February 17, 2009, Wayland, Massachusetts.  The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) recently held its biennial election of directors. Of the 21 elected members of the consortium's 2009-2010 Board of Directors, 16 serving members were returned and four new members have been seated. The new OGC board members are Jeffery Peters, Kevin Pomfret, François Robida and Rob van de Velde.

Jeffery Peters currently serves as Director of Federal Programs for ESRI, Inc. In his role at ESRI, Mr. Peters is responsible for the vision and strategy for geospatial technologies and solutions serving the national Government and its international operations.

Kevin Pomfret is a lawyer in Richmond, Virginia with expertise in the legal issues associated with spatial data and spatial technology including intellectual property rights, licensing, liability, privacy and national security. While serving as a satellite imagery analyst with the U.S. government, he developed an imagery collection strategy to monitor critical arms control agreements. He also served in various roles within the Intelligence Community working on collection and exploitation requirements and future imaging systems. He writes and speaks extensively on spatial law and technology.

François Robida is Deputy Head of Information Systems and Technologies Division at BRGM, France's leading public institution involved in the Earth Science field for the sustainable management of natural resources and surface and subsurface risks. Mr. Robida is in charge of research and development and supervises European and international projects in the domain of Information Systems for geosciences and environment, such as Orchestra, Rise, Swing, Genesis, Aegos, EuroGeoss, and OneGeology.

Rob van de Velde is Director of Geonovum, the Dutch National SDI Executive Committee. Geonovum develops and manages the national framework of geo-standards and has been mandated by the National GI-Council to implement the EU INSPIRE Directive in The Netherlands and to develop a National Georegister. Mr. Van de Velde is actively engaged in stimulating location awareness and organizing strategic cooperation amongst leaders in national and local government, academia and industry.

Returning to the OGC board are: Dr. Roberta Balstad, Lisa Campbell, Dr. John Curlander, Philippe Delclaux, Ben Eazzetta, Steve Hagan, Jefferey Harris, Joanne Isham, Dr. Mike Jackson, Michael Jones, Dr. R. Siva Kumar, Dr. Vanessa Lawrence, Dr. Robert Moses, John Olesak, Granville Paules, Jack Pellicci, and Dr. Christopher Tucker.

David Schell, OGC CEO and Chairman, said, "The OGC community is extremely fortunate that these extraordinary individuals have agreed to serve on the Consortium's board. Their collective accomplishment and scope of interest confirm OGC's expanding role in addressing society's increasing dependence on spatial information services to understand the complex infrastructure, security and geopolitical challenges facing both public and private sector scientists and policy makers around the world."

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 370 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. The OGC's OpenGIS® standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. These 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:
Sam Bacharach
Executive Director, Outreach and Community Adoption
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc
tel:+1-703-352-3938
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