--- Begin Forwarded Message ---
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 01:00:08 -0500
From: Lance McKee <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: OGC Web Mapping Pilot Project announcement
Sender: Lance McKee <[log in to unmask]>
This announcement is being sent to multiple lists. We apologize for
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PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For information about this release, contact:
Lance McKee, Vice President, Corporate Communications
The Open GIS Consortium, Inc.
35 Main Street, Wayland, MA 01603 USA
tel: +1-508-655-5858
fax: +1-508-655-2237
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
OGC CALLS FOR PARTICIPATION IN WEB MAPPING PILOT PROJECT
Wayland, MA, USA, January 26, 2000. The OpenGIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC)
today released a Request For Quotation (RFQ) to solicit technology
proposals for the OGC Web Mapping Testbed Upper-Susquehanna Lackawanna (WMT
USL) Pilot Project. OGC, in collaboration with the US Army Engineer
Research and Development Center (ERDC), will provide cost-sharing funds to
partially offset expenses associated with the project. OGC seeks as many
participants as possible who can enhance and/or make use of the WMT USL
Pilot Project. The OGC RFQ and Call for Participation are available online
at http://www.opengis.org/uslpilot/20000126_uslpilot_rfq.htm.
The WMT USL Pilot Project will help ERDC assess the feasibility of
implementing a multi-user, multi-vendor web-enabled mapping and planning
framework in Central and Northeastern Pennsylvania to support flood control
and environmental restoration efforts. The project will establish a
web-enabled framework to manage and deliver geographic content to multiple
users, to help them 1) use online maps and Earth images to understand their
physical and cultural environment, 2) respond effectively to challenges
illuminated by geographic visualization, and 3) work effectively with
others to make spatially-informed decisions. The goal is an operational
capability to support locally independent, regionally coordinated flood
control and environmental restoration projects throughout the area, but it
is intended to be a prototype only, not a fully operational system.
Proposals are due on February 9, 2000. A demonstration of the Phase 1
framework will be available by May 25, 2000.
The project will have two phases. Phase One involves rapidly designing and
implementing a prototype information discovery, dissemination, and
visualization framework based on interoperable OpenGIS web mapping
technologies developed in OGC's 1999 Web Mapping Testbed. Phase Two will
concentrate on distributed decision support, analytical services, and
tailored visualizations of data. Though based on capabilities developed in
the 1999 testbed, the first phase of the project will likely extend current
OpenGIS web mapping specifications to include the capability to encode
spatio-temporal objects in the Geography Markup Language and to create and
update geographic information across the Web regardless of differences
between different vendors' software. It may also support development of new
draft OpenGIS interface specifications for online services.
A Community Advisory Group composed of representatives of the Pennsylvania
GIS Consortium, the Baltimore and Philadelphia Districts of the Army Corps
of Engineers, and county/city governments is being formed to work with the
OGC WMT to coordinate Phase One activities throughout the region. Among
other activities, this group will help identify regional objectives to be
supported by the information dissemination and visualization framework and
the geospatial content and applications needed to support each objective.
After the basic framework capability is established, local users will
discover and access online geographic information from multiple sources
using products that implement the OpenGIS Catalog Services Specification,
and they will integrate their own project-specific information and services
using tools supplied by vendor participants. For information consumers,
platform-neutral middleware based on OpenGIS Specifications reduces the
complexity of discovering useful applications. For information providers,
the middleware reduces the complexity of creating useful applications.
Interoperable web mapping increases planners' ability to visualize
interactions between regional factors such as slope, rainfall, water
quality, population density, etc., because web mapping dynamically
integrates information from multiple online sources into one map image or a
series of maps that visually communicate information about the region.
Having multiple cooperators' systems work together is critical for regional
coordination, but it has been unrealizable prior to the OpenGIS
Specifications that enable interoperation across the Web between different
vendors' geoprocessing systems.
The WMT USL Pilot Project - Phase One Project Plan is available at
http://www.opengis.org/uslpilot/20000126_uslpilot_plan.htm.
The OGC Web Mapping Testbed, Web Mapping Infrastructure, and Web Mapping
Pilots and Demonstrations are collectively designated the "Web Mapping
Initiative." The Web Mapping Initiative is one of the currently active
Interoperability Initiatives in OGC's Interoperability Program.
OGC is a not-for-profit, international consortium whose 200 industry,
government, and university members work to make geographic information an
integral part of information systems of all kinds.
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Lance McKee
Vice President, Corporate Communications and Public Sector Programs
Open GIS Consortium, Inc.
35 Main Street
Wayland, MA 01778 USA
Tel. 508-655-5858
Fax 508-655-2237
http://www.opengis.org
[log in to unmask]
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