1. Copyright © 2009, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., OGC and Interoperability – How is OGC responding to the INSPIRE needs? Presentation at the National Technical University of Athens, April, 27 th 2010 Athina Trakas Open Geospatial Consortium Director European Services atrakas@opengeospatial.org http://www.opengeospatial.org

2. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., 2 Agenda General Aspects and Introduction How does OGC work Requirements and the OGC process Players and Interfaces INSPIRE / OGC

3. General Aspects and Introduction 3

4. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., 4 Cross-Boundary Information Sharing... … and accessing geodata is getting more and more important for public administration, industry and academia alike and continues to be one of our biggest challenges. But how can data from different sources be accessed, fused and applied commonly? The key that enables such information access in the first place is standardisation. It is the definition of common interfaces and terminology between heterogeneous systems that enables interoperability.

5. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., 5 What is Interoperability? "capability to communicate, execute programs, or transfer data among various functional units in a manner that requires the user to have little or no knowledge of the unique characteristics of those units“ - - - “Die Fähigkeit, über verschiedenste Systeme hinweg auf eine Art und Weise zu kommunizieren, Programme auszuführen oder Daten zwischen funktionalen Komponenten auszutauschen, ohne dass der Endanwender vertiefte Kenntnisse über die zu Grunde liegenden Mechanismen haben muss.“ Source: OGC Abstract Specification Topic 12: Services. Derived from ISO 2382-1.

6. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., 6 Organisations face the challenges of next-generation data sharing and collaboration. Sharing is often necessary among different communities, organisations and countries in a region. OGC can help define how OpenGIS standards are put to best use for your future requirements and mission! Urban Planning Defence & Intelligence Geosciences Sustainable Development Consumer Services & Mass Market Emergency Management & Response OGC Web Services Sensor Webs Location-Based Services Web Mapping Modelling & Simulation Decision Support Multi-Source Operations Portal Services What drives OGC Standards Development? Environmental Planning Research & Education Energy & Utilities Aviation e-Government

7. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., What are OGC Web Services (OWS) Web Map Service (WMS) Web Feature Service (WFS) Web Coverage Service (WCS) Catalogue (CSW) Geography Markup Language (GML) Web Map Context (WMC) OGC KML Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) Others… Just as http:// is the dial tone of the World Wide Web, and html / xml are the standard encodings, the geospatial web is enabled by OGC standards: Relevant to geospatial information applications: Critical Infrastructure, Environment, Weather, Climate, Homeland Security, Defense & Intelligence, SmartGrids and others Web Map Server Web Coverage Server Web Feature Server

8. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., OGC at a Glance Founded in 1994, not for profit, consensus based and voluntary 400 member organisations (industry, government, academia) (April 2010) http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/members 28 adopted OGC Standards (some are ISO Standards) http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards S everal hundred software products, implementing OpenGIS Standards http://www.opengeospatial.org/resource/products Cooperation with other standards organisations, foundations and projects. OGC Membership Distribution By Type OGC Membership Distribution By Region

9. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., OGC at a Glance - Partners and Network And many more...

10. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., The OpenGIS ® Vision Interoperability and Standards are Key Achieve the full societal, economic and scientific benefits of integrating location resources into commercial, institutional and organisational processes worldwide. 10

11. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., The OGC Mission To serve as a global forum for and lead the development, promotion and harmonization of open and freely available geospatial standards. …

12. How does OGC? 12

13. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., Voluntary & Consensus International organisation that plan, develop, establish, or coordinate voluntary consensus standards using agreed-upon procedures. A voluntary consensus standards body is defined by the following attributes: – Openness. – Balance of interest. – Due process. – An appeals process. – Consensus – Well defined Policies and Procedures. 13

14. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., What is an OGC Standard? A document, established by consensus Approved by the OGC Membership Provides, for common and repeated use, rules, guidelines or characteristics Achieves maximum interoperability in its given context Implementable in software OGC standards are Open Standards –Freely and publicly available –No license fees –Vendor neutral 14

15. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., How does OGC work? Consensus process – that is reflecting a common understanding of requirements. Formalised standards development process – based on commonly agreed, structured and well defined policies and processes. Making use of innovative processes – for testing, verifying and documenting user requirements 15

16. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., 16 Organisation Chart http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects

17. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., OGC’s Approach to Advancing Interoperability http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects Interoperability Program (IP) a global, innovative, hands-on prototyping and testing program designed to accelerate interface development and validation, and bring interoperability to the market. Specification Development Program Consensus processes similar to other Industry consortia (World Wide Web Consrtium etc.)‏ Outreach and Community Adoption Program - Education and training, encourage take up of OGC standardards, business develop- ment, communications programs Rapid Interface Development Standards Setting Market Adoption

18. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., How to participate? http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects Specification Development Program Participate through: (i) Domain Working Groups: Forum for discussion and documentation of interoperability requirements for a given information or user community, Informational presentations and discussions about the market use of adopted OGC Standards (http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/wg) (ii) Standards Working Groups: Edit and approve a candidate standard for public comment, Consider official Change Request Proposals to an existing OGC Standard and make changes to the standard as necessary (http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/swg) Interoperability Program (IP Program) Participate through: testbeds, interoperability experiments or pilot projects, where sponsors and participants (usually OGC members) work together solving interoperability requirements, results might be: “demonstrable” implementations, engineering reports etc. (http://www.http://www

19. How to bring requirements to the OGC? 19

20. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., (New) Requirements? http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/process Everyone can bring always bring in Change requests and new requirements. http://portal.opengeospatial.org/public_ogc/change_request.php OGC members meet 4 times a year at the OGC Technical Committee meetings. http://www.opengeospatial.org/event

21. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., “Change Request” and “New Requirements” http://portal.opengeospatial.org/public_ogc/change_request.php Requirements related to INSPIRE A Change Request or a new requirement is proposed → OGC Staff makes sure, that it is forwarded to the related DWG or SWG. Close cooperation with the Initial Operating Capabilities Task Force (IOC TF) of INSPIRE Current ideas: close coordination between IOC TF, JRC and OGC –Explain how to use the CR or New Requirements tool. –Explicitly introduce and present the requirements during the OGC meetings –Present a detailed time schedule of INSPIRE in OGC (e.g. through Drafting Team members)

22. Players and Interfaces OGC/INSPIRE 22

23. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., Interfaces in the standards setting process Many OGC members are involved in the INSPIRE proces and vice-versa: INSPIRE Legally Mandated Organisations (LMO): BRGM (F), BKG (D), DEFRA (UK), Finnish Meteorological Institute, Geonovum (NL), Universities of Edinborough (UK), Jaume I (ES) and many more. INSPIRE Spatial Data Interest Communities (SDIC): OGC France Forum (F), SDI of Catalonia (ES), EDINA (UK), OGC Hydrology DWG Drafting Teams, Thematic Working Groups, thematial overlapping (e.g. Hydrology, Meteorolgy and others from Annexes) IOC Task Force And of course the collaboration with the Joint Research Center (JRC) and other EU agencies.

24. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., IP Program Initiatives 24 Galeon Interoperability Experiment (using Web Coverage Service (WCS) Standard http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/initiatives/ galeonie Ocean Science IE –Phase I investigated use of WFS and SOS for in-situ marine platforms - produced an Engineering Report and reference implementations for using SOS –Phase II will continue the improvement and use of OGC specifications in the marine community. AGILE/EuroSDR/OGC Research Data Testbed (PTB) GEOSS AIP-3 Architecture Implementation Pilot

25. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., HNODC Web Interface PRESENT Web Services W.S. Architecture Geospatial W.S. WMS/WFS WPS HNODC General HNODC Architecture HNODC Interface HNODC W.S. Thanks to Vailis Lakes HCMR

26. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., 26 Some closing thoughts OGC and complimentary open standards are a resource to advance research in geosciences through interoperable architectures that improve cross-boundary information discovery, sharing, access and fusion Direct involvement of the user community with industry in OGC programs has been important the Consortium's success. Policy favoring open standards is helping to accelerate industry adoption of OGC standards. There is much more work to do!

27. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., Avoid duplication, enhance cooperation!

28. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., Questions? Get engaged! Athina Trakas Director European Service OpenGeospatial Consortium, Inc. Heerstr. 162 53111 Bonn Tel.: +49 – 228 – 54 88 99 42 Mobil: +49 – 173 – 211 2623 eMail: atrakas@opengeospatial.org web: http://www.opengeospatial.org

29. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., Some closing thoughts “The Geospatial Web is not just a bunch of mash-ups or even the hundreds of SDI's that have been successfully deployed. The Geospatial Web is about the complete integration and use of location at all levels of the internet and the web. This integration will often be invisible to the user. But at the end of the day, the ubiquitous permeation of location into the infrastructure of the internet and the web is being built on standards.“ Dr. Carl Reed CTO Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc

30. OGC Copyright © 2010, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., 30 Return on Investment Source: http://www.ec-gis.org/sdi//ws/costbenefit2006/