI Interoperability Pilot video is available in English and French.

CGDI Interoperability Pilot video

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Updated OGC Reference Model, available now

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) announced the completion and availability of Version 2.0 of the OGC Reference Model (ORM). The ORM provides a framework for the ongoing work of the OGC and a guide for those who seek to implement interoperable solutions and applications for geospatial services and data. The ORM focuses on relationships between the documents in the OGC Standards Baseline (SB), which consists of the approved OpenGIS® Abstract and Implementation Standards (Interface, Encoding, Profile, Application Schema) and OGC Best Practice documents.

The ORM provides insight into the current state of the work of the OGC and thus serves as a useful resource for defining architectures for specific applications. It helps prospective members see how they might serve their stakeholders by making a contribution to the OGC process, and it provides overall guidance to developers who are implementing one or more of the OpenGIS Standards. The ORM contains numerous links to OGC resources that provide more detailed information. It is the result of extensive development by hundreds of OGC Member Organizations and tens of thousands of individuals who have contributed to the development of OGC standards since 1994.

The OGC(R) is an international industry consortium of more than 365 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available interface specifications. OpenGIS(R) Specifications support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. The specifications empower technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications.

Check it out here, Version 2.0 of the OGC Reference Model.

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OGC Spatial Data Quality Working Group Survey Results

The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announced today that OGC members Blue Marble and 1Spatial have released the results of the OGC Spatial Data Quality Survey. The results are now available here.

The OGC Technical Committee's Spatial Data Quality Working Group,under the leadership of Blue Marble (www.bluemarblegeo.com) President Patrick Cunningham (Vice Chair), and Seb Lessware (Chair) of 1Spatial (www.1spatial.com), developed the survey and distributed it to thousands of geospatial data suppliers and users around the world. The goal of the survey was to provide user feedback to guide the OGC's development of appropriate terms of quality measure and a robust spatial data quality model.

"We are particularly pleased to have been involved in this effort to gather feedback from members of the geospatial community," commented Patrick Cunningham. "With this data, we will be able to move forward with the Working Group's directive of researching the best framework for spatial data quality standards."

The mission of the Data Quality Working Group of the OGC Technical Committee is to provide a forum for describing an interoperable framework or model for OGC quality assurance measures and Web services. Standards developed on this framework will enable more effective and reliable evaluation, sharing and use of geospatial information; improve data analysis and ultimately influence policy decisions. In order to achieve the Working Group's goal, it was necessary at the outset to poll organizations involved in the marketplace to ascertain what they mean when they use the term "spatial data quality."

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OGC Spatial Data Infrastructure 1.0 extension for ArcGIS 9.2 dekstop

The Carbon Project is pleased to announce the addition of the world's most powerful geospatial security framework to its Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) 1.0 extension for ArcGIS 9.2 desktop. SDI 1.0 is a selected suite of OGC standards endorsed by government agencies to promote interoperability.

The Secure SDI extension will be released this month as part of the CarbonArc PRO 1.6 update.

The extension provides role-based access control
and feature-level security for SDI in coordination with distributed security frameworks from CubeWerx, a leading provider of spatial data warehousing and OGC-compliant Web services software products.

"The combination of CarbonArc PRO and Secure SDI functionality answers one of the primary challenges in deploying real-world systems based on OGC standards - making sure critical geospatial information goes to the people who are supposed to have it," said Jeff Harrison, President and CEO of The Carbon Project.

Secure SDI provides unprecedented functionality including role-based access control, security by geographic area, security by OGC operations, and
security down to specific geospatial features. The technology is an important advancement for the geospatial community and can support coalition
operations, cross-border SDI and regulatory interoperability between organizations.

"Secure SDI is vital because OGC standards are strongly influencing development of the national and international SDIs, especially data access
and collaborative production operations. But these efforts have reached the point where broad acceptance is dependent on securing online data resources including access control to OGC data services. These requirements will continue to increase as simple data access transitions into collaborative data management based on standards like the Web Feature Server Transactional (WFS-T) from OGC," says Harrison.

CarbonArc PRO has been selected by multiple government customers and has been featured in many recent interoperability demonstrations.

CarbonArc PRO was developed with CarbonTools PRO, an extension to the Microsoft .NET Framework allowing software developers to add advanced geospatial interoperability to any Microsoft Windows application.

CarbonArc PRO 1.6 with Secure SDI will be available this month.

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GEOSS Sensor Web Workshop, a success

The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announced that on May 15 and 16, 2008, more than 40 researchers, members of the GEO (Group on Earth Observations) Secretariat and representatives of the European Commission met at the GEO offices in Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss concepts, ongoing activities, and requirements for future progress in the domain of Sensor Webs ( http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/markets-technologies/swe). Organized by GEO Task DA-07-04 (Sensor Web Enablement), led by the Meraka Institute in South Africa and supported by the GEO Secretariat, the workshop was also supported and endorsed by: the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Pretoria, South Africa; the European Commission through the SANY and OSIRIS integrated projects; and the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC).

GEO’s GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems) seeks to integrate heterogeneous information systems across technical, semantic, institutional and political boundaries to enable continuous monitoring of the Earth and access by a wide variety of researchers to a vast shared set of information resources. Requirements are derived from applications in domains such as disasters, health, energy, and climate.

The great variety of Sensor Web research, implementation and usage in various application domains was reflected in 25 presentations given by workshop participants ( http://www.ogcnetwork.net/node/383). Most of the implementations demonstrated use of open source software by the open source initiative 52°North ( http://www.52north.org). The importance of standards was emphasized.

The next GEOSS Sensor Web workshop will take place in early 2009 in Japan.

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 365 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OpenGIS® 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.

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Call for Participation in Global Earth Observation System of Systems

The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announced that a Call for Participation (CFP) in Phase 2 of the GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems) Architecture Implementation Pilot (AIP) has been issued by the GEO (Group on Earth Observations).

Phase 1 of the AIP demonstrated GEO Portal and Clearinghouse solutions. Phase 2 will establish "operational, research and technical exemplars," services that support the GEOSS Societal Benefit Areas (application domains).

The CFP invites GEO Members and Participating Organizations to:
# Provide components and services relevant to GEOSS "Societal Benefit Areas" (application domains).

# Participate in interoperability testing of the services including use of the GEOSS Common Infrastructure Components in order to validate the architecture.

# Participate in the collaborative refinement of societal benefit scenarios to guide testing, demonstrations and operations of interoperable services.

The CFP document is available at http://www.earthobservations.org/geoss_imp.shtml. Responses to the CFP are requested by 1 September 2008 to support a planning workshop scheduled for 25-26 September 2008 in Boulder, Colorado, USA. To register for the teleconference or ask questions about the CFP, please contact George Percivall, percivall@opengeospatial.org. The OGC efforts in AIP is supported by the European Commission, Northrop Grumman, and ERDAS. Additional information is available at http://www.ogcnetwork.net/AIpilot.

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Open Source Geospatial Foundation Supports CASCADOSS

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) welcomes the initiatives of the CASCADOSS project. It is helping to build solid organisational foundations for those public sector bodies and SMEs which use the Free and Open Source GIS and Remote Sensing projects which OSGeo exists to support.

In carrying out analysis of appropriate software for use in GIS and RS projects relating to the Environment and management of Environmental Information, CASCADOSS is offering a invaluable service to both users and developers of FOSS4G projects.

Documentation and evaluation of software and standards for specific user communities is not a always focus of our software development communities. However, such efforts are necessary to reach our goal of spreading the use of Open Source software and its positive economic / organizational application in to new and broader constituencies. A third-party effort to offer clarity on licensing and future maintenance options to public sectors and SMEs will serve to provide mutual benefit for everyone in the broader FOSS4G community.

An effort like CASCADOSS serves as valuable bridge-building between the free software development community and GIS tools user communities. This is especially helpful for bridging between networks of specialists, scientists and scientific units such as those involved in Europena Union GMES Programme. CASCADOSS also aims to spread information on use of FOSS4G among EU countries with special focus on New Member States. This effort will encourage potential users in the broaden application of FOSS4G solutions.

OSGeo is glad to offer support to CASCADOSS where it can, including promotion of associated events, and re-dissemination of output reports and other documentation. Visit website http://www.cascadoss.eu/

Source : http://www.osgeo.org/

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OGC Announces Another Government Agency Chooses OGC Standards

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

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

NOAA will begin the effort by establishing interoperable access to online databases maintained by the National Weather Service (NWS) National Data Buoy Center (NDBC), the National Ocean Service (NOS) Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services (CO-OPS) and the National Environmental Satellite Data Information Service (NESDIS) CoastWatch Program. This will be accomplished using web service interface and encoding standards developed by the OGC.

"We are pleased to support NOAA in its effort to improve access, integration and use of important ocean observations collected and managed by many organizations," said OGC President and CEO Mark Reichardt. "The use of interoperable standards to study the ocean ecosystem will help to yield a range of environmental, social and economic benefits."

The standards being used are part of OGC's Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) suite of specifications, which enable diverse network-connected sensors and sensor systems to be queried and controlled by remote users. For IOOS, NOAA data providers will implement OGC's Sensor Observation Service, Geography Markup Language (GML) and Observations and Measurements (O&M) specifications to provide data on temperature, salinity, water level, currents, winds and waves.

Source : http://www.opengeospatial.org/

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