Bundeswehr University in Munich (UniBw) is the university of the unified armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany. It offers courses for officers and members of the German Bundeswehr, as well as some enterprise employees. From this perspective the university is probably quite unique in the world. UniBw offers a wide spectrum of options for scientific work and co-operation, ranging from basic research to application-related research & development projects.

GIS Issues
AGIS is the Geographic Information Laboratory at the university. Ten full-time research associates are currently working for the lab, mainly on third-party-funded research projects. The focus of research covers issues crucial to GIS, including:
-geo-information, sensors and services
-data quality/quality management
-geodata and metadata management
-standardisation and interoperability.

Projects
Projects cover subject matter ranging from geographic information (GI) services for indoor navigation and 3D-visualisation of vector data via the internet to the development of GI-based decision-support for early warning systems in landslide applications. As interoperability does not occur by accident, all projects make use of ISO or Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards. Academic teaching is also influenced by the requirement to use standards. For example, a three-credit course on ‘GI standards’ has been developed in English and is provided to students from other European universities on a distance-learning basis.

DGIWG
DGIWG, Digital Geospatial Information Working Group works in close co-oper­ation with the BGIO (Bundeswehr Geo Information Office), focusing on facilitating standardised access to heterogeneous and distributed geospatial information. For example, AGIS is developing concepts for an OGC Web Services-based portal for the BGIO Geoinformation Service. DGIWG is the multinational body responsible for geospatial standardisation for the defence organisations of member nations. DGIWG geospatial standards are built upon the generic and abstract standards for geographic information defined by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO TC/211). DGIWG makes use of the service standards endorsed by the OGC.

Co-operation
General co-operation between DGIWG and OGC in the OGC’s Defence and Intelli­gence Domain Working Group in particular offers great opportunities for facilitating international standardisation in the exchange of geospatial information within the military community. Members of the AGIS group are working in DGIWG on behalf of BGIO, for example, on Geography Markup Language (GML) profiles and a standard-based portrayal solution. Other projects address extension of data modelling and data services to allow handling of data-integrity information in the form of semantic constraints, in accordance with standards and with interoperable integration of multi-sensors in early warning systems.?


Prof. Dr-Ing Wolfgang Reinhardt, AGIS GI research group, Institut für Geoinformation und Landmanagement, Bundeswehr University Munich, D-85577 Neubiberg (Briefe), email: wolfgang.reinhardt@unibw.de