History
of OGC
OGC’s existence and role in the geospatial industry are the result
of many people working together over many years to make spatial information
and spatial processing more useful and available. The following paragraphs
provide an outline of the OGC story, but many pages of interesting detail
could be added in a long book about OGC. Because interoperability has become
central to the industry, most of the key contributors to geospatial technology
and associated markets would be mentioned in such a book. The technologists,
business people, and users of spatial technology in OGC deserve to be recognized
for their successful integration of geospatial information into the larger
Information Infrastructure.
Events Leading to the Formation of OGC
•
In the early 1980s, a spatial analysis software development group was formed
at the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Construction Engineering Research
Laboratory (CERL) in Champaign, Illinois. Under the direction of Bill Goran,
a Geographer in the Environmental Division of CERL, this team focused on
helping DOD implement and apply GIS technologies for military installation
management and civil works applications. After reviewing commercial software
available at that time, the group decided instead to develop a public domain
geospatial analysis system. The resulting open source, UNIX-based software – GRASS
(Geographic Resource and Analysis Support System) – soon became widely
used at Corps of Engineers sites and in the Soil Conservation Service, National
Park Service and other US federal agencies, as well as at many universities
in the US and around the world. Having started from a nucleus of about 300
users in the mid eighties, by the early nineties the active GRASS mailing
list contained more than 6000 names, most of whom represented users or managers
interested in extending the use of GRASS for a growing number of applications.
The GRASS community was at that time an early and very significant user of
the Internet, motivated by the increasing availability of spatial data and
network opportunities sponsored by the public sector and research communities.
•
Three organizations formed at that time as a result of the widespread
interest and use of GRASS in the community:
- The GRASS Interagency Steering Committee (GIASC), was formed by a group
of US federal agencies with a memorandum of understanding in 1990 to support
and coordinate development of GRASS in the US Government. GIASC met twice
a year and provided resource and direction for CERL’s Office of GRASS
Integration (OGI). One of the most important contributions of the OGI was
to create and maintain two Internet discussion lists, one a GRASS users list
and the other a GRASS developers list. Thousands of people, both in and out
of the government, participated in the OGI list activity which became an
active, global discussion forum where questions about the use or positioning
of GRASS would in most instances be answered within minutes either by the
support staff at CERL or by other members of the GRASS community. The GIASC
and OGI also actively supported publication of the GRASS community magazine “GRASSCLIPPINGS” as
well as the annual meetings of the growing GRASS users community. During
this period, Kurt Buehler joined the CERL Spatial Analysis Team and assumed
leadership of the GRASS development team.
-- A GRASS user group organization called “GRASS: The User Forum” or “GRASS
TURF” was organized in 1986 under the leadership of Kenn Gardels, its
first president. A senior researcher at the Center for Environmental Design
Research at University of California - Berkeley, Kenn Gardels was a prominent
figure in California State GIS policy development. Under Gardels’ leadership,
TURF became an informal association of individual GRASS users, public and
private organizations, and universities. GRASS TURF was also active in supporting
both the annual GRASS Users Conference and the GRASSCLIPPINGS magazine.
-- In 1991, in parallel with GRASS TURF, several prominent leaders of the
GRASS user community formed a not-for-profit 501 (c)3 corporation, also initially
called the GIASC, to provide a private sector business structure to house
the main activities of the GRASS users community, including both GRASSCLIPPINGS
and the annual GRASS Users Forum. GIASC was soon positioned to provide administrative
support and a private sector focus for GRASS TURF activities in general.
•
During 1992, at an annual meeting of the GRASS TURF membership, GRASS TURF
was merged with the GIASC nonprofit and a founding Board of Directors from
the GRASS TURF membership was elected. These directors included David Schell,
who had been active in the GRASS development community through business development
activities in the computer industry. David led the new board in taking the
decision that the new merged organization should be renamed the “Open
GRASS Foundation” (OGF) and that its scope should be expanded to include
both the implementation of a private sector development and support capability
for GRASS, and the creation of a consensus-based membership process for management
of GRASS community affairs. OGF’s founding Board of Directors were:
-- David Schell, Chairman of the OGF Board, also at that time Executive Director
of OGF.
-- Kenn Gardels, Secretary, at that time GIS Coordinator, Center for Environmental
Design Research, University of California at Berkeley.
-- Dr. W. Frederick Limp, Treasurer, at that time the Director of the Center
for Advanced Spatial Technologies at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.
-- Dr. Emil Horvath, at that time Chief, GIS and Remote Sensing Branch, US
Department of Agriculture Soil Conservation Service.
-- Quentin Ellis, at that time GIS Business Development Manager, Camber Corporation.
-- Ed Escowitz, at that time senior research scientist at the USGS.
-- Dr. Scott Madry, at that time Associate Director of the Remote Sensing
and Spatial Analysis Center, Rutgers University.
•
The startup OGF was supported in all its activities by an innovative cooperative
research and development agreement (CRADA) implemented between OGF and USACERL
which provided the administrative and technical support necessary to accomplish
the purposes of the new company. In particular, the CRADA was designed to
facilitate technology transfer from CERL’s GRASS project to the private
sector. In recognition of the success of this agreement, CERL later won an
award of merit in GSA’s “1993 Federal Laboratory Consortium Competition
for Excellence in Technology Transfer.”
