OGC Joins World Standards Day, Tackling climate change through standards
Written by OGC
16 October 2009
Wayland, MA, October 14, 2009. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGCr) joins the World Standards Day celebration, announcing a Climate Challenge Integration Plugfest (CCIP).
World Standards Day ( http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1250 ) is celebrated by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the International Telecommunication Union (ITC) and other organizations each year on 14 October to honor the efforts of thousands of experts worldwide who collaborate to develop voluntary International Standards that facilitate trade, spread knowledge and disseminate technological advances.
In accordance with this year's theme for World Standards Day, "Tackling climate change through standards," the OGC, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) will conduct a Climate Challenge Integration Plugfest (CCIP) at the FOSS4G (Free, Open Source Software for Geomatics) Conference in Sydney, Australia, 20-23 October, 2009. The CCIP is a prime opportunity for vendors, users, and other interested parties to mutually refine services, interfaces and protocols in the context of a hands-on engineering experience expected to shape the future of geospatial and imagery-related Web Services software development and Web publication of scientific geospatial data. Participation is encouraged by commercial entities as well as free and open source projects. See details at http://external.opengis.org/twiki_public/bin/view/ClimateChallenge2009/WebHome.
The OGC supports the climate change community in efforts such as:
-- The OGC leads architecture development and interoperability demonstrations for the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) ( http://earthobservations.org/about_geo.shtml ).
-- Geoscientists involved in ocean observation, meteorology and hydrology are embracing OGC standards. See these OGC Domain Working Groups at http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/wg.
-- The OGC's Geography Markup Language Encoding Standard (GML) is part of the IEC's Common Information Model (CIM) smart grid standard and OGC participates in the smart grid standards effort led by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The smart grid promotes energy efficiency and renewable energy.
-- The OGC's recent AEC/Owner/Operator (AECOO) Testbed, run in collaboration with the buildingSmart alliance, explored, among other things, ways that energy analysis of buildings could be served by interoperability standards for Building Information Models (BIM).
The OGC works with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), OASIS, International Organization for Standards (ISO), IEEE Technical Committee 9 (Sensors), Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), Web3D and other standards organizations to ensure a unified standards framework for geospatial technologies. This framework is a critical asset for those who are working to understand and mitigate climate change and its impacts.
The OGCr is an international consortium of more than 385 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. The OGC's OpenGISr standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. These 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.
Top iPhone related GIS and Geo Tech news stories from 2009 - At the end of the year its always interesting for us to look at some of the stats and results to identify trends and more important, to see what our readers think is hot! In the "news" category it seems that iPhone related geo tech items were extremely popular.
Geo Social Location Checkin to Twitter from iPhone - With the cool SXSW event taking place Austin, TX, everyone who's anyone in social and social location seems to have rolled out updates this week, making your choice for how to check-in to your social media bookmarks even tougher to decide on!
10 Awesome GIS and Mapping apps for the iPhone - I recall last year at the ESRI UC when an iPhone was on stage showing a prototype app (think ArcPad on iPhone). It was then that I realized the iPhone platform is going to be BIG in mapping and there's a ton of opportunity for developers.
Nokia Booklet 3G, unboxing video and image gallery... Those of you in the USA who pop in to BestBuy occasionally, you may have seen a stand showing off the Nokia Booklet 3G. A sleek, 3G enabled, SIM slot (AT&T) sporting netbook.
Interesting Tweeple - 10 Geo Technology & Geo-Social Women of Twitter - given the growing love for geospatial and location-aware technologies, I’ve decided to hype 10 women that I feel make a significant contribution to the Geo-Twittersphere. If you’d like to add 10 knowledgeable and useful Twitter contacts to your Geo following list I highly suggest the following: (in no particular order)
10 Geo Social Location-Aware Apps Making Waves... With Twitter's opening of their location API to developers there's going to be a ton of third party apps that will enable Twitter users to share location-aware information via their Twitter accounts.
Signs that indicate you may be a GeoGeek (aka. GeoNerd) and some suggested Geo blogs - Chances are good that if you are a Geo Geek then you already know it and likely refer to yourself as one. However, there’s many of you out there that may be on the fence and wondering… “am I a Geo Geek?" Read on for a comprehensive list of signs you might be a GeoGeek followed up by some suggested Geoblog reading.
Real-time GPS Mapping and GIS Solution Aids Efficient Disaster Management - Saturday, February 7, 2009 will forever be known as Black Saturday in the State of Victoria, Australia. In the midst of a 10-year drought, a record breaking heat wave descended upon the state, with temperatures exceeding 45 degrees C (110-120 deg F), breaking all-time record highs in some cities - Victoria Police Use Trimble Juno SC Handhelds to Speed Assessment of Damage Caused by Bush Fires.
2010 ESRI Federal User Conference February 17-19, 2010, Washington D.C. Walter E. Washington Convention Center - The FedUC is the largest geospatial conference for federal agencies. Connect with other leaders, decision makers, and GIS professionals.
The International LiDAR Mapping Forum 2010 - Tenth Anniversary Event! ILMF 2010 will be held from March 3 - 5, 2010 at the Hyatt Regency in Denver at Colorado Convention Center.
The NAVTEQ 2010 Global LBS Challenge Awards Ceremony will be held during Ignite at O'Reilly Where 2.0. Be among the first to hear as NAVTEQ announces the winners for the North America region. Participants will be competing for a global prize pool of $10 million and growing by showcasing pre-commercial location-enabled apps using NAVTEQ map data & products. March 30, 2010, during Ignite Where, 7:30pm - 9:00pm, at the Marriott San Jose, CA
WHERE2.0 2010 - Now in its sixth year, the Where 2.0 Conference is where the grassroots and leading edge developers building location-aware technology intersect with the businesses and entrepreneurs seeking out location apps, platforms, and hardware to gain a competitive edge. For 15% use Discount Code: whr10lbs
See more 
