Wayland, MA, June 11, 2009. The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC®), the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) are conducting a Climate Challenge Integration Plugfest (CCIP) to be launched at the FOSS4G (Free, Open Source Software for Geomatics) Conference in Sydney, Australia, 20-23 October, 2009 (http://2009.foss4g.org).

The OGC is seeking CCIP sponsors. Prospective sponsors are invited to contact the OGC to discuss providing requirements and resources. Sponsors will be involved in developing the CCIP test plan and the plugfest event. Participation is open to all software vendors, programmers and system integrators regardless of whether their software is open source or proprietary. For a more complete description of the CCIP visit http://external.opengis.org/twiki_public/bin/view/ClimateChallenge2009/WebHome. Plugfest Policies and Procedures will be published shortly.

Louis Hecht, Director of Global Business Development at OGC, said, “The CCIP and its follow on activities will demonstrate standards-based interoperability between applications used for climate change. The climate change community has much to gain from using the GEOSS architecture (http://www.earthobservations.org) and implementation plans for the Global Observing System for Climate (http://www.gosic.org/ios/GCOS-main-page.htm), which employ OGC standards. CCIP is an easy and convenient way for the climate change and technology communities to work on a one to one basis.”

Companies or individuals interested in sponsoring or participating in the CCIP should contact Greg Buehler . OGC will hold two Sponsor conference calls convenient for the Near East and Asia Time zones and another convenient for North/South America and European Time Zones. These will be announced on the CCIP website and to those who express interest to the OGC.

The OGC® (http://www.opengeospatial.org/) is an international consortium of more than 380 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.

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) (http://osgeo.org) has been created to support and build the highest-quality open source geospatial software. The foundation's goal is to encourage the use and collaborative development of community-led projects, data development and education.