∑ Early the following year, the new organization was offered use of an
office in the remote sensing center at Boston University, where it began its
formal
operation. David Schell was soon joined by a staff assistant who was a graduate
student in the Boston University geography department.
•
Over the next two years, OGF recruited sponsors from government, the private
sector, and academia. Bob Moses, president of PCI Geomatics, made his company
OGF’s first commercial sponsor. Gale TeSelle of the USDA Soil Conservation
Service (SCS) led the Soil Conservation Service to support OGF with task
orders, providing administrative and technical support for the government
GRASS community. Bill Goran at USACERL also provided OGF with tasking designed
to underwrite the public awareness and consensus process that resulted eventually
in the development of OGC’s consortium process. Tasking from both SCS
and USACERL was facilitated greatly by the support and involvement of Dr.
Fred Limp, director of the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies at the
University of Arkansas. Dr. Limp was also one of the very early contributors
in developing the interoperability process. Gale TeSelle promoted the use
of GRASS for distributed access to GIS capabilities in the SCS (which was
renamed during this period Natural Resources Conservation Service, or NRCS).
•
With a significant amount of commercial GIS software in use by the government
at that time, the issue of data sharing had become very important. Actual
interoperability – real-time communication of data and instructions
between two different systems – was an idea only a few had explored.
MOSS (Map Overlay and Statistical System), an open source GIS that predates
GRASS, was heavily used in many DOI agencies and in a number of state and
local governments. John Davidson of Genasys, one of the authors of MOSS,
had demonstrated in the late ‘80s that seamless interoperability could
be achieved between two disparate open source systems. It was suggested that
OGF with its industry membership and interest in open software might be able
to provide a forum for exploring the possibility of interoperability between
commercial systems as well as open source systems. Therefore, a group was
formed, in the context of OGF’s relationships with USACERL and NRCS,
to discuss what a distributed network environment interoperability architecture
might look like and what it would mean for the community. On behalf of CERL
this team was led by Kurt Buehler, at that time CERL’s leader of the
spatial analysis team which was responsible for GRASS and related software
issues. The team was commissioned to study the issue of interoperability
and look at ways the GRASS community could serve as a foundation for further
community based activity in the interest of making more spatial resources
available for both public and private sector use. This group was variously
comprised of five or six key people, the leaders of which were Kurt Buehler
of USACERL and Kenn Gardels of University of California - Berkeley. It was
Kenn Gardels who originally coined the term “Open GIS.”
•
In addition to PCI’s early sponsorship, the new direction of interoperability
development received a major boost when Sun Microsystems’ Academic
Grants program awarded new SPARCstations worth $80,000 to support an OGF
proposal that multiple product organizations work together to integrate for
the first time a functionally interoperable geospatial development environment,
including both raster and vector GISs, a database, and statistical software
packages. The project was named at the time the “Open GIS Application
Environment” or “OGAE.” Under the guidance of the study
group, the OGAE quickly evolved conceptually into a prototype concept for
OpenGIS, and the major concern of this evolving enterprise became the integration
of spatial product capabilities into the mainstream information technology
environment of the network.
•
In 1992, Kurt Buehler worked with OGF to put together a series of industry
technical meetings, and Kurt was assigned to develop the “Community
Consensus” process. The first formal meeting to address this concept
was hosted by the National Park Service in Lakewood, CO and attended by most
of the major commercial GIS vendors. Additional meetings supported by CERL
included meetings hosted by NOAA in Silver Springs, MD and in Berkeley, CA
by the University of California, Berkeley. This series of meetings, animated
progressively by the creative input of many people in the geospatial community,
became the core of the development activity which evolved into the OpenGIS
Project. Kurt Buehler continued to play a key role in advancing the technical
interoperability concept, organizing and running the meetings and involving
people who could contribute to its development.
•
Henry Tom, then chair of the X3L1 ANSI Committee on Geographic Information
and also head of the US delegation to ISO TC/211, was at the National Institute
of Standards and Technology (NIST) at that time, and he became an active
proponent. Henry volunteered to be OGC’s formal liaison to the world
standards community, and he has from that time forward provided valuable
guidance and support.
•
Kenn Gardels wrote a groundbreaking article in the Fall, 1993 issue of
GRASSCLIPPINGS on openness in the spatial domain, describing the Open GIS Application
Environment
(OGAE).
•
OGF organized the December, 1993 GRASS User Meeting in Washington, D.C. “OpenGIS” and “OGAE” were
main topics for presentation and discussion. Despite a record snowfall that
snarled air traffic throughout the Eastern U.S., more than 400 people attended.
•
OGF’s articles in GIS World and other magazines were attracting attention.
Kenn Gardels’ paper was widely discussed in the GRASS community, and
two MITRE employees wrote an article in the ACM StandardView journal about
the need for an “industry architecture” in the geoprocessing
industry. One of the authors, Greg Smith, who subsequently joined NGA (then
called NIMA), had recently become an OGF board member.
