20 June 2011. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) recently held its biennial election of directors. Of the 19 elected members of the consortium’s 2009-2010 board of directors, 17 serving members were re-elected and two new members have been seated. The new OGC board members are Jacqueline McGlade and Sanjay Kumar.

Professor Jacqueline McGlade is Executive Director of the European Environment Agency. Prior to this appointment in 2003, she was Natural Environment Research Council Professorial Fellow in Environmental Informatics in the Mathematics Department of University College London. She has had numerous appointments at universities, research centers and government agencies, published numerous papers, articles and books, presented and appeared in many radio and television programmes and given public lectures worldwide on climate change and other topics. She is a member of the Environment Advisory Committee of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, UK-China Forum and UK-Japan 21st Century Group.

Sanjay Kumar is Chief Executive Officer of GIS Development, the leading geospatial media company in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Pursuing his belief in the importance of the geospatial industry, he has been working towards raising the awareness and profile of the industry through political and administrative leadership worldwide, and working to connect the geospatial industry with other important industries. He actively collaborates with global geospatial organisations and is publisher of Geospatial World magazine and founder of the Map World Forum, a global geospatial industry event. Mr. Kumar has also been associated with many geospatial professional societies and served as Chair of ISPRS WG VI-4 on distance learning from 2000-2004. He is founding Secretary of the Association of Geospatial Industries (AGI) of India and is a member of the National Task Force on Evolving Geospatial Strategy, Government of India. He was the 2010 chair of the OGC Global Advisory Council.

Returning to the OGC board are: Dr. John Curlander, Philippe Delclaux, Ben Eazzetta, Steve Hagan, Jefferey Harris, Dr. Mike Jackson, Michael Jones, Dr. Vanessa Lawrence, Stefano Morisi, John Olesak, Jack Pellicci, Jeffery Peters, Kevin Pomfret, François Robida, Velu Sinha, Dr. Christopher Tucker and Rob van de Velde.

Three OGC staff members, Jeff Burnett, Mark Reichardt and David Schell are members of the Board by appointment.

The OGC Board granted the title “Director Emeritus” to the following retired directors whose enduring interest and participation in OGC activities qualifies them for this advisory and honorary role: Dr. Robert W. Corell, Joanne Isham, Dr. R. Siva Kumar, and Jeff Labonté.

David Schell, Chairman of the OGC Board of Directors, said, “The OGC community is extremely fortunate that these extraordinary individuals have agreed to serve on the Consortium’s board. Their collective accomplishment and scope of interest confirm OGC’s expanding role in addressing society’s increasing dependence on spatial information services to understand the complex infrastructure, security and geopolitical challenges facing both public and private sector scientists and policy makers around the world.”

The OGC community mourns the passing of Board members Granville Paules, who died January 4, 2011, and Dr. Robert Moses, who died May 3, 2010.

About the OGC

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 415 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. 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/contact.

“