OGC Newsletter - April 2010
April 2010
CONTENTS
Message from Director of European Services: The OGC in Europe CTO's Report on March 2010 TC and PC MeetingAIP3 KickoffNews and Opinion From the BlogosphereOGC in Social MediaNews Items
DEPARTMENTS:
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MESSAGE FROM DIRECTOR OF EUROPEAN SERVICES: THE OGC IN EUROPE
Current and accurate information is highly important in addressing societal, environmental and economic problems, especially as the world gets more complex. One key factor in enabling people to share such information is interoperability among diverse systems. Interoperability in turn depends on standardization, which means reaching consensus on common interfaces and terminology so the diverse systems can communicate with each other.
From a European perspective, the need for interoperability is obvious when it comes to implementing elements of the Directive governing the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE), and other programs such as Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) and the Single Environmental Information System (SEIS). These programs run across many countries and cover a number of business disciplines and application areas; only a well-run global consensus standards process can provide a standards platform that meets such a wide range of program requirements. Open standards are essential for developing flexible information conduits that meet organizational needs, such as effective and efficient access to spatial data. In the standards process, geospatial information is becoming even more ubiquitous in mainstream information processing.
OGC plays a major role in addressing geospatial interoperability requirements for many programs around the world. Projects funded by the European Commission include ORCHESTRA, SANY, GIGAS and EO2Heaven, to name some examples:
GIGAS is the acronym for "GEOSS, INSPIRE and GMES - an Action in Support." The project promotes the coherent and interoperable development of the GMES, INSPIRE and GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems) initiatives through their concerted adoption of standards, protocols, and open architectures.
The SANY project (Sensors ANYwhere) extended the work of the ORCHESTRA (Open Architecture for Risk Management) project into the domain of interoperable sensor networks. The results have recently been published in a book that provides an overview on the use of OGC architectures and the SWE standards family in the application domains of environmental monitoring and risk management.
The most recent project, EO2HEAVEN (Earth Observation and ENVironmental modeling for the mitigation of HEAlth risks) aims to contribute to a better understanding of the complex relationships between environmental changes and their impact on human health, and actively engages with GEOSS tasks in this area. EO2HEAVEN will open up its pilot implementation to external participation through the creation of an OGC testbed and by initiating a pilot implementation as GEOSS task in the area of Information Systems for Health and Monitoring and Prediction Systems.
Many European OGC members are participating in these projects and bring the identified requirements into the global standardization process. This active introduction of European requirements is crucial to make sure that the OGC as a whole, and all its member organizations from around the world are aware of the challenges we are dealing with in a federal structure like the European Union. Then approaches for tackling these challenges and the associated knowledge can be shared throughout the OGC community.
European members working on programs and projects like those described above often have knowledge of evolving "soft requirements," as well as "hard requirements" imposed by legal mandates. Active participation enables European OGC members to make the standards community aware of these emerging interoperability requirements as soon as possible. One important benefit for European organizations is that requirements can be defined and addressed with the support of the broader OGC community at a global state-of-the-art level. This opportunity allows Members to share their expertise and jointly shape global OpenGIS standards.
As a consequence, OGC has introduced a new lifecycle management program to collect and track requirements, either against existing standards or as a starting point for new standards developments. It is the first time ever that a standards organization has started an open and traceable approach to provide transparency about standards versions and related requirements. Initial feedback has been very positive, since this process and its tools are regarded as a major step forward in providing a neutral and efficient program to harmonize requirements. It also aids subsequent standards development across organizational boundaries.
So, don't hesitate to participate actively in the OGC process and tackle interoperability!
-- Athina Trakas
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CTO'S REPORT ON MARCH 2010 TC AND PC MEETING
The 72nd OGC Technical Committee meetings were held the week of 8 March 2010 in Frascati, Italy, hosted by the European Space Agency at its ESRIN facility. 149 individuals attended and participated in the various Working Group sessions.
A summary of the document motions from the Frascati meetings has been posted to OGCNetwork: http://www.ogcnetwork.net/node/638. These are in draft format; please advise Carl Reed of any changes or additions.
-- Carl Reed
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To support the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) program, a task called the Architecture Implementation Pilot (AIP) is being carried out by the Architecture and Data Committee of the Group on Earth Observations. The charter of AIP is to develop and pilot new process and infrastructure components for the GEOSS Common Infrastructure and the broader GEOSS architecture.
A workshop to kick off phase 3 (AIP-3) was held at ESA-ESRIN Frascati, Italy, 11-12 March 2010 in conjunction with the 72nd OGC Technical Committee meetings.
The main result of the AIP-3 Kickoff Workshop was the formation of Working Groups (WGs) that will now conduct the development of AIP-3. The WGs are listed on the AIP-3 collaboration web pages.
AIP-3 has four main goals:
- Deploy and demonstrate the advantages ofGEOSS service oriented architecture(SOA)
- Move toward Best Practice for deploying Societal Benefitscenarios in the SOA
- Increase the data sharing and address data quality in GEOSS
- Develop results in time to showcase at the GEO Ministerial Summit, to be held in November 2010 in Beijing.
75 people attended the workshop. Information about the workshop is posted on OGC Network:
Purpose and Agendas; Presentations at the closing plenary; Pictures (bottom of page).
-- George Percivall
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NEWS AND OPINION FROM THE BLOGOSPHERE
On 22 March, the post "Open Source AR Toolkit Roundup (Part 2)" notes in the last paragraph that Ericsson Labs has developed an Android toolkit that uses OGC's SensorML to encode sensor information.
As part of its Open Government activities, the US Department of Interior created a web page inviting people to submit ideas on how it can create an open government plan. One post recommended that regular benchmarking exercises be "... performed on both commercial and open source GIS software on both the Windows and Linux 32-bit and 64-bit platforms. Such benchmarks would include serving up data via OGC web services, http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards, such as WMS, WFS, WCS, SOS, etc. ..."
OGC Board member Kevin Pomfret posted "How to Build a Spatial Law and Policy Community?" on 11 March. His OGC experience contributes to his belief "... that the fundamental legal and policy challenges associated with the collection, use and distribution of spatial data are universal."
In Vector One on 9 March, Jeff Thurston posted "GIS in 3D and OGC Discussion on the WVS Pipeline" after he read the OGC Web View Service Discussion Paper (09-166r2), which raised some questions in his mind about 3D. He closed by saying, "The OGC Discussion Paper is an excellent read. I would encourage others to read it and comment. It is important."
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Bookmarking
An effort is underway to make OGC documents more accessible to everyone. The idea is to navigate OGC documents using Delicious, a social bookmarking tool. Contribute by tagging your own important OGC documents with ogcdoc, plus other keywords such as {filter georss gml owc ows sas sdi sensorml sld sos styling swe wcs wfs wmc wms wps}. More details are available at http://www.ogcnetwork.net/ogcdoc. To see documents that have already been bookmarked and tagged, go to http://delicious.com/tag/ogcdoc.
Why would you consider doing this? Delicious lets users attach any - and many - tags to any web document. This gives you the benefit of the tags assigned by colleagues who have found a document relevant and useful for a topic. Entering <ogcdoc wms> in the delicious search box will return about three dozen items, a short list with the nice property that every item has a very high probability of being relevant to your interest in the OGC WMS standard. Once you start tagging things yourself, you can access those items anywhere, not only from your own computer at the office, but also in the office of a colleague, at the hotel business center, on your portable computer, or anywhere you have internet access. And people who provide tags that help others do their jobs more efficiently become known both for being knowledgeable and for being helpful (and maybe cutting edge too, using this social media "stuff").
On 26 March, @opengis, @geospatialnews, @DigitalPot, @articleant, @prsearchwire, @BINewsWire, @DTNNews and @SendYourRelease tweeted "OGC Seeks Comments on SWE Common Service Model Interface Standard ..." and this was also tweeted by @Seano6t1hf on March 27.