•
In 1993 OGF moved into expanded facilities in Cambridge Massachusetts, sponsored
by Camber Corporation, which had become significantly involved in the planning
and development of the OGC organization through Camber’s Executive
Vice President, Bob King. Camber’s support at this early stage was
extremely helpful to the fledgling organization.
•
During these developments in the early 1990s, computing was becoming more
network-centric. The Object Management Group (OMG), a membership-based industry
standards organization focussed on developing specifications for interoperable
object-based software, was growing rapidly, and there was general progress
in the software industry in the direction of shared interfaces, object-oriented
programming and object modeling. The OGAE idea evolved into a vision of diverse
geoprocessing systems communicating directly over networks by means of a
set of open interfaces based on the “Open Geodata Interoperability
Specification (OGIS).” OGF’s “OGIS Project” was announced
in June, 1993.
•
Finally, the need for open interfaces led to another organizational change,
because OGF – a foundation – wasn’t the right kind of organization
to develop such specifications. What was needed was an industry consortium
like OMG. This required forming a 501 (c)6 not-for-profit trade association
to replace the 501 (c)3 not-for-profit charitable foundation. The company
was incorporated as “OGIS Ltd.” on August 25, 1994. An Oct 22,
1994 Board resolution changed the name to “Open GIS Consortium, Inc.”
• At the new Consortium’s first Board of Directors meeting on November,
29, 1994, the directors included: David Schell (President), Gregory Smith
(MITRE), Scott Madry (Rutgers University), Emil Horvath (SCS), Quentin Ellis
(Camber Corp.), Kenn Gardels (University of California, Berkeley), and Fred
Limp (University of Arkansas Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies). Lance
McKee was the secretary of the corporation. The Board appointed two vice
presidents: Lance McKee, Vice President of Corporate Communications and Jim
Farley of CAST, Vice President of Technical Programs. Kurt Buehler was appointed
as Technical Director of the OGIS Project Track and Chairman of the Technical
Committee. In February, 1995, Kurt Buehler left the Corps of Engineers and
became OGC’s Vice President and Chief Technology Officer.
Significant Events in the History of OGC.
---- 1994 ----
•
OGC was founded with eight charter members at the time of its first Board
of Directors meeting on September 25, 1994. These members were Camber Corporation,
University of Arkansas - CAST, Center for Environmental Design Research
at the University of California – Berkeley, Intergraph Corporation, PCI
Remote Sensing, QUBA, USACERL (US Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering
Research Laboratory), and USDA Soil Conservation Service.
•
Intergraph was OGC’s first commercial Principal Member. Intergraph’s
Executive VP Larry Ayers became a member of the OGC Board of Directors. Cliff
Kottman, who worked at Intergraph as chief technical representative on Federal
accounts, had previously arranged for Intergraph to host one of the GRASS
technical group meetings. John Herring, a lead engineer at Intergraph, had
participated in that meeting. Kottman and Herring soon became increasingly
involved in the technical discussions.
•
OGC proceeded to trademark “OpenGIS.” This mark is now trademarked
in 28 countries. Officially protecting this “community intellectual
property” was necessary to enable the Consortium to position itself
and its products (OpenGIS Specifications) as truly open and vendor-neutral.
•
In 1994, the OGC process was validated further by being referenced in
the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) 1994 National Spatial Data Infrastructure
Plan. Over the years, cooperation between OGC and FGDC has steadily increased,
to the benefit of both organizations and all of their constituencies.
•
OGC received funding through a NASA Cooperative Agreement Notice (CAN)
which helped support development of a robust Technical Committee process.
The period
of performance began December 9, 1994. OGC had five partners: the Center
for Remote Sensing and Spatial Applications at Rutgers, Belcore, the California
Resource Agency, NASA and Camber Corporation. Together, these were the
partners of the Universal Spatial Data Access Consortium, the purpose of
which was
to model interoperable visual environments in order to provide a first
proof of concept of some of the OpenGIS principles. NASA’s support was vital
during the period when OGC needed to build critical mass in the industry.
The Cooperative Agreement Notice helped fund OGC to bring in enough key members
to be a viable organization and to create an effective Technical Committee
process.
•
Number of OGC members at the end of 1994: 20.
---- 1995 ----
•
The OGC Technical Committee began its bimonthly meetings and developed
consensus on formal structure of Working Groups, Task Forces, and SIGs. The
OGC Management
Committee was formed to provide business planning and oversight.
•
Lockheed Martin Corporation joined in December, 1995, seeing the opportunity
to help them help their defense and intelligence customers and also seeing
the opportunity to bring some of their core competencies to new markets.
Larry Fritz, Senior Staff Scientist at Lockheed Martin and then Secretary
General of ISPRS, joined OGC’s Board of Directors.
•
Jack Pellicci, US Army (retired) and then Vice President, Strategy, Solutions
and Marketing, Oracle Government, led Oracle to become an early member
because of his recognition of the importance of spatial information.
Jack has been
a strong supporter of OGC since 1994 and has been a valued member of
OGC’s
board. Oracle joined OGC in March, 1995, establishing the fact that open
interfaces shatter the old monolithic model of geoprocessing systems. Oracle
recognized the opportunity to use their database software to store complex
spatial information and to make that data and Oracle’s database functionality
available to other geoprocessing systems through OpenGIS interfaces.
