Wayland, MA, November 16, 2006 – At a recent Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) seminar, Dan Mandl of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center described how NASA is using the OGC's Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards to simplify the tasking of satellites. “Software services based on open architectures have opened the door to standardized tasking of Earth imaging satellites,” explained Mandl. “With SWE standards, ongoing experiments indicate that NASA can make better use of scarce resources by enabling users to focus on the data products they need rather than on complex satellite control procedures.”
NASA also supported the live demonstration showcasing the NASA Earth Science Gateway as a successful implementation of open standards in support of better decision making.
The Geospatial Information and Technology Association (GITA) co-hosted the Interoperability Day Seminar, which highlighted successful applications of standards-based interoperable geospatial technologies. The event, held October 4, 2006 in Tyson's Corner, Vienna, Virginia included live demonstration of standards based services for coordination of emergency management and response as well as presentations and panel discussions.
Chief Technical Officer of Parsons Brinckerhoff, Doug Eberhard, gave the keynote address, speaking about the complexities of the urban landscape and the need for institutional cooperation backed up by interoperability among information systems. He showed how “supermodels” that integrate geospatial, CAD, visualization, and asset systems can improve decision making and workflows at some of the largest and most complex infrastructure projects in the world today.
Representatives from Oak Ridge National Labs, Canadian Forest Service, U.S. Naval Research Lab, NASA and ESRI explained how their organizations and users benefit from interoperable solutions.
Other presentations were provided by representatives from FM Global, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the University of Texas (UT) at Dallas. FM Global, a major insurer of large buildings, industrial complexes, and facilities around the world, depends heavily on geospatial data and processing to maintain its leadership position in the industry, so it is actively engaged in the integration of geospatial standards with building information model standards. The DHS presentation showed how the US Coast Guard's Shore Infrastructure division has begun to save money by using building information models to enable horizontal process flow through an open architecture based on international standards. Bhavani Thuraisingham of UT focused on geospatial data security on the geospatial semantic Web.
The day wrapped up with a social presented by Gold Sponsor ESRI and Silver Sponsors Autodesk, Boeing and eSpatial.
The OGC® is an international industry consortium of more than 330 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available interface specifications. OpenGIS® Specifications support interoperable solutions that geo-enable the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. The specifications empower technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org.
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