News

Welcome to OGC’s Press Room, your source for geospatial and location news. Here you can find the latest press releases, new blog content, the OGC newsletter, and more.

News in location happens fast, regularly, and often at OGC. Our hand-written news features innovative technologies, impacts in the industry across the globe, key issues, funding opportunities, and much more.

If you haven’t yet, get regular updates and subscribe to our mailing list here, and follow us on social media.

All news (1395 match criteria)

April 12, 2006

OGC Announces Web Mapping Testbed Military Pilot Project

The Web Mapping Testbed Military Pilot Project (WMT MPP) will bring the combined technological skills and problem solving power of over 200 OGC member companies and organizations to the complex interoperability challenges facing next-generation military geospatial infrastructure development.The objectives of the WMT MPP are to: – Incrementally evolve a multinational technology base and vendor pool.- Develop and demonstrate prototype interoperable infrastructures based on OGC Specifications and configuration-controlled commercial components.- Promote interoperable geospatial infrastructure development in classified and unclassified network environments.David Schell, President of OGC explained, The Web Mapping Testbed Military Pilot Project is an excellent opportunity for defense and intelligence organizations to strengthen communications, affect the interoperable technology development process, and reduce the cost of realizing standards-conformant geospatial infrastructures.

April 12, 2006

OGC Announces Wireless Location Services Initiative

The goal of the OpenLS Initiative is to develop standards needed by industry to support implementation of the location services invoked by mobile or wireless Internet devices.OGCs Interoperability Program is well suited to meet the immediate needs of the wireless location services for gateway access to the location content of the Internet.2) Gateway Services that integrate location application services with common mobile terminals, wireless platforms, Internet Protocol (IP) platforms, and/or mobile position determination systems that operate between wireless-IP systems and location application servers.3) OGC Services Framework, or services and content protocols that have been developed and tested in previous OGC testbed and specification initiatives.However, the great social and commercial value offered by Location Services to anyone, anywhere depends upon the implementation of a consistent infrastructure of standard Location Service interfaces.

April 12, 2006

Sam Bacharach Joins OGC Staff

The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announced today that Sam A. Bacharach joined OGCs staff in March as Interoperability Program Manager.In this role, Mr. Bacharach is responsible for the management of testbeds, demonstrations, prototypes, pilot programs, reference implementations, and technology insertion plans that advance OpenGIS standards for geospatial processing.Before he worked for Intergraph, Mr. Bacharach was a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Topographic Officer.Mr. Bacharach had early army experience as a Military Intelligence Officer in the early 1970s in Germany and then as a Combat Engineer in the early 1980s.Mr. Bacharach holds a Bachelor of Science, Journalism and Master of Science Geography from the University of Idaho, Moscow, ID.

April 12, 2006

Jeff Harrison Joins OGC Staff

The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announced today that Jeffrey G. Harrison joined OGCs staff in August as an Interoperability Program Specialist.Mr. Harrison is also responsible for enlisting the support and involvement of US Federal, State and Local Government sectors in OGCs Interoperability Initiatives.Prior to joining OGC, Mr. Harrison was the Program Manager for the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) Web Mapping Technology (WMT) Program.Prior to joining ERDC, Mr. Harrison held various project and program management positions with the U.S. Department of Defense.Mr. Harrison is a regular speaker on interoperable geoprocessing technology at technical conferences, meetings, seminars, and symposia.

April 12, 2006

OGC Names Jeff Burnett VP Operations & Finance

WAYLAND, Mass.–July 10, 2000-The Board of Directors of the Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) recently approved the appointment of Jeff Burnett as Vice President, Operations and Finance.Jeff Burnett joins OGCs staff with over 20 years of experience in the information technology industry, including senior marketing and product management roles in both large and small software and systems companies, including Digital Equipment Corporation and Masscomp.David Schell, president of OGC, said, “OGC is extremely fortunate to have Jeff Burnett assuming these responsibilities in OGC during a period of rapid growth.Jeff brings the kind of experience and perspective we need to make a smooth transition as we expand our presence in the industry.OGCs 225 industry, government, and academic member organizations participate in a consensus process to integrate geoprocessing and location services into the worlds information infrastructures.

April 12, 2006

OGC Web Mapping Testbed Phase 2 RFQ Released

On April 28, 2000 the Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) issued a Request For Quotation (RFQ) and Call for Participation in the Web Mapping Testbed Phase 2, an OGC Interoperability Program Initiative.Like the highly successful first phase of the Web Mapping Testbed, the WMT-2 testbed project will – Employ spiral engineering methodologies with extensive participation of the commercial sector.- Ensure applicability of resulting interface specifications by performing integration of different vendor implementations of the interface specifications in integration experiments.Following the conclusion of WMT-1, testbed sponsors and participants provided requirements and requests for items to be considered during WMT-2.The on-going OGC Web Mapping Testbed Upper-Susquehanna Lackawanna (WMT USL) Pilot Project ( http://www.opengeospatial.org/uslpilot/ ) is also a source of requirements, requests, and new technical components for WMT-2.

April 12, 2006

OpenGIS Web Map Overlay Specification Released

On April 19 the Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) made the new OpenGIS (TM) Web Map Server Interface Implementation Specification available on its public web site ( http://www.opengeospatial.org ).Software with interfaces conforming to this specification will enable automatic overlay, in ordinary web browsers, of map images obtained from multiple dissimilar map servers, regardless of map scale, projection, earth coordinate system or digital format.Already, the OpenGIS Web Map Server Interface Specification works with catalog services defined in the OpenGIS Catalog Services Specification.The development of open standards and specifications will greatly accelerate our ability to access and understand geospatial information from multiple sources.The Web Mapping Team, both the organizations and individuals involved, are to be congratulated on their accomplishment.

April 12, 2006

OGC Calls For Participation In Geospatial Fusion Testbed

The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) today released a Request For Quotation (RFQ) to solicit technology proposals for the OGC Geospatial Fusion Services Testbed.The GFS Testbed Project is designed to support In-Q-Tel and its sponsor, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.This testbed is targeted to automate the fusion of inherent geospatial characteristics into an overall information framework.The interfaces for the automation technologies, which we call the Location Organizer, will form the foundation for future phases.It is the OGCs intention to coordinate this Testbed with the Web Mapping 2 Testbed, an RFQ for that is scheduled for public release on April 28, 2000.

April 12, 2006

OpenGIS Standard Enables Automatic Web Map Overlays

It enables automatic overlay, in ordinary web browsers, of map images obtained from multiple dissimilar map servers.This dramatic breakthrough ushers in the long-awaited integration of where information into information systems.In coming months, vendors of these systems will implement the OpenGIS Web Map Server Interface Specification and other OpenGIS standards in software upgrades and new software.Map and imagery suppliers will make their data available over the Web through these vendors OpenGIS-conformant servers.The OpenGIS Web Map Server Interface Specification works with catalog services defined in the OpenGIS Catalog Services Specification.