•
Sun Microsystems became increasingly active and in April, 1995 was led
into principal membership though the efforts of Carl Cargill, who later
became
a member of OGC’s Board of Directors and Sun’s director of
standards. Carl was a key resource in helping OGC to become an established
player in
the world of IT standards.
•
The basic OpenGIS architecture was defined and stabilized over the course
of this year, and the basic structure and process of the Technical Committee
were also defined and stabilized. Many long discussions led to basic
agreements and common understandings that provide a foundation for all
the work that
has been accomplished in the Technical Committee since then.
•
Directors appointed in 1995, in addition to Carl Cargill, Jack Pellicci,
and Larry Fritz as mentioned above, included Jerome Kreuser, Head of
the Quantitative Analysis Consulting Group, IRM Dept., World Bank; and
Jim
McCrystal, then Vice President, Information Systems, National Geographic
Society
•
Number of OGC members at the end of 1995: 38
---- 1996 ----
•
The US Dept. of Defense National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) contracted
with OGC to provide input into planning NIMA’s next generation distributed
geoprocessing approaches, and to organize a series of “Integrated Product
Team” (IPT) meetings at which technology vendors and NIMA technologists
shared their visions. This led to NIMA’s continuing relationship with
OGC, which focuses on OGC’s unique capability to help NIMA simultaneously
influence the geospatial industry’s interoperability progress and to
help NIMA architect its technology based on that progress.
•
Louis G. Hecht, Jr. was appointed Vice President, Business Development,
responsible for the implementation of strategic memberships, business relationships
and
managing business planning. Mr. Hecht has 24 years of experience in the
fields of information technology, resource management and spatial data
management
and analysis, and he has authored numerous columns and articles.
•
OGC wrote and published The OpenGIS Guide - Introduction to Interoperable
Geoprocessing. Hundreds of copies were sold and made available to members,
and it was soon put online, free for anyone to download. “The Guide” helped
educate people about the technological foundations of the OpenGIS Specification.
•
Microsoft joined in November, 1996. Their focus in the consortium has
been to educate the other members on the opportunities and obstacles to mobile
computing and location-based services, and to help OGC in its efforts to
bring convergence with other standards organizations in this area.
•
Michael Brand, then president of European Umbrella Organisation for Geographical
Information (EUROGI) and Director of the Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland
, was elected to OGC’s Board of Directors.
•
Number of OGC members at the end of 1996: 87.
---- 1997 ----
•
OGC released the OpenGIS Simple Features Specification, which specifies
the interface that enables diverse systems to communicate in terms of “simple
features” which are based on 2D geometry. The supported geometry types
include points, lines, linestrings, curves, and polygons. Each geometric
object is associated with a Spatial Reference System, which describes the
coordinate space in which the geometric object is defined.
•
ISO/TC 211 and OGC began to converge their approaches through a white paper,
through ongoing discussion of each other’s draft documents, through
OGC’s participation in ISO/TC 211 sessions, and through ISO/TC 211’s
participation in both OGC Technical Committee and OGC Management Committee
meetings.
•
OGC and FGDC staged a successful demo of OpenGIS concepts at the GIS/LIS
show in Washington, DC.
•
Telecommunications and Transportation Working Groups and a WWW Mapping
SIG were formed in OGC’s Technical Committee.
•
Close coordination and cross membership were established with the OMG’s
CORBAgis SIG.
•
OGC joined a partnership with NCGIA to develop an Interoperability Research
Agenda.
•
Clifford A. Kottman, Ph.D. was appointed Vice President, Technology Development.
Mr. Kottman has worked in academia (Louisiana State University, and Oregon
State University), government (the Defense Mapping Agency), private industry
(including Lockheed and Intergraph Corporations), and not-for-profit technology
companies (MITRE and the Open GIS Consortium). As Vice President and Chief
Scientist of the Open GIS Consortium, Dr. Kottman is the Consortium’s
lead interface to other standards organizations and he plays a key role in
establishment of OpenGIS Implementation Specifications.
•
Robert Corell, then Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation,
Geosciences Directorate, and Marty Faga, then Senior Vice President and
General Manager, Center for Integrated Intelligence Systems at The MITRE
Corporation,
were elected to OGC’s Board of Directors.
• Number of OGC members at the end of 1997: 112.
---- 1998 ----
•
The GIPSIE Project (GIS Interoperability Project Stimulating Industry in
Europe) was funded by the European Commission to facilitate European GIS
industry’s contribution to OpenGIS Specifications and support development
of conformant software products.
•
NSDIPA, the Japanese spatial data infrastructure organization, signed
a memorandum of understanding with OGC in 1997. As a result, a number of Japanese
geospatial
companies, many of whom are NSDIPA members, have joined OGC.
•
Ulrich Neunfinger, then president of SICAD GEOMATICS, and Aki Yamaura,
General Manager of the Satellite/Information Systems Business Unit and
Deputy General
Manager, Aerospace at Mitsubishi Corporation in Japan, and also Chairman
of the NSDIPA Foreign Affairs Committee, were elected to OGC’s Board
of Directors.
