13 September 2012 – The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) announces theformation of a new OGC Land Information Domain Working Group (Land Info DWG) toaddress CAD, Land Information System (LIS) and Geographic Information System(GIS) interoperability challenges facing industry domains concerned with thebuilt environment.

Organizations and individuals throughout thearchitecture/engineering/construction (AEC) industry need to be able toexchange detailed civil and survey engineering data within that industry. They,and others in fields as diverse as environmental sciences and locationmarketing, also need to be able use such data with geospatial data andgeospatial applications. In general, geospatial systems have evolved fromrequirements for observation and analysis, whereas land information systemshave evolved from requirements for design and legal property description.

To meet this data exchange need, over the past 10 years a group ofvolunteer organizations and individuals developed the LandXML model andassociated XML schema. LandXML is a non-proprietary standard for data exchangeamong the land development, civil engineering and surveying communities. Over70 registered software products support LandXML, and many organizations aroundthe world, such as the Australian Department of Lands, the Federal AviationAdministration (FAA) and the US Army Corps of Engineers, rely on LandXML as adata exchange format for mission critical activities.

The goals of the Land Information DWG are to find the best approach forincorporating the LandXML schema into the OGC's standards base and to explore waysto incorporate land related information into OGC standards. This is the firsttime the OGC membership is tackling comprehensive integration of survey, civilengineering, and other land based data stored in CAD and GIS databases. Thisnew work complements a legacy of activities in the OGC dating from the CAD-GISDWG (now the 3DIM DWG), the CityGML StandardsWorking Group (CityGML SWG), and other OGC DWGs and SWGs.

The draft charter can be downloaded from:  https://portal.ogc.org/files/?artifact_id=51125&version=1. Comments must bereceived by 15 October 2012. Please send comments to Gene Roe (gene.roe [at] lidarnews.com).

About the OGC

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 460 companies,government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating ina consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGCstandards support interoperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web,wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC standards empowertechnology developers to make geospatial information and services accessibleand useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visitthe OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.