OGC Sensor Observation Service Standard Version 2.0 Adopted

25 April 2012 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) membership has adopted the OGC Sensor Observation Service (SOS) Interface Standard Version 2.0.

Whether from in-situ sensors (e.g., water monitoring) or remote sensors (e.g., satellite imaging), observations made from sensor systems contribute most of the geospatial data by volume used in geospatial systems today. The OGC® Sensor Observation Service Interface Standard (SOS) provides an open, well-defined API for managing measured data as well as metadata from deployed sensors. The SOS is one standard in the OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) suite of standards.

SOS 2.0 includes a modular restructuring of the document, a new and easy to use key-value-pair binding, a new SOAP binding, a redesign of the observation offering concept, and it now relies on the common OGC Sensor Web Enablement Service Model. SOS 2.0 is highly modular and follows the OGC core/extension design pattern. The main SOS 2.0 document incorporates the core as well as the transactional extension, result handling extension, enhanced operations extension, binding extension, and a profile for spatial filtering of observations. Further extensions can be built upon this framework in the future.

The SOS 2.0 standard is available at:  http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/sos.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 435 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.

OGC City Geography Markup Language v 2.0 Adopted

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) membership has adopted Version 2.0 of the OGC City Geography Markup Language (CityGML) Encoding Standard (http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/citygml).

CityGML is a community defined information model and XML-based encoding for the representation, storage, and exchange of virtual 3D city and landscape models. CityGML provides a standard model and mechanism for describing 3D objects with respect to their geometry, topology, semantics and appearance, and defines five different levels of detail. CityGML is highly scalable and datasets can include different urban entities supporting the general trend toward modeling not only individual buildings but also whole sites, districts, cities, regions, and countries.

CityGML provides much more than 3D content for visualization by diverse applications. It allows users to share virtual 3D city and landscape models for sophisticated analysis and display tasks in application domains such as environmental simulations, energy demand estimations, city lifecycle management, urban facility management, real estate appraisal, disaster management, pedestrian navigation, robotics, urban data mining, and location based marketing. Because CityGML is based on the OGC Geography Markup Language Encoding Standard (GML), it can be used with the whole family of OGC web services for data accessing, processing, and cataloging.

CityGML has been implemented in many software solutions and is in use in many projects around the world. In National Spatial Data Infrastructure programs in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Malaysia, Abu Dhabi and other countries, CityGML provides an important platform for the transition from 2D to 3D data. It also plays an important role in bridging Urban Information Models with Building Information Models (BIM) to improve interoperability among information systems used in the design, construction, ownership and operation of buildings and capital projects.

In comparison to Version 1.0, CityGML Version 2.0 defines additional feature types and new feature properties including new thematic modules for tunnels and bridges; the ability to model footprint and roof edge representations for buildings in order to allow users to derive 3D models from existing 2D building data; and generic attribute sets, allowing users a more powerful way to customize CityGML without the need for additional coding. Since all elements of Version 1.0 were preserved, CityGML 1.0 files can easily be converted into V2.0 by a simple substitution of the namespace values. A comprehensive test dataset illustrating all data concepts and structures is available for download at www.citygml.org.

CityGML was originally defined and submitted to the OGC by the Special Interest Group 3D (SIG 3D) (http://www.sig3d.org) of the Spatial Data Infrastructure Germany (GDI-DE), which has also substantially contributed to and implemented the current version of CityGML.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 435 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.

U.A.E Ministry of Interior/Abu Dhabi Police GIS Center for Security Joins the OGC

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) announced that the U.A.E. Ministry of the Interior, represented by Abu Dhabi Police GIS Center for Security, has become a Principal Member of the OGC to chair a new, planned international OGC Law Enforcement and Public Safety Working Group.

In addition to advancing technical standards and best practices as voting members of the OGC Technical Committee, Principal Members provide guidance on market direction and Consortium focus, vote to approve nominations to the OGC Board of Directors, and have authority over the development, release and adoption of OGC standards through their voting rights in the OGC Planning Committee.

The Abu Dhabi Police GIS Center for Security aims to contribute to the OGC GovFuture Program and other consortium activities that guide local, sub-national, national & international government organizations in raising awareness and adoption of OGC standards in geospatial systems and geographical information, which are critically important in government decision support systems. Abu Dhabi Police is interested in initiating and leading a Domain Working Group that would be supported by police, emergency and security forces from the UAE, the Middle East region and other world regions. The goal is to drive geospatial technology standards and approaches that support law enforcement, public safety and security, as well as encouraging research, projects, events and outreach that contribute to achieving this goal.

