[OGC Press Release] OGC Membership Approves Four Sensor Related OGC Specifications

[OGC Press Release]

PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For information about this announcement, contact:

Sam Bacharach
Executive Director, Outreach and Community Adoption
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc
tel: +1-703-352-3938
sbacharach at opengeospatial.org

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Wayland, MA, Sept. 1, 2006 – With sensors of all types becoming part
of the world's information infrastructure, the Open Geospatial
Consortium, Inc. ® (OGC) is pleased to announce that its membership
has approved four standards that will allow sensors to better
interoperate with the Web and other information technology assets.

Common sensors found everyday include imaging cameras traveling on
aircraft, "sniffers" that determine pollutions concentration in the
air, "listeners" that keep track of noise and temperature sensors that
ensure that produce traveling in trucks remains fresh. The OGC has
been working for several years to find ways in which these and other
sensors can publish information about their existence, report their
locations and share their information in a standard way. The vision is
to build a Sensor Web, a network of sensors accessible over the
Internet to serve scientists and others as they try to better
understand our world.

The OpenGIS® Sensor Model Language (SensorML) Implementation
Specification describes an information model and encodings that enable
discovery and tasking of Web-resident sensors, and exploitation of
sensor observations. SensorML allows scientists to find and
communicate with sensors to assign specific jobs. SensorML is built on
XML and can describe any process, including measurement by a sensor
system, as well as post-measurement processing.

The OpenGIS TransducerML (TML) Implementation Specification is a
method and message format for describing information about sensors and
actuators (assemblies that make things "go") and capturing,
exchanging, and archiving live, historical and future data received
and produced by them. TML, also built on XML, provides a mechanism to
efficiently and effectively capture, transport and archive transducer
data, in a common form, regardless of the original source.

The OpenGIS Sensor Observation Service (SOS) Implementation
Specification provides access to observations from sensors and sensor
systems in a standard way that is consistent for all sensor systems
including remote, in-situ, fixed and mobile sensors. It defines an
application programming interface (API) for managing deployed sensors
and retrieving sensor data.

The OpenGIS Sensor Planning Service (SPS) Implementation Specification
defines interfaces for requesting information describing the
capabilities of a sensor to determine the feasibility of a sensor
planning request, for submitting such a request, for inquiring about
the status of such a request, for updating or canceling such a
request, and for requesting information about further OGC Web services
that provide access to the data collected by the requested task.

Each of the specification documents provides software engineers the
information needed to implement the standards in their programs, be
they client applications that request information of a sensor, or
those that receive such requests and essentially "tell the sensor what
to do." Mark Reichardt, president of OGC, notes the importance of
these newly approved specifications. "Sensors are already part of our
daily lives; they will no doubt become even more ubiquitous as we try
to create a safer, more sustainable world. These four specifications
will make using sensors and sharing their important information
simpler and quicker. We look forward to seeing them in widespread use
in the coming months and years."

The OGC Sensor Web efforts benefit from cooperation with the IEEE
Technical Committee 9, specifically individuals involved with the1451
family of standards for smart sensors, and the Organization for
Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS).  The OGC
standards will be made freely available at the OGC website in the
coming weeks. (www.opengeospatial.org)

The OGC® is an international industry consortium of more than 320
companies, government agencies, research organizations, and
universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly
available interface specifications. OpenGIS Specifications support
interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and
location services, and mainstream IT. They empower developers to make
complex spatial information and services useful with all kinds of
applications. See http://www.opengeospatial.org.