•
The Management Committee’s Government SIG was chartered to provide
a forum for representatives of government agency members to discuss topics
of particular concern. Meetings of the “Gov SIG” yield user organization
agreements that affect the course of OpenGIS Specification development, the
focus of Interoperability Initiatives, and, perhaps most importantly, the
purchase of products that implement OpenGIS Specifications.
•
Number of OGC members at the end of 1998: 146.
---- 1999 ----
•
OGC released two more key OpenGIS Specifications: Grid Coverages and
Catalog Services. The OpenGIS Grid Coverages Specification promotes interoperability
between software implementations by data vendors and software vendors providing
grid analysis and processing capabilities. The OpenGIS Catalog Service
Interface Specification defines a common interface that enables diverse
but conformant
applications to perform discovery, browse and query operations against
distributed and potentially heterogeneous catalog servers.
•
Beginning in 1996, OGC had begun to develop a Spiral Engineering Process
for specification development. This provided part of the background for
discussions in OGC’s WWW Mapping SIG that gave rise to the Web Mapping Testbed
Phase 1 (WMT1). This rapid prototyping initiative, which ran April through
August, produced the OpenGIS Web Map Server Interface Specification.
•
OGC campaigned successfully to make interoperability and OpenGIS Specifications
a key element of the Digital Earth Reference Model. The Digital Earth initiative
had began as an Al Gore initiated, NASA-led interagency demonstration of
next generation network-based geospatial applications. OGC helped the Digital
Earth community to understand that the vision depended on interoperability.
•
ISO published “Draft Co-operative agreement between ISO/TC 211 Geographic
information/Geomatics and the Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC)” which
formalizes ongoing cooperation between this important de jure standards organization
and OGC. This relationship continues to strengthen, with procedures now in
place for formal review and acceptance of OpenGIS Specifications as ISO international
standards.
•
In memory of Kenn Gardels, who died early in 1999, and in appreciation
of his remarkable dedication and contributions, the OGC Board created a special
award in his name. The first Kenneth D. Gardels Award Ceremony, a private
event for OGC Members and Directors, was held June 16, 1999 at Oracle Corporation
in Reston, VA. The award was given to John Herring of Oracle Corporation
for his outstanding technical contributions and leadership in the OGC Technical
Committee.
•
John Cavalier, President and CEO of MapInfo, and John McLaughlin, Vice
President for Research and International Cooperation at the University
of New Brunswick
in Fredericton, N. B. were elected to OGC’s Board of Directors.
• Number of OGC members at the end of 1999: 182.
---- 2000 ----
•
The OpenGIS Coordinate Transformation Services Specification and the OpenGIS
Web Map Server Specification were released. OGC’s OpenGIS Coordinate
Transformation Services Specification provides a standard way for software
to specify and access coordinate transformation services for use on specified
sets of spatial data. The OpenGIS Web Map Server (WMS) Specification standardizes
the way in which Web clients request maps. Clients request maps from a WMS
instance in terms of named layers and provide parameters such as the size
of the returned map as well as the spatial reference system to be used in
drawing the map. OGC published the Geographic Markup Language (GML) 1.0 recommendation
paper, leveraging the Web’s XML capabilities to support ubiquitous,
standards-based geoprocessing.
•
Based on the success of the Web Mapping Testbed, OGC organized its Interoperability
Program, institutionalizing support for an ongoing series of “Interoperability
Initiatives” which include testbeds, pilot programs, prototyping activities,
etc., including in 2000:
- OGC WMT Upper-Susquehanna Lackawanna Pilot Project, which began in April,
2000 and completed successfully in June, 2000. WMT USL helped the US Army
Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) assess the feasibility
of implementing a multi-user, multi-vendor web-enabled mapping and planning
framework in Central and Northeastern Pennsylvania.
- Web Mapping Testbed Phase 2 (WMT2), building on WMT1, expanding the range
of interoperable web mapping services.
- Geospatial Fusion Services Testbed (GFST1). The open interfaces involved
here enable three services that work together to integrate text with geoprocessing
and web based services: a geoparser (capturing geographic references in
text), a gazetteer (using a dictionary of place names and their associated
location)
and a geocoder (putting the location on a dynamic digital map). Together
these services allow a researcher, for example, to explore a dynamic, viewable
map automatically filled with details based on text from a series of news
articles and other documents.
• OGC participated in the Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) Seminar.
•
OGC launched OGC Europe to enable the consortium to assist European government
programs with vendor-neutral technology interoperability approaches.
•
Alan Doyle of BBN, for his technical leadership, his service as both
Technical and Management Committee representative, and his visionary promotion
in OGC
of a standards approach for web-based distributed geoprocessing, was awarded
the Kenneth D. Gardels Award at the second Kenneth D. Gardels Award Ceremony,
held June 5, 2000 at ESRI in Redlands, CA.
• In February, 2000, Jeff Burnett, an experienced manager with over 20
years experience in the information technology industry, joined OGC’s executive
staff as Vice President, Operations and Finance. He was also made secretary
and treasurer of the corporation.
• Number of OGC members at the end of 2000: 209.
