13 September 2012 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) announces the formation of a new OGC Land Information Domain Working Group (Land Info DWG) to address CAD, Land Information System (LIS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) interoperability challenges facing industry domains concerned with the built environment. 

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

To meet this data exchange need, over the past 10 years a group of volunteer organizations and individuals developed the LandXML model and associated XML schema. LandXML is a non-proprietary standard for data exchange among the land development, civil engineering and surveying communities. Over 70 registered software products support LandXML, and many organizations around the world, such as the Australian Department of Lands, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the US Army Corps of Engineers, rely on LandXML as a data exchange format for mission critical activities.

The goals of the Land Information DWG are to find the best approach for incorporating the LandXML schema into the OGC’s standards base and to explore ways to incorporate land related information into OGC standards. This is the first time the OGC membership is tackling comprehensive integration of survey, civil engineering, and other land based data stored in CAD and GIS databases. This new work complements a legacy of activities in the OGC dating from the CAD-GIS DWG (now the 3DIM DWG), the CityGML Standards Working Group (CityGML SWG), and other OGC DWGs and SWGs.

The draft charter can be downloaded from:  https://portal.opengeospatial. org/files/?artifact_id=50172. Comments must be received by 15 October 2012. Please send comments to Gene Roe (gene.roe lidarnews.com).

About the OGC

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 460 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.