Wayland, MA, USA, September 30, 2008. At the September meeting of the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC(R)) in Norcross, Georgia, Dr. Mike Botts received the OGC's tenth annual Kenneth D. Gardels Award (http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/awards). The Gardels Award, a gold medallion, is awarded to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to advance OGC's vision of geospatial information fully integrated into the world's information systems.
Michael Botts, Ph.D., University of Alabama in Huntsville, was the central figure in the Sensor Model Language (SensorML) (http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/sensorml) development effort before he introduced SensorML into the OGC Technical Committee process in 2000. Once he began working with other members in the OGC, he organized what became known as the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) (http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/markets-technologies/swe) effort, orchestrating the development and adoption of today's suite of SWE standards. While Mike was himself responsible for a considerable amount of the technical work, he enlisted the help of many other multi-agency, multi-university, and multi-national experts whose knowledge, viewpoints and institutional influence have contributed to the success of SWE. He has played a major role in coordinating with other sensors standards groups, including the IEEE 1451 (http://ieee1451.nist.gov/) Standards Working Group.
Mark Reichardt, president and CEO of OGC, said, "Through Mike's leadership and commitment, OGC has advanced a tremendously important open standards framework that enables the discovery and tasking of sensors, as well as access to and fusion of sensor information — referenced by location and time — for improved understanding and decision making. SWE extends the benefits of open standards to include a vast resource of networked sensors. Sensors provide a critical link between the real world and the digital world. SWE has become a key element in the global standards infrastructure that will support science, engineering and management throughout this century and beyond.
The Gardels Award is given annually in memory of Kenneth Gardels, a founding director of OGC and OGC's former director of academic programs. Mr. Gardels coined the term "Open GIS," and devoted his life to the humane and democratic uses of geographic information systems. He died in 1999.
The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 365 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. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/.
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