Call for Participation in OWS-4 Testbed

The Open Geospatial Consortium (MD, USA) has issued a Request for Quotes/Call for Participation (RFQ/CFP) for the OGC Web Services, Phase 4 (OWS-4) Interoperability Initiative, a testbed to advance OGC's open interoperability framework for geospatial capabilities. The RFQ/CFP is available at the link below.

The OWS-4 sponsors are organisations from multiple countries seeking open standards for their interoperability requirements: GeoConnections (Canada), Oak Ridge National Laboratory ORNL (US), BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin Corporation, the US National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA), the US General Services Administration (GSA), other major US agencies, the National Technology Alliance, the NATO C3 Agency, the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain, and TeleAtlas NV. OWS-4 activities are proceeding in coordination with other standards initiatives in OASIS, IEEE and IAI.

After analysing the sponsors' input, the OGC Interoperability Team recommended to the sponsors that the content of the OWS-4 initiative be organised around the following 7 threads:

• Sensor Web Enablement (SWE): Standards for discovering and accessing Web-resident sensors
  
• Geo Processing Workflow (GPW): Development of GML Application Schemas and testing OWS in the larger Web service workflow environment
  
• Geo Decision Support (GeoDSS): Refining OWS as an open framework for DSS
  
• Geo-Digital Rights Management (GