News

NEWS FROM THE OGC

Social Change Online, an organization quite active in the OGC Interoperability Program, led the formation of an Australian Special Interest Group (SIG). The SIG, which includes vendors, government and research agencies met in January in Adelaide, established goals focused on demonstrating end-to-end solutions and providing local content. They hope to grow interest in OGC within the continent. The Australian SIG activity has helped to spark interest in other geographically focused SIGs.

The Natural Resources and Environmental SIG hopes to pull together the interest, data and worldwide perspective of practitioners using geospatial data in air and water quality, pollution control, agriculture and forestry, development, health, extractive industries, and other fields. The group plans to reach out to those players and to provide OGC with insight into the sectors needs.

OpenGIS

Conformance Testing Program Home Page

Implications of the OpenGISŪ Specification for Regional Science

A Consensus Approach Helps to Spatially Enable the Web

Web Mapping Testbed Breaks New Ground in Open Geoprocessing

Open GIS Interoperability Programme

OGC Launches the Open Location Services Initiative

Mbiz Central

One interface could accelerate the development and deployment of location services

Geoplace

Webmapping explained

Basic Information about Webmapping

MSMonline

New frontiers for Geoengineering

SpatialNews

Sydney Company delivers breakthrough in webmapping technology

OGC SEEKS INPUT ON WEB MAPPING STANDARD

OpenGIS Web Map Overlay Specification Released

Social Change Online - Sydney Company delivers breakthrough in webmapping technology

Thursday 15 March 2001

A small Sydney IT company, Social Change Online, has developed an innovative Internet technology that promises to revolutionise the way we see information on the web.

The first large scale usage of the technology, the NSW Government's online 'Community Access to Natural Resources Information' (CANRI) project , was launched today at Parliament House by the Deputy NSW Premier, Dr Andrew Refshauge.

"This technology solves one of the most frustrating problems faced by Government and business data managers: how to take data in different formats from across the web and display it graphically on a single web page," said Sean Kidney, CEO, Social Change Online.

"Map-based information is critical for decision-making across government, industry and the community, and 80% of the data on the web has a geographic dimension.

"This technology will unlock the vast amount of data that's hidden away in all sorts of government and community organisations," said Mr Kidney.

According to Mr Kidney, "savings are not just for Government. Imagine a builder being able to check on the web the exact and current location of sewage, gas and electricity lines before digging - all via the one web page. That alone would save thousands of hours of work for everyone from home owners to the construction industry."

OpenGIS Web Map Overlay Specification Released

May 9, 2000

Previously, complex technical issues and lack of industry consensus have kept the "where" out of most distributed information systems. Now the Web is "spatially enabled."

Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of digital maps and earth images, which until now could not be accessed and used without special skills and software, will suddenly become an integral part of the Information Infrastructure. Such maps and images show, for example: transportation routes, land use and ownership, zoning, watersheds, elevation, population density, average income, aerial photos, cell phone coverages, and pipelines.

The new specification will boost the utility and commercial value of location-aware, Internet-connected cell phones, laptops, and car computers. Such devices will, for example, access spatial data on the Internet to provide directions and travel advisories and also information about nearby goods and services.

David Schell, president of OpenGis Consortium (OGC), praised the members of the consortium on their achievement. "This is truly an historic accomplishment -- the combined effort of the web mapping team is sure to benefit people around the world for generations to come. As a result of the Web Mapping Testbed we can look forward to the day when people can expect map overlays on the Web to happen effortlessly, just as they count on hearing a dial tone whenever they pick up a telephone.

The Web Mapping Team, both the organizations and individuals involved, are to be congratulated on their accomplishment."

GDIN (Global Disaster Information Network)

Disaster management. Real-time integrated data essential

Social Change Online demonstrated at the GDIN international conference a key technology for Disaster management -web mapping. Through accessing multiple on-line data sources, webmapping enables rapid, real-time decision support systems to manage the disaster with greater efficacy.

As the Open GIS Consortium (OGC) has demonstrated during the first "Web Mapping Testbed" (WMT) in 1999, direct online access to distributed (spatial) databases is an essential element in the deployment of effective Disaster Management.

Since WMT-1, further significant progress has been made in the development of OpenGIS standards. These developments enable rapid deployment of online distributed and heterogeneous resources. Integration of weather data, contact directories, infrastructure maps, satellite images etc. with mainstream IT is becoming a reality using these emerging technologies.

Conform IT

Social Change Online wins important grant to create a conformance and robustness testing facility for interoperable map-based services.

Social Change Online's Conform IT facility will help vendors, system integrators and application builders to take advantage of the valuable OpenGIS standards and implementation specifications that have been adopted by peak coordinating bodies in Australia and internationally over the past year.

The service will provide a process for testing conformance of products to OpenGIS Implementation Specifications, and, eventually, for testing interoperability between conformant products.

Once conformance testing occurs and is successfully completed, clients of the service will be allowed to use a copyrighted Mark of Compliance (trademark or certification mark).

Interoperability Testing will be implemented as a service of convenience and will not necessarily require the use of any marks.

Australia is a leading player in the development of the standards in this field, and has several technologies being developed by local companies whose conformance and market lead can be accelerated by such a facility.

Conform-IT will boost the ability of Australian technology firms to bring products to market and in the establishment of a robust infrastructure for sharing spatial data to meet national policy objectives.

© Social Change Online, Australia
webmap@socialchange.net