20 September 2010. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has issued a Request for Quotations/Call for Participation (RFQ/CFP) to solicit proposals in response to requirements for the Special Activity Airspace (SAA) Dissemination Pilot, sponsored by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA):

•The RFQ/CFP is available at http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/72
•Responses are due by October 18, 2010
•A bidders' teleconference will be held on October 4, 2010.
•The Point of Contact is Nadine Alameh nalameh@opengeospatial.org.

The FAA SAA Dissemination Pilot will extend the SAA SWIM Services to enable the dissemination of SAA information (including updates and schedule changes) to National Airspace System (NAS) stakeholders and other external users via services that implement OGC Web Services (OWS) standards.

In support of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen), the FAA SWIM program seeks to achieve systems interoperability and information management for diverse Air Traffic Management (ATM) systems using Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA). The FAA SWIM capabilities include supporting the exchange of SAA information between operational ATM systems. SAAs include Special Use Airspaces (SUA) – regions of airspace designated for use by the military ensuring no other traffic uses that airspace during scheduled times.

The FAA SAA DisseminationPilot shall

•Build on SAA SWIM Services leveraging the OGC Web Feature Service (WFS), the OGC Feature Portrayal Service (FPS), the (draft) Event Service and the Aeronautical Information Exchange Model (AIXM),
•Support the filtering, access and portrayal of SAA information as well as the notification to subscribed users of SAA updates and schedule changes,
•Support the evolution towards end-to-end automated information flow from the US Department of Defense (DoD) – originators of SAA activation requests – to airlines and other NAS stakeholders.

Navin Vembar, AIM Modernization Segment 2 Program Manager, FAA notes “The FAA SAA Dissemination pilot is an opportunity to work closely with industry to demonstrate that OGC Web Services and international standards facilitate the FAA's efforts to communicate with our stakeholders in an automated manner”. 

OGC pilots are part of OGC's Interoperability Program, a global, hands-on 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. OGC Interoperability Initiatives are designed to encourage rapid development, testing, validation and adoption of OGC standards.

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 395 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards support interoperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact/.

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