Also on 26 March, @LearonDalby tweeted "Anyone name an OGC format that supports domains/code tables? Be nice if it was also supported by major GIS software. -SDO doesn't count"
On 10 March, @jeremy_morley tweeted from the TC meeting: "Interesting session at OGC TC on GeoSMS (in use in Japan and Taiwan). Current version is 2, 3 proposed. #ogc"
@JeffHarrison tweeted about the David Schell interview: "OGC - Interoperability Science Requires a Cultural Dialog http://bit.ly/alAHp4"
On 9 March, @Geothinkers tweeted from the NSGIC mid-year conference: "EPA supporting GML, WMS, WFS of OGC helping promote GIS Agnosticism #nsgicmidyear"
On February 12, @CrisisMappers tweeted "How might Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Best Practices impact crowsourced geospatial data in future disasters? http://bit.ly/a81Lqw #GIS"
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OGC, CEN/TC 287 and ISO/TC 211 Agree to Increase Coordination
The CEN/TC 287 workshop on best practice for National Spatial Data Infrastructures (NSDIs) convened in Saint-Denis, Paris, France on 1 March 2010. This provided an excellent venue and opportunity for organizational representatives of CEN/TC 287, ISO/TC 211 and OGC to discuss ways in which coordination between these standards bodies can be improved to better address European and international standards requirements. Discussions also included representatives from participating user communities, and led to general agreement for closer, more formal cooperation between OGC and CEN/TC 287, as well as agreement to consider continued improvements in OGC and ISO/TC 211 coordination. Emphasis was also placed on the testing of standards for viability, fulfillment of purpose, ease of implementation and improvements in interoperability. The mantra "test early, test often" was reflective of this need.
These three organizations will be cooperatively exploring the adoption of a common Change Request / Requirements registry, and will be examining ways in which adopted standards schema can be managed more effectively and efficiently across these organizations. The requirements process is also an effort to make the standards process more transparent and more responsive to community needs. All requirements and change requests will be gathered in an open forum visible to the public. All parties agreed that continued exploration of process improvements would be valuable to the community, with particular focus on improved coordination, reduction in duplication of effort, and streamlining of standards coordination processes.
OGC Hosts Haiti Toolkit Web Portal
Industry representatives are working with the US National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) to develop a reconstruction coordination toolkit for the earthquake-devastated nation of Haiti (see NIBS Building Sciences monthly e-newsletter for February). The OGC agreed to host a web portal to help committees who are working on the project to share information and documents quickly and efficiently. The Haiti portal is based on the portal developed by the OGC for its own use. The OGC is already hosting a web page (http://www.ogcnetwork.net/networks/haiti) that provides links to Earth images, maps and other geospatial data that are being used in Haiti earthquake disaster relief.
If you have information about other OGC-enabled data portals, clients or services being used to support the Haitian relief effort, please let us know by posting a comment. (Click on the red "add new comment" link at the bottom of the page). We want aid workers to know about all of these, we want owners of web-based catalogs that use OGC's Catalogue Service Web standard to harvest and publish these links, and we want to raise awareness of how OGC's open standards help mobilize information and applications for improved response to disasters.
OGC has sent information about these resources to information technologists at the Red Cross, UN, and other relief groups. If you know of others who might find these resources helpful, please forward this information to them.
Free Book Offers Great Introduction to Sensor Web Enablement Standards
A new book "SANY - an open service architecture for sensor networks," available free at http://sany-ip.eu/publications/3317, provides an excellent introduction to OGC's Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards. SANY stands for "Sensors Anywhere." As a major Integrated Project in the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) of the European Commission, SANY extends the interoperability advances of an earlier European project, ORCHESTRA, into the domain of environmental sensor networks and standards-based sensor web enablement to support decision-making.
SDOs Coordinate on Building Information Model Standards
In February, the OGC and another standards development organization (SDO), the buildingSMART alliance TM (bSa), released a report, "Summary of the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, Owner Operator Phase 1 (AECOO-1) Joint Testbed." The report summarizes results of a nine-month effort in the OGC's Interoperability Program to increase interoperability among software used by architects, construction companies, cost estimators and building energy analysts.
