Blogs

In the 200 years since the beginning of the industrial revolution, urbanisation has been occurring at an exponential rate – representing the largest impact humans have had on the planet. Infrastructure development and maintenance is in need of major investment, estimated to be on the order of $24 trillion over the next couple of decades – and most of the funding will have to come from the private sector. The World Economic Forum estimates that we will have to build the same urban capacity (housing, infrastructure and facilities) in the next 40 years

Last week in Austin, Texas, there was a meeting of the OGC members who are planning an OGC North American Forum. People working in organizations representing Canada, Mexico and the United States of America came together to outline the goals and the formulation of the forum. You are probably wondering what this has to do with the Middle East. Well, quite a lot actually.

This year's Free and Open Source Software for GIS conference will take place in Dessau (Germany) from 20-22 March. [1] 
 
In recent years it has been a successful approach to combine the OSGeo conference with the Open Street Map

The European Commission's ISA (Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations) programme invites the public to provide input on the important steps towards improving interoperability across Europe. In an open review process, citizens are invited to comment on three fundamental data entities: Core Person Vocabulary, Core Business Vocabulary, Core Location Vocabulary. [1]

Under INSPIRE, to improve environmental policy making in Europe, Member States must make available in a consistent format spatial datasets within the scope of the Directive, and create services for accessing these datasets.

Over the past decade, location data and spatial analytics have played a transformative role in addressing a number of global issues. My interest has focused on improving public health and sustainable communities through improved sharing of geospatial information.

 
OGC member representatives and staff attend many conferences, trade shows and events where location counts. For example, this month, OGC staff have presented at the India Geospatial Forum, the European Location Framework (ELF) Meeting, and the ESRI US Federal User Conference. If you are attending an event and speaking about the OGC, please ask us to add the event to our Events calendar or consider becoming part of the OGC Speakers’ Bureau.

David Schell, who founded the OGC and who was for many years the OGC's president, CEO and chairman, was presented with a “Making a Difference” Award by Jack Dangermond, Esri's president, last week at the Esri Federal GIS Conference. Dangermond opened the conference by presenting the award.

As part of our campaign to inform companies in the mobile industry about the value of the OGC's standards and standards process, we have recently revised our "Mobile Internet and Location Services" page on the OGC website. We hope that you will take a moment to review it and provide us with your feedback. It has been written for you.