|
|
SpatialNews.com Press Release

Wireless News -
Business News -
Feature Columns
OGC WEB MAPPING TESTBED PHASE 2 RFQ RELEASED
On April 28, 2000 the Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) issued a Request For
Quotation (RFQ) and Call for Participation in the Web Mapping Testbed Phase
2, an OGC Interoperability Program Initiative. (See
http://www.opengis.org/wmt-2.) Proposals are due May 24, 2000.
The goal of WMT-2 is to rapidly develop open interface specifications
leading to interoperable Standards-based Commercial-Of-The-Shelf (SCOTS)
software products that support use and exploitation of geospatial data and
earth images over the World Wide Web. The purpose of the RFQ is to solicit
proposals from commercial organizations in response to a set of
requirements established by the WMT-2 sponsors.
WMT-2 sponsors currently include the U.S. Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA), the U.S. Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC),
GeoConnections (Canada), the U.S. National Aeronautic and Space
Administration (NASA), the U.S. National Imaging and Mapping Agency (NIMA),
the U.S. Army Engineering Research Development Center (ERDC), and the U.S.
Geological Survey (USGS).
Like the highly successful first phase of the Web Mapping Testbed, the
WMT-2 testbed project will:
- Employ spiral engineering methodologies with extensive participation of
the commercial sector. A key principle of OGC's testbed projects is to
foster a bi-directional transfer of technical ideas between users and
vendors.
- Make use of existing and emerging OpenGIS(TM) specifications. WMT-2 will
refine existing OpenGIS specifications as well as create new ones.
- Ensure applicability of resulting interface specifications by performing
integration of different vendor implementations of the interface
specifications in integration experiments.
- Ensure that resulting interface specification profiles are harmonized
with existing and emerging distributed computing environments.
- Ensure that cross-platform interoperability mechanisms and bridges are
built.
OGC, through the WMT-2 sponsors, will provide cost-sharing funds to
partially offset WMT-2 participants' expenses. OGC seeks to involve as many
participants in the initiative as possible.
The first phase of the Web Mapping Testbed, which ran from April to
September in 1999, yielded the OpenGIS Web Map Server Interface
Specification (
http://www.opengis.org/techno/specs.htm) for interfaces
which enable automatic overlay, in ordinary web browsers, of map images
obtained from multiple dissimilar map servers, regardless of map scale,
projection, earth coordinate system or digital format. The first phase
also yielded a recommendation paper for Geography Markup Language (GML), a
proposed standard XML encoding scheme for spatial data. (This paper is
being voted on. The paper will be posted at
http://www.opengis.org/techno/specs.htm after a favorable vote.) WMT-2 will
build on the content of those documents and other OpenGIS Specifications.
Following the conclusion of WMT-1, testbed sponsors and participants
provided requirements and requests for items to be considered during WMT-2.
The on-going OGC Web Mapping Testbed Upper-Susquehanna Lackawanna (WMT USL)
Pilot Project (
http://www.opengis.org/uslpilot/) is also a source of
requirements, requests, and new technical components for WMT-2. The USL
Pilot was designed as a proving ground for interfaces and technologies
developed in WMT-1, but it also has yielded research forays into areas such
as symbolization, spatio-temporal representation, and services metadata.
These may be transitioned into the WMT-2 effort. RFQ respondents will be
encouraged to consider the role their technologies can play in any of the
specific technology areas outlined in the RFQ.
OGC is an international, not-for-profit organization founded in 1994. OGC's
215 industry, government, and academic member organizations participate in
a consensus process to integrate geoprocessing into the world's information
infrastructures.
Contact:
Lance McKee, Vice President, Corporate Communications
Open GIS Consortium, Inc., Wayland, MA 01778
tel: +1-508-655-5858
fax: +1-508-655-2237
lmckee@opengis.org
www.opengis.org
Return to News Page
|

Sponsored by:

For information regarding advertising rates Click Here!
|