The AECOO-1 Testbed was jointly led by the bSa and the OGC, with participation from architecture firms, general contractors, government agencies, and trade associations including the American Institute of Architects and the Large Firm Roundtable. This collaboration has brought the OGC into a new industry domain, opening up new opportunities for our members.
The Testbed resulted in ideas for improved ways of using the bSa's Industry Foundation Class (IFC) standards in the areas of building energy analysis and building component accounting. It also clarified the opportunities for modernization of the IFCs and has underscored the need for closer coordination of OGC with bSa and other AEC trade organizations and standards bodies.
Many OGC technology-provider members already provide both geospatial and computer-aided design (CAD) software and services, so they understand the important supporting role that geospatial technologies play in the AEC industry. They and their customers also see the importance of creating an open Building Information Models (BIM) standards framework to make AECOO business processes more efficient.
Many members in the OGC are also interested in indoor location, and though this was not a focus in AECOO-1, it may be in follow-on activities. Partly as a result of the rapid uptake of the OGC's CityGML standard, OGC is involved in discussions about new projects that involve indoor location, including the Open Floor Plan Display/Exchange (OFPD/X) effort and the International Justice and Public Safety Network's Geospatial Service Oriented Architecture for Public Safety (GeoSOAPS).
Author Requests Reviews of Proposed URN Namespace
Sean Leonard has posted a draft document titled A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace for Transaction Identifiers to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) website, and has requested reviews. The abstract:
Transaction identifiers are used throughout modern commerce to memorialize particular economic events. This document describes a Uniform Resource Name (URN) namespace that contains transaction identifiers.
GSDI World Conference Invites Submissions
The Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) Association 12th World Conference will be held in Singapore 19-22 October 2010. The Call for Papers identifies several publications (proceedings, book and journal issue) associated with the conference, and specifies the deadlines for each. The deadline for abstract submission has been extended to 15 April. The conference is on twitter at http://twitter.com/gsdi12. OGC will be providing a keynote at this international event.
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OGC welcomes new members who joined us recently.
Alticode (Small Company) (France)
AMEC Earth and Environmental (Associate) (Canada)
Applied Science Associates, Inc. (ASA) (Associate) (United States)
Association Française pour l'Information Geographique (Research Institute / Not For Profit Institute) (France)
ATMOSPHERE (Small Company) (France)
Australian Bureau of Meteorology (Technical) (Australia)
Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley (University) (United States)
Centre for Spatial Law & Policy (Associate) (United States)
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (University) (India)
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (University) (India)
IRSTV (University) (France)
Kolodziej, Kris (Individual) (United States)
Korean Research Institute for Human Settlements (Research Institute / Not For Profit Institute) (Korea, Republic of)
National Land Survey of Finland (Associate) (Finland)
Neogeo Technologies SARL (Small Company) (France)
Open Resource Management Foundation (Research Institute / Not For Profit Institute) (United States)
Planetek Italia s.r.l. (Associate) (Italy)
Tata Consultancy Services (Associate) (India)
University of California, San Diego, Ocean Observatories Initiative Cyberinfrastructure (OOI CI) (University) (United States)
University of Geneva, enviroSPACE laboratory (University) (Switzerland)
Virginia Tech Center for Geospatial Information Technology (University) (United States)
Vowles, Graham (Individual) (United Kingdom)
WiSC Enterprises (Small Company) (United States)
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OGC In The News
The 22 March issue of Federal Computer Week listed the "Federal 100," an annual listing of 100 individuals "who made significant contributions to the federal information technology community in 2009." The list includes OGC founder and Chairman David Schell.
In "Interoperability Science Requires a Cultural Dialog," Vector1 Media presents an interview with OGC founder and Chairman David Schell. (8 March 2010)
On 8 March, Directions Magazine carried "INSPIRE Translates to Shared GIS Resources." The article notes that one trend important to sharing data is the use of standards, and OGC and ISO are identified as having "... created environments where shared data can be consistently understood."
On 5 March, Federal Computer Week published "Geospatial apps help temper Mother Nature's fury," about the use and integration of many kinds of sensors into a flood prediction pilot project in Namibia. The article quotes OGC president and CEO Mark Reichardt about the contribution land-based, internet-connected sensors make to understanding a situation. In discussing the development of many new geospatial applications, the article notes, "Key enablers include ... development of standards that make sensor integration faster and cheaper to accomplish." [Emphasis added.]
The March issue of GeoWorld carried "Standards Enhance Information Communities," by OGC Chief Technical Officer Carl Reed. He explains the value of applying lifecycle management concepts to the development, adoption and revision of standards, and summarizes the current status of OGC standards.
The March issue of Coordinates contains "A synchronisation approach to automate spatial metadata updating process," which proposes a method to automatically update spatial data by using GML.
On 23 February, GIM International carried "Candidate 3D Standards," an article about three OGC Discussion Papers related to the 3D GeoWeb: Draft for Candidate OpenGIS® Web 3D Service Interface Standard (09-104r1), Web View Service Discussion Paper (09-166r2), and 3D-Symbology Encoding Discussion Draft (09-042). Together, these candidate standards "... establish a new family of 3D portrayal services focusing on virtual 3D maps, interactive virtual environments, and 3D cartographic visualisation."
In his February editorial, the Geospatial Intelligence Forum editor identified OGC as a leader in developing tools that enable sharing of data.
In the Winter 2009 issue (published in January 2010) of the Federal Geographic Data Committee Newsletter, the article on page 5, "Cross-Border SDI based on WFS Deployed" reports on a collaborative project that "... has developed, deployed and demonstrated the foundations of an online network to help identify critical infrastructure during emergencies and everyday operations." The project uses OGC's WFS.
The Proceedings of the International Symposium on Intelligent Information Systems and Applications (IISA'09), which was held in Qingdao, P. R. China, 28-30 Oct 2009, includes the paper "Geospatial Services Chaining with Web Processing Service." The paper demonstrates three approaches to chaining geospatial services: 1) Using BPEL to orchestrate a service chain that includes one or more WPS processes; 2) Using WPS Interface to design a sequence of web services; and 3) Simple cascading service chains created via WPS GET operation.
Press Releases
OGC Forms Aviation Working Group
April 8, 2010
OGC Seeks Comments on SWE Common Service Model 2.0 Interface Standard
March 25, 2010
OGC Recommends 'Sensors Anywhere' Book
March 22, 2010
OGC to Host Haiti Toolkit Web Portal
March 22, 2010
OGC Seeks Comments on Sensor Planning Service Standard 2.0
March 15, 2010
OGC Seeks Comments on Modular, GML-based Web Coverage Service 2.0
March 15, 2010
OGC Seeks Comments on SWE Common Data Model
March 15, 2010
OGC Seeks Comments on Table Joining Service Standard
March 15, 2010
OGC announces Earth Observation Profile for Web-based Catalogue Services
March 5, 2010
OGC and bSA Release Report on AEC Interoperability Testbed
February 17, 2010
GSDI 12 Conference Announcement and Call for Papers and Workshops
February 15, 2010
GEO Announces Call for Participation in GEOSS Pilot
February 1, 2010
OGC and World Meteorological Organization to Collaborate on Meteorology Standards
February 1, 2010
OGC Adopts Earth Observation Profile for Web-based Catalogue Services
January 21, 2010
OGC and iEMSs to Cooperate on Standards for Environmental Modeling
January 19, 2010
OGC Hosts Indoor Location and Floor Plan Standards Forum
January 18, 2010
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Defence Geospatial Intelligence Middle East 2010
April 11th, 2010 - April 14th, 2010
GeoTec Event 2010
April 13th, 2010 - April 15th, 2010
AAG 2010 - Annual Meeting
April 14th, 2010 - April 18th, 2010
Geospatial Infrastructure Solutions Conference 2010 - GITA - Phoenix, AZ
April 25th, 2010 - April 29th, 2010
ASPRS 2010 Annual Conference
April 26th, 2010 - April 30th, 2010
European Geosciences General Assembly - Vienna, Austria
May 2nd, 2010 - May 7th, 2010
AIXM WXXM Conference, Washington, DC
May 4th, 2010 - May 6th, 2010
Geoscience Information Consortium - GIC25: Ljubljana, Slovenija
May 10th, 2010 - May 14th, 2010
SWE Workshop at CTS 2010
May 17th, 2010 - May 21st, 2010
EuroSDR - Distance elearning course - Laserscanning for tree extraction
May 17th, 2010 - May 28th, 2010
USGIF Tech Days
May 19th, 2010 - May 20th, 2010
ISO/TC211 30th Plenary & WG Meetings - Southampton, England, United Kingdom
May 24th, 2010 - May 28th, 2010
GeoIntelligence Asia
June 2nd, 2010 - June 4th, 2010
EuroSDR - Distance elearning course - Assessment of the quality of Digital Terrain Models
June 7th, 2010 - June 18th, 2010
June 2010: OGC TC/PC Meetings
June 14th, 2010 - June 18th, 2010
Interfacing social and environmental modeling
June 14th, 2010 - June 18th, 2010
COM.Geo 2010 Conference
June 21st, 2010 - June 23rd, 2010
Second Open Source GIS UK Conference - OSGIS 2010
June 21st, 2010 - June 22nd, 2010
INSPIRE Conference 2010
June 22nd, 2010 - June 25th, 2010
GEOSS Workshop
June 23rd, 2010 - June 25th, 2010
20th Anniversary Meeting on Cognitive and Linguistic Aspects of Geographic Space
July 4th, 2010 - July 10th, 2010
International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software
July 5th, 2010 - July 8th, 2010
Map Asia 2010
July 20th, 2010 - July 22nd, 2010
IGARSS conference
July 25th, 2010 - July 30th, 2010
GeoWeb 2010 - Vancouver, BC, Canada
July 26th, 2010
Map Africa 2010 - Cape Town, South Africa
August 11th, 2010 - August 13th, 2010
EuroSDR - Distance elearning course - The INSPIRE Directive and its Implementing Rules. How to understand and apply them?
August 30th, 2010 - September 10th, 2010
FOSS4G 2010
September 6th, 2010 - September 9th, 2010
EuroSDR - Distance elearning course - Schema matching, mapping and transformation for INSPIRE
September 20th, 2010 - October 1st, 2010
OCEANS 2010 MTS/IEEE Seattle
September 20th, 2010 - September 23rd, 2010
September 2010: OGC TC/PC Meetings
September 20th, 2010 - September 24th, 2010
URISA 48th Annual Conference
September 28th, 2010 - October 1st, 2010
GEOSS Workshop
October 3rd, 2010
ISPRS Latin American Remote Sensing conference
October 4th, 2010 - October 8th, 2010
GSDI 12 World Conference: Realising Spatially Enabled Societies - Singapore
October 19th, 2010 - October 22nd, 2010
GeoINT Conference
November 1st, 2010 - November 4th, 2010
5th International 3D GeoInfo Workshop 2010 - Berlin, Germany
November 3rd, 2010 - November 4th, 2010
GEO Ministerial Summit and GEO VII Plenary
November 3rd, 2010 - November 5th, 2010
ISPRS Commission IV midterm conference
November 16th, 2010 - November 18th, 2010
December 2010: OGC TC/PC Meetings
November 28th, 2010 - December 3rd, 2010
ISO/TC211 31th Plenary & WG Meetings - Canberra, Australia
December 5th, 2010 - December 10th, 2010
June 2011: OGC TC/PC Meetings
June 5th, 2011 - June 11th, 2011
For further info on events please contact gbuehler [at] opengeospatial.org (Greg Buehler).
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CONTACT
Please send comments and suggestions to:
Tina Cary
Editor, OGC News
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.
35 Main Street Suite 5
Wayland MA 01778-5037
USA Phone: +1 508 655 5858
Fax: +1 508 655 2237
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