Wayland, MA, — July 06, 2009 — The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) has posted videos of demonstrations of Phase 2 of the GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot (AIP-2) on the OGC website at http://www.ogcnetwork.net/pub/ogcnetwork/GEOSS/AIP2/index.html.

The AIP-2 pilot activity, which began in September 2008, is a project of the GEO (Group on Earth Observations) AR-09-01b Task Team. AIP-1 demonstrated GEO Portal and Clearinghouse solutions. AIP-2 established "operational, research and technical exemplars", services that support several of the GEOSS Societal Benefit Areas (SBAs): Disaster Management, Biodiversity and Climate Change, Air Quality and Health, and Renewable Energy. AIP-2 Engineering Reports will be made available to the GEOSS Best Practice Registry ( http://www.ogcnetwork.net/AIP2ERs ) for use by organizations in and outside of GEOSS .

GEO Members and Participating Organizations provided components and services relevant to SBAs. They participated in interoperability testing of the services to validate the architecture, and in the collaborative refinement of societal benefit scenarios to guide testing, demonstrations and operations of interoperable services.

AIP-2 developed a reusable process for Societal Benefit Areas to utilize the GCI. This process supports efficient communication and also implementation of SBA requirements and work processes into the informatics technology of the GCI. GCI is built upon GEOSS Interoperability Arrangements, including several OGC standards.

Ivan Deloatch, USGS and co-chair of the GEO Architecture and Data Committee, commented that "The GEOSS process depends upon contributions from many organizations to build the system of systems. OGC has led the AIP process of AIP bringing together the contributed components in to a pilot-level capability that can now be considered for augmenting the GEOSS initial operating capability."

For additional information, see http://www.ogcnetwork.net/AIpilot or contact George Percivall, Email Contact.

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 380 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.

GEO (Group on Earth Observations) is a voluntary partnership of 124 governments and international organizations, launched in response to calls for action by the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development and by the G8 (Group of Eight) leading industrialized countries. GEO is coordinating efforts to build a Global Earth Observation System of Systems, or GEOSS. See http://earthobservations.org/about_geo.shtml.



Contact:

Sam Bacharach
Executive Director, Outreach and Community Adoption
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc
Tel: +1-703-352-3938
E-mail: Email Contact