HD-1: Use of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Standards in the Geosciences

Sunday, July 25, 08:30 - 12:30

Presented by

George Percivall

Abstract

This tutorial will provide an overview of standards from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and their use in the geosciences. The OGC is a non-profit, international, voluntary consensus standards organization. OGC standards are developed and adopted by consensus by the 380 members of the OGC. OGC standards describe rules, guidelines or characteristics for interfaces and encodings aimed at the achievement of the optimum degree of interoperability for geospatial information. The most popular OGC standards are the Web Map Service (WMS), Web Feature Service (WFS), Web Coverage Service (WCS), Catalogue Service for the Web (CSW), Geography Markup Language (GML), and KML (formerly Keyhole Markup Language). The suite of OGC Sensor Web Enablement Standards (SWE) are rapidly rising to a similar level of implementation as the initial set of OGC Web Services. Implementation of OGC standards begins concurrent with the initial drafts of the specifications as part of the OGC Interoperability Program. The OGC Specification Program produces the final candidate specification and is the consensus adoption body for the OGC standards. After adoption as standards organizations may confirm implementation through the OGC Compliance Program.

The Geosciences have been a main driver for the OGC standards. Concepts from geodesy, remote sensing, metrology, and science informatics were used to define the standards. The standards have been applied both before and after adoption to the fields of hydrology, geology, meteorology, oceanography, land cover, and many other scientific domains of the geosciences. Several geoscience applications will be presented showing use of OGC standards for data and information discovery, access, processing, fusion and decision-support.

Speaker Biographies

George Percivall is an accomplished leader and instructor in the development of information systems and international standards for geospatial information. As OGC's Chief Architect, he is responsible for the overall vision for the OGC baseline and its evolution through developments by OGC members. As Executive Director of OGC's Interoperability Program, he is responsible for managing OGC's Interoperability Program, which involves planning and executing testbeds, pilot projects, interoperability experiments etc., and for OGC's compliance testing program.

Prior to joining OGC, Mr. Percivall had leadership roles on several NASA projects. He was Chief Engineer of the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) for the Landsat/Terra release; Principal engineer for NASA's Geospatial Interoperability Office; and, represented NASA in OGC, ISO TC211, and CEOS. He was the Director of the Geospatial Interoperability Group of GST, Inc. Previously, he led developments in Intelligent Transportation Systems with the US Automated Highway Consortium and General Motors Systems Engineering. He holds a BS in Physics and an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois - Urbana.