---- 2001 ----
Eighteen candidate OpenGIS Specifications were in progress in this year,
many the result of WMT2 and GFS testbeds. Twelve additional OpenGIS Specifications
were in planning stages in the Technical Committee. GML 2.0 was adopted
as an implementation specification.
• Dr. Carl Reed joined OGC staff in May, 2001 as Executive Director of
the Specification Program. Prior to joining OGC, Dr. Reed had held positions
as vice president of geospatial marketing at Intergraph Corporation, chief
technology officer for Genasys II, and GIS division manager at Autometric.
While working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Dr. Reed was a principal
developer of an interactive GIS for environmental mitigation, the Map Overlay
and Statistical System (MOSS). This was the world's first full-function,
interactive vector-based GIS to run on a mini computer.
• The Interoperability Program gained momentum and greatly expanded
its agenda to support interoperability planning services, testbeds for the
development of new interfaces, and pilot projects to validate, in a near
operational setting, OpenGIS Specifications and the products that implement
them. OGC launched the Open Location Services (OpenLS) Initiative, enlisting
wireless technology providers and reaching out to other standards groups
to ensure a consistent spatial framework for rapidly emerging Location Services.
The OpenLS Testbed attracted a variety of international wireless, GIS and
other vendor community sponsors. The Web Mapping Testbed 2 and Geospatial
Fusion Services Testbed 1 Interoperability Initiatives completed successfully
and added to OGC’s framework of web service specifications. The Geospatial
Fusion Services Pilot completed successfully. Nordrhein Westphalia (Germany)
contracted with OGC for interoperability planning services. The Military
Pilot Program – Phase 1 commenced to address evaluation of OGC specifications
and spatial technologies in a near operational setting. The Civil Works Technology
Insertion Project (CTI-1) also began in 2001. An Insertion Project expands
an organization’s interoperability capacity by laying the groundwork
for open implementations. The CTI Project, sponsored by the US Army Corps
of Engineers, Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), applied interoperable
web mapping technology in practical applications, supporting enterprise GIS
solutions for Corps Civil Works Divisions and Districts. OGC obtained sponsorship
for an initial OGC Web Services thread to commence, focusing on the development
of a General Services Model, Sensor Web, and additional Web Mapping Services
interfaces and capabilities. CANRI, the Australian Spatial Data Infrastructure
Team, joined the OGC Web Services Initiative, continuing the strong Australian
involvement in OGC.
•
OGCNetwork was created as a resource to support Interoperability Initiatives
and also to support interoperable technology developers working independently.
OGC Network provides support to prototyping, demonstration, and testing
of interoperable geospatial products, as well as educational materials.
•
At the third Kenneth D. Gardels Award Ceremony, held April 5, 2001 at
Oracle Corporation in Nashua, NH, the Kenneth D. Gardels Award was given to
Arliss Whiteside of BAE SYSTEMS Mission Solutions for his service as a
Planning
Committee representative and for his superlative work in developing OpenGIS
Interface Specifications for image geometry models, accuracy metadata,
coordinate reference systems and transformations, services architecture,
catalog services,
and image exploitation.
•
Jeff Burnett, Vice President of Operations and Finance, OGC; S.J. Camarata,
Director of Corporate Strategies for ESRI Inc.; Dr. Mike Jackson, Head of
Geospatial Systems at Hutchison3G UK Ltd (H3G); Robert King, president of
MSR, Inc.; and Preetha Pulusani, Executive Vice President for Mapping/GIS
and Intergraph India, Ltd. at the Intergraph Corporation were elected to
OGC’s Board of Directors.
•
OGC advanced Location Services interoperability at "GIS In Telecoms
2001," December 04, 2001.
• Number of OGC members at the end of 2001: 228.
--- 2002 ----
• 18 candidate OpenGIS Specifications were in progress in this year, many
the result of testbeds. Six additional OpenGIS Specifications were in planning
stages in the Technical Committee. The Web Coverage Service draft implementation
specification was approved and the OpenGIS Geography Markup Language Specification
(GML 2.1) was adopted.
•
The Geospatial Information for Sustainable Development Initial Capability
Pilot (GISD-ICP), an OGC pilot project to advance geo-interoperability for
sustainable development, completed in 2002. The Open Location Services Testbed
(OpenLS™ Testbed) (OpenLS-1 and OpenLS-1.1) also completed. OGC and
the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) concluded the FEMA-sponsored
Multi-Hazard Mapping Initiative Phase 1 (MMI-1) with a successful demonstration
of a standards-based framework for discovery, access, and distribution of
multi-hazard map data. OGC began its Critical Infrastructure Protection Initiative
(CIPI) with a Call for Communities (CFC) to reach out to government agencies
at all levels (in Canada, the US and other countries); non-governmental organizations;
academic groups; and private sector companies involved in Critical Infrastructure
systems. Such organizations responded to participate in a series of hands-on,
collaborative engineering efforts to test the effectiveness of new open standards.
The CIPI kickoff event was held in November. Also, in November, the OWS 1.2
live demonstration of geospatial interoperability drew on three emergency
response situations in a mock Department of Homeland Security Emergency Operations
Center. The demonstration featured the use of live sensors, the tasking of
an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and the integration of data, services and
other elements hosted on servers worldwide. The Object Domain Modeling Support
(ODMS) Initiative (ODMS); the OGC Web Services (OWS) Initiative Phase 1 Requirement
Set 1 (OWS-1.1); the Military Pilot Project Testbed, Phase 1 (MPP-1); the
Multihazard Mapping Initiative, Phase 1 (MMI-1); and the North Rhein Westphalia
Pilot (NRWPP) all completed in 2002.
• In February, 2002, OGC signed a memorandum of understanding with the
Columbia Earth Institute (CEI), a collection of Columbia University institutes
that
includes Lamont Doherty, to extend our activities into the domains of science
and sustainable development.
• January 16, 2002. OGC was recognized for playing an important role in
a joint project of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) and
the
US Geological Survey (USGS). The project focused on removing technical obstacles
to sharing earth observation data. It was a direct result of the 1997 US
and European Science and Technology Agreement concerning Earth Observation
Technology Development and Application Research, and a subsequent 1999 cooperative
arrangement between JRC and USGS.
• A number of important alliances were formed in 2002. The Location Interoperability
Forum (LIF) and the OGC agreed to work together on interoperability, education
and market development for mobile location based services. OGC and the Personal
Communications Industry Association (PCIA) signed a memorandum of understanding
to work together to advance the interoperability of geospatial information
systems in wireless communications. OGC and Automotive Multimedia Interface
Collaboration (AMI-C) signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at aligning
OpenGIS specifications, programs and processes with the information requirements,
specifications and programs of the automotive industry. OGC and the Geospatial
Information Technology Association (GITA) signed an MOU to undertake a program
of jointly supported educational and market development activities designed
to benefit the members of both organizations and the geospatial community
as a whole.
• The Open GIS Consortium (Europe), Limited (OGCE) partnered with the European
Umbrella Organisation for Geographic Information (EUROGI), the European Commission
- Joint Research Centre (JRC), and the University of Sheffield in a far-reaching
European geographic information project called Geographic Information Network
in Europe (GINIE). GINIE is a project funded by the Information Society Technologies
Programme of the European Union to support the development of a cohesive
Geographic Information Strategy at the European level. Also, OGC and the
Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe (AGILE) signed
a memorandum of understanding aimed at creating a program of jointly supported
educational and market development activities designed to benefit the members
of both organizations and the European geospatial community as a whole. This
is in the context of European Commission Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI)
programs like GINIE, ETeMII, GETIS and INSPIRE, supported by organizations
including EUROGI, Eurogeographics and AGILE. OGCE was one of the two major
participants in the EC-funded GETIS (Geoprocessing Networks in a European
Territorial Interoperability Study), working toward consensus on the geoprocessing
framework to provide interoperability of geospatial information and a competitive
market platform in Europe.
• OGC formed a Technology Advisory Group (TAG) to support the efforts of
I-Teams nationwide. I-Teams are state, regional, or thematic information consortia
formed to plan and co-invest in current, standards-based spatial data. I-Teams,
which include both public and private sector partners, create business plans
to drive partnerships, policy, financial plans and processes necessary to
realize these goals. The US Office of Management and Budget and the Federal
Geographic Data Committee support I-Teams.
• OGC provided support for the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC)
led Geospatial One-Stop initiative launched as part of the U.S. e- government
program. OGC developed and tested interoperable capabilities, including (in
the Geospatial One-Stop Transportation Pilot Activity) capabilities to address
the semantic differences that exist between similar geospatial data sets
developed and maintained by federal, state and local government, and other
organizations. This involved development of Unified Modeling Language (UML)
and processes to generate Geography Markup Language (GML) representation
of the Transportation Framework Standard (roads, transit, rail). This work
was related to OGC's support for the Modeling Advisory Teams (MAT) established
by the FGDC to accelerate the nationwide consensus development of National
Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) Framework Data Standards.
• As part of an Emerging Technology Summit Series, GITA and OGC sponsored
a Location-Based Services event to feature the results of OGC's OpenLS Initiative.
• OGC added an Outreach and Adoption Program (OCAP) to the existing Specification
and Interoperability Programs. OCAP promotes OGC's work into the larger geospatial
and IT community. Mark Reichardt, Executive Director of OCAP, was chosen
to manage Business Development, Marketing Communications, Field Operations,
and Support Staff.
• OGC and the Institute for Professional Education (IPE) agreed to collaborate
on the development and delivery of OpenGIS Specification training.
• OGC began a University Program, beginning with an interoperability internship
bulletin board.
• Ron Lake Received OGC's 2002 Gardels Award, in large part for his instrumental
role in developing the Geography Markup Language (GML). In July, the company
Ron Lake founded, Galdos Systems (Vancouver, B.C., Canada), hosted the first
OGC-sponsored GML Developer Days.
• OGC's President, David Schell, Received CIO Magazine's 20/20 Award.
• OGC introduced a new membership level called Principal Plus. Designed
for public and private organizations, Principal Plus members benefit by taking
a more active role in shaping the direction of the Consortium's technology
specification activities and in encouraging the use and acceptance of OpenGIS
specifications worldwide.
• OGC announced new Local, State and Provincial Membership levels.
• TASC, a business unit of Northrop Grumman's Information Technology (IT)
sector, upgraded its OGC membership to the Strategic level. Also, FGDC, Intergraph,
and
NASA each upgraded their OGC membership level from Principal to Strategic Member.
Autodesk became an OGC Principal Plus Member and Natural Resources Canada became
an OGC Principal Member. OGC supported the United Nations (UN) in the development
of a Strategic Plan for Geographic Information (GI). The United Nations joined
as a Principal Member.
• Number of OGC members at the end of 2002: 238.
---- 2003 ----
•
OGC's Technical Committee and Planning Committee approved version 1 of the OpenGIS® Reference
Model (ORM). The ORM brings together, under the rubric of ISO's RM-ODP standard,
a comprehensive description of OGC's technical baseline for interoperability
and framework for our adopted and emerging OpenGIS Specifications. OGC also approved
the following OpenGIS Specifications in 2003: The OpenGIS Catalog Services Specification;
OpenGIS Geography Markup Language v3.0 (GML 3.0); the OpenGIS Web Map Context
Interface Specification; the OpenGIS Location Services (OpenLS(TM)) Specification;
and the OpenGIS Web Map Service (WMS) 1.2 Specification. WMS 1.2 was also submitted
to the ISO TC 211 as a new work item.
• The following OGC Interoperability Initiatives were completed in 2003:
the OGC Web Services (OWS) Initiative Phase 1 Requirement Set 2 (OWS-1.2); the
Critical
Infrastructure Protection Initiative 1.1 (CIPI-1.1); the Critical Infrastructure
Protection Initiative (CIPI-2); the Geospatial Objects Phase 1 (GO-1); the Conformance
and Interoperability Test and Evaluation (CITE) Initiative; and the Geospatial
One-Stop - Portal Initiative (GOS-PI). The US Government GOS Portal for geospatial
information discovery, access, and mapping in the U.S is based on the standards-based
architecture and prototype developed in the GOS-PI. The OGC Web Services (OWS)
Initiative Phase 2 (OWS-2) and the Kentucky Landscape Census (KLC) Project both
began in Q4 2003.
• The Planning Committee approved the CITE testing framework that was the
final product of the CITE Initiative. CITE provides an automated set of tests
for testing
of software compliance with the WMS 1.1 and WFS 1.0 specifications along with
a Geography Markup Language (GML) validator. The first test suites and other
resources became available in 2003.
• Web Map Service (WMS) Cookbook version 1.0, the first in a planned series
of books detailing the implementation and use of OpenGIS Specifications, was
released.
The GINIE Book, GI in the Wider Europe, which OGCE helped write, was published
and made available on the GINIE website. http://www.ec-gis.org/ginie.
• The OGC EuropeSIG coordinated responses from industry and submitted an
OGC response
to the INSPIRE Call for Internet Consultation.
•
OGCE created the European Virtual Resource Pool (EVPool). Participants in EVPool
work to increase understanding of the benefits of OpenGIS® specifications
in European business and government pre-procurement settings. EVPool provides
technical support for OGCE projects that involve strategic evaluation about future
investments of interoperable geoprocessing.
• GITA and the Open GIS Consortium hosted the Emerging Technology Summit
II: Spatial Web Services, June 5-6, 2003, with a keynote by World Wide Web founder
Tim Berners-Lee.
• On June 27, 2003. Questerra joined OGC as Strategic Member
• OGC honored Edric Keighan, Peter Vretanos and Bill Lalonde, all of Canadian
software
developer CubeWerx, with the fifth annual Kenneth G. Gardels Award.
• At a special ceremony in Washington, D.C., OGC presented the US Army
Corps of
Engineers with a special OGC Vision Award.
• OGC-Australasia (OGC-A) was formally incorporated in July 2003. Two projects
were successfully completed in 2003 and the AusIndustry grant for the Interoperability
Demonstration Project was awarded to the Australian Spatial Information Business
Association (ASIBA) and an OGC-A led team.
• The OGC Board approved IPR Policies to further safeguard OGC's open,
public Standards.
•
In August, 2003, When Hurricane Isabel hit the east coast of the United States,
OGC Web Services from multiple member companies powered the U.S. government's
Hazard Maps <http://www.hazardmaps.gov/atlas.php> website, which, as a
result of the Multi-Hazard Mapping Initiative, supports 36 live map servers and
899 live map layers. In August, the website passed the one million visitor mark.
• OGC, along with the Object Management Group (OMG), Simulation Interoperability
Standards Organization (SISO) and Web3D Consortium, hosted the first annual Workshop
on Web Enabled Modeling and Simulation (WebSim), October 27 - 30, 2003.
• The Planning Committee created the Enterprise Architecture Special Interest
Group
(EASIG) to provide a forum for discussion on the relationship and integration
of OGC's work with geospatial standards and architecture in the broader information
technology environment.
• The OGC began an internship program that helps match organizations looking
for qualified interns with college students seeking internships that will help
them
become familiar with OGC's interoperability specifications.
• OGC launched OGC User, a quarterly publication distributed via email.
OGC User focuses on the many projects worldwide where forward looking organizations
have
implemented OpenGIS based solutions.
• Number of OGC members at the end of 2003: 254.
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