Geological maps are essential for finding natural resources, mitigating geohazards, and managing waste. Knowledge of geology has become increasingly important and sharing that knowledge is crucial. Through the OneGeology effort:
1. Geological maps from around the globe are accessible on the World Wide Web.
2. A new Web language has been written for geology which allows nations to share data with each other and the public.
3. The know-how to do this is being exchanged so that all nations, regardless of their development status, can take part and benefit.
Standards make OneGeology possible. For example, GeoSciML ( http://www.geosciml.org/), is a Web-based geoscience encoding standard developed by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) ( www.iugs.org/) Interoperability Working Group. GeoSciML is an "application schema" of GML ( http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/gml), the OGC's OpenGIS(R) Geography Markup Language Encoding Standard (GML – ISO DIS 19136) for representation of geospatial features and geometry. GeoSciML also uses the OpenGIS Observations and Measurements (O&M) Encoding standard ( http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/om). In addition to GeoSciML, OneGeology uses the OpenGIS Web Map Service Interface Standard ( http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wms) and other OGC standards. Without such standards, geology data clients and servers around the world would not be able to interoperate across the Web as OneGeology nodes.
The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 365 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OpenGIS® Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC 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:
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC)
Sam Bacharach,
+1-703-352-3938
Director, Outreach
Email Contact