Geoscience Australia Newest Principal Member of OGC

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has announced that Geoscience Australia has raised its membership level from Technical to Principal Level. Geoscience Australia has been an active member of OGC since 1999.

Geoscience Australia has been a long-time and active member of the OGC, supporting the Technical Committee and over 25 of its working groups since 1999, said Mark Reichardt, president and CEO of the OGC. He is pleased to announce that GA has elevated its membership to the Principal Level to further extend its support to begin influencing OGC’s market direction, and to ensure that the Consortium’s policies and procedures remain agile and relevant to an ever-changing location technology marketplace.

Geoscience Australia has been a major contributor to developing and promoting international OGC standards for essential datasets, including the Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS) standard and the Geoscience Markup Language (GeoSciML) standard. Geoscience Australia is currently participating in OGC’s Hierarchical Data Format 5 (HDF5) data model standardisation working group and its application in domains such as point clouds and global grids.

Digital Earth Australia

As well as their longstanding commitment to the development and use of open standards, this move to increase their contribution to the international standards community forms a strategic part of the delivery of the Digital Earth Australia project.

Dr Stuart Minchin, Chief of the Environmental Geoscience Division, said Geoscience Australia values the importance of working with international partners such as the OGC to increase collaboration and make sure our technology keeps pace with the latest global advances and trends.

The Australian Government’s National Innovation and Science Agenda and 2026 Spatial Industry Transformation and Growth Agenda recognise that open standards and technologies are going to drive the Australian economy and foster innovation across the public and private sectors, Minchin continued. The collaboration with the OGC on the DGGS standard has provided a new way of organising and working with large volumes of geospatial data. This will help to develop Digital Earth Australia as a multi-resolution, multi-domain spatial data infrastructure to provide improved access to Australia's geoscience datasets and products.

As a Principal Member of OGC, Geoscience Australia will increase its participation in the consortium activities additionally serving as part of the OGC's Planning Committee, where it will help identify market and technology trends relevant to OGC's goal to ensure that its policies and procedures remain effective and agile in a changing technological environment. Principal Members also participate in final approval decisions for all OGC standards and for nominations to the Board of Directors.

About Geoscience Australia

Geoscience Australia is Australia’s pre-eminent public sector geoscience organisation. It is the nation’s trusted advisor on the geology and geography of Australia, applying science and technology to describe and understand the Earth for the benefit of Australia. Geoscience Australia applies geoscience to Australian Government priorities: maximising value from Australia’s abundant mineral and energy resources; providing the fundamental geographic information to develop the nation; sustainably managing a vast marine environment; securing water on a dry continent; and protecting communities from natural disasters.