Mark Reichardt, President of the OGC, said, “By becoming a Principal Member in the OGC, the U.A.E. Ministry of the Interior has shown a strong commitment to the open standards community and its leadership in advancing OGC standards for improved decision making across government. It’s also important for the Middle East region that we now have an OGC Principal Member from the UAE."

"We are pleased to be the first police force in the world to be a Principal Member of the OGC, and in a position to chair a focused domain working group at the global level," said Captain Mohammed Saleh Al Mansoori, head of the GIS Center for Security in the U.A.E. "This initiative contributes to our mission of becoming an intelligence-led police force by investing in information and knowledge and adopting technology best practices and standards to fulfill our tasks and duties as a force."

About the Abu Dhabi Police GIS Center for Security

The Abu Dhabi Police GIS Center for Security has developed a strategic roadmap to utilize the capabilities of spatial systems in areas of law enforcement, public safety and homeland security. It is setting a new standard on how to plan, think and operate spatially to make location count in law enforcement and public safety.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 435 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.

OGC Announces 5th International Augmented Reality Standards Community Meeting

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) announced that the Fifth International Augmented Reality (AR) Standards Community meeting will take place March 19 and 20, 2012 in Austin, Texas, USA. This meeting is being sponsored by Khronos Group http://www.khronos.org and sponsored/hosted by the OGC in cooperation with the University of Texas.
Participants will learn the status of activities and discuss progress in all relevant standards development organizations, including:

• Open Mobile Alliance Mobile AR Enabler
• W3C Points of Interest and GeoLocation WGs
• ISO/JTC SC 29 MPEG-A Part 13
• ISO/JTC SC 24 Working Group 9 on AR
• Web3D Consortium AR Work Group
• Open Geospatial Consortium ARML 2.0

Developers and providers of AR tools, platforms, applications, services and data are invited to attend. Participation is open to anyone, but registration is required. To register, visit https://store.opengeospatial.org/event/120319ar .
Position papers and the status updates of six international standard development organizations will form the basis of the meeting's agenda and discussions.  Additional information about the meeting goals and steps to register/prepare may be found at: http://www.perey.com/ARStandards/fifth-international-ar-standards-meeting/
About the OGC
The OGC is an international consortium of more than 440 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.

OGC Announces Smart Grid Location Standards Ad Hoc Meeting

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) invites Smart Grid professionals to a Smart Grid Location Standards Meeting to be held on March 20 from 8:00-10:00 a.m. at the OGC Technical Committee Meeting in Austin, Texas, USA. This meeting is sponsored/hosted by the OGC, in cooperation with the University of Texas at Austin.
The ability to communicate geospatial information is seen as a crosscutting requirement in Smart Grid standards efforts worldwide. The OASIS eMIX (Energy Market Information Exchange) standard uses the OGC Geography Markup Languate (GML) Encoding Standard. The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) CIM (Common Information Model) standard is "harmonized" with WXXM (Weather Information Exchange Model), which is an industry profile based on GML. More standards coordination and development, however, is required to enable efficient geospatial communication within smart grids and between smart grids and "neighboring" activities such as emergency response, disaster management, urban planning and building energy management.
Many of the OGC's domains of activity – sensor webs, weather, indoor/outdoor location integration, 3D city models, location services, data fusion and others – have significance for the Smart Grid. Many OGC members have a stake in the Smart Grid information technology market, the growth of which depends on the evolution of a standards infrastructure that includes location standards.
This meeting (an "ad hoc" meeting in the OGC's formal meeting nomenclature) has been set up to assess the level of interest in the community to tackle open geospatial standards for the Smart Grid. It is expected that OGC member participants will agree on near and intermediate term actions, which may include the drafting of a Smart Grid Domain Working Group charter.
The Smart Grid Location Standards Ad Hoc meeting is open to the public and admission is free, but Smart Grid Location Standards Ad Hoc Meeting attendees who don't plan to attend other OGC Technical Committee sessions must register via email at register@opengeospatial.org. See details of the OGC Technical Committee meeting at http://www.opengeospatial.org/event/1203tc.
OGC staff and Eric Nelson of Synaptitude Consulting will facilitate the meeting. We hope you will attend
About the OGC
The OGC is an international consortium of more than 440 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 athttp://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.