OGC Web Services, Phase 7

OWS testbeds are part of OGC’s Interoperability Program, a global, hands-on and collaborative prototyping program designed to rapidly develop, test and deliver proven candidate specifications into OGC’s Specification 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’s sponsoring organizations. OGC Interoperability Initiatives include test beds, pilot projects, interoperability experiments and interoperability support services – all designed to encourage rapid development, testing, validation and adoption of OGC standards.

OWS-7 Sponsors

U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)
U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
EUROCONTROL
EADS Defence Communications Systems (DCS)
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
U.S. Army Geospatial Center (AGC)
U.S. Joint Program Executive Office (JPEO)
BAE Systems
PCI Geomatics
Lockheed Martin

The OWS-7 sponsors are organizations seeking open standards for their interoperability requirements. After analyzing their requirements, the OGC Interoperability Team recommended to the sponsors that the content of the OWS-7 initiative be organized around the following threads:

• Sensor Fusion Enablement (SFE)
• Feature and Decision Fusion (FDF)
• Aviation

Thread scope details are presented below the milestone schedule. 
OGC members who wish to observe OWS-7 may do so upon submission of the OGC Observer Agreement.

Schedule of Events and Milestones

28 October 2009 – The Request for Quotation / Call for Participation was released.  See http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/60. 

1 December 2009 – RFQ/CFP closed; all proposals must be in.

7-11 December – OGC Technical Committee meeting in Mountain View, California USA

10 December, 12:00-15:00 EST – Technical Exchange Meeting #1 (TEM-1) presentation of RFQ responses and participant selection to OWS-7 Sponsors only. (Meeting conducted at OGC TC, Mountain View, California)

21 December, 10:00am-noon EST – TEM-2, for final discussions on participant selection with sponsors.

19-21 January 2010 – OWS-7 Kickoff at George Mason University, Fairfax Virginia campus.

8-12 March 2010 – OGC TC in Frascati, Italy

26 March 2010 – Interim Milestone: Draft Engineering Reports are due, and coordination of cross-thread software components and interfaces (catalog, event architecture, security architecture) must be complete.

9 April 2010 – Draft component implementations are due.

21 May 2010 – Final component implementations are due.

14-18 June 2010 – OGC TC in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA

30 June 2010 – Final drafts of all Engineering Reports and Change Requests are due. Final summary reports from participants are due.

The final OWS-7 Summary Report, OGC document 10-094, can be downloaded here. 

Sensor Fusion Enablement (SFE)

The SFE Thread builds on the OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) framework of standards that has achieved a degree of maturity through previous OWS interoperability initiatives and deployments worldwide. SFE will focus on integrating the SWE interfaces and encodings with workflow and web processing services to perform sensor fusion.  SFE will continue the development of Secure SWE architecture, as well as the interoperability of SWE and Common CBRN Sensor Interface (CCSI).

Emphasis for SFE during this phase of the OWS testbed will be the following:

• Motion Video Fusion. Geo-location of motion video for display and processing. Change detection of motion video using Web Processing Service with rules.
• Dynamic Sensor Tracking and Notification. Track sensors and notify users based on a geographic Area of Interest (AOI). The sensor and the user may be moving in space and time.
• CCSI-SWE Best Practice. Building on OWS-6, develop an ER to be considered by the OGC Technical Committee as a Best Practice.

Feature / Decision Fusion (FDF)

The FDF Thread builds on OWS-6 GPW and DSS work, in particular to advance the state of information cataloguing, Web Processing Services (WPS) profiles, and the Integrated Client. The following task areas have been identified for Feature and Decision Fusion:

• Schema Automation. Transformation from UML to profiles of GML and KML, including generation of constraints.
• Data Discovery and Organization. Use of thematic categories in multi-media data discovery, including augmented metadata for quality of source, fitness for use, and uncertainty of the data values, propagated through usage and workflow.
• Feature and Statistical Analysis. Workflow profiles for feature fusion, including statistical analysis, vector and topological processing. WFS, WMS and WMTS will be used to support statistical mapping.
• Geosynchronization. Web services and client components to support synchronization of geospatial data and updates across a hierarchical Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI).
• Data and Analysis Sharing. The use of OWS Context for collecting links to web services and analysis results.
• Integrated Client. A field-ready client application to support and display sensor information, cataloguing metadata, notification alerts, feature and statistical analysis, and OWS Context. This client will include an embedded WFS server for geosynchronization support.

Aviation Thread

This thread seeks to further develop and demonstrate the use of the Aeronautical Information Exchange Model (AIXM) and the Weather Information Exchange Model (WXXM) in an OGC Web Services environment.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and EUROCONTROL have developed AIXM as a global standard for the representation and exchange of aeronautical information. AIXM uses the OGC Geography Markup Language (GML) tailored to the specific requirements for the representation of aeronautical objects, including the temporality feature that allows for time dependent changes affecting AIXM features. FAA and EUROCONTROL are using AIXM as an integral part of their efforts to modernize their aeronautical information procedures and to transition to a net-centric, global aeronautical management capability. More specifically, AIXM is being used in the net-centric System Wide Information Management (SWIM)-related components of the US NextGen and European Union (EU)’s SESAR programs. Indeed, it is expected that the results of the Aviation Thread of OWS-7 will be contributed to both programs with a focus on recommended OGC specifications that can be applied in the definition and implementation of both SWIM environments. 

WXXM is also jointly developed by FAA and EUROCONTROL, as a proposed standard for the exchange of aeronautical weather information in the context of a net-centric and global interoperable Air Transport System (ATS). WXXM also uses GML tailored to the specific requirements of aeronautical meteorology and is based on the OGC Observation and Measurement Model. WXXM development is harmonized and coordinated with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the organization traditionally responsible for standards in meteorology.

The OWS-7 Aviation Thread will investigate and demonstrate the applicability of AIXM and WXXM along with relevant OGC specifications and web services to applications and tools that support Airline Operations Centers and Flight Dispatch applications. Such applications provide information for representing a Common Operating Picture; supporting flight planning (including General Aviation) and preparation (MET and AIM); calculating weight and balance; estimating fuel requirements; in-flight emergency response; etc. The primary focus in OWS-7 is on ground usage of the information, although provision of information packages to the crew, on the ground and in the air, is also of interest.

To support the above goal, the OWS-7 Aviation Thread will cover the following tasks: