Blogs

Testbed-14, the biggest Innovation Program initiative executed by OGC in 2018, came to an end last week at ESA/ESRIN in Frascati, Italy with a final demonstration. 

2018 was another productive year for OGC, as well as a year of adaptation to a rapidly changing global location information and technology marketplace. I am writing to share with you a few of our major accomplishments in 2018.

Braving heavy snowfall, and overcoming subsequent flight delays, more than 140 key standards leaders from industry, academia, and government attended last week’s Technical Committee (TC) Meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. The meeting was hosted by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). This TC Meeting also featured an Energy Summit, a special IndoorGML-hosted open session, a wrap-up of the Environmental Linked Features Interoperability Experiment (ELFIE), and more.

With geospatial technologies becoming increasingly mainstream, there has been a growing need for OGC to provide a way for individuals to prove their expertise in the application of OGC standards. As such, OGC staff have been developing the infrastructure required to deliver an OGC e-Learning program that includes certification of successful completion of examinations that focus on OGC standards. Enrolment will begin on December 17, 2018.

GeoPackage is often seen as a container that stores geospatial information, but at its core, GeoPackage is simply a SQLite database. This opens up a realm of possibilities to interact with and exploit its contents. We can incorporate advanced analysis into our data, or augment with other data types like basemaps, elevation, and other forms of media, all within the same package.

Usefully, GeoPackage can even accomplish offline Network Routing. Here's how.

After 7 years, an OGC Technical Committee (TC) meeting has again come to Germany, this time from the 10-13 September 2018 in Stuttgart - more or less the backyard I grew up in. More than 200 people attended our 108th TC Meeting, held at and hosted by the Hochschule für Technik Stuttgart (HfT Stuttgart).  

The week saw the usual blend of excellent meetings, an Ice Breaker in the Student’s Bar Block 4, a Pub Quiz where you could check your knowledge about German and Stuttgart culture, politics, and trivia, as well as the Geospatially Interoperable Games and Simulations (GIGS) Summit, the SensorThings API Summit, the kick-off of the Citizen Science Interoperability Experiment, and the annual OGC Gardel’s Award presentation - this year’s recipient being Joan Masó from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (CREAF).

In September 2018, the OGC/WMO Hydrology Domain Working Group (HDWG) held its ninth annual workshop marking ten years of successful collaboration between the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and OGC in hydrology and informatics. The working group has generated interoperability experiments, engineering reports, discussion papers, best practice documents, and four approved OGC standards - part of the WaterML2 suite. 

After almost 18 years with OGC, 14 years as President, I plan to transition to part-time work with OGC early next year. In my new capacity, I will focus on strategic opportunity development in the areas of membership value and growth, and the advancement of key programs and initiatives in support of OGC’s technology and marketplace priorities.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time as OGC’s President and CEO, and I am honored to have been able to serve the geospatial and standards communities in this capacity. This transition is something that I have carefully considered for some time, and I believe that it is time for new leadership to help take OGC to the next step in its evolution.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of ApacheCon. For the last several years, we’ve had a strong representation at Apache from projects in the Geospatial sciences space. Just as collaboration is so important in the sciences, it is at Apache, and Apache seems to be a great fit for Geospatial projects, giving an open, collaborative way to work on the code that matters to Geospatial scientists, across the boundaries of corporations or research organizations. Through these projects, the ASF has forged a great relationship with OGC, and for the last couple of years we’ve had Geospatial tracks at ApacheCons in Vancouver, Seville, and Miami. This year at ApacheCon North America, in Montreal, we once again are excited to be featuring a track of Geospatial-focused talks, in cooperation with OGC.

As part of its Innovation Program, OGC invited international experts to two sessions at this year’s International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) in sunny, hot Valencia, Spain, the week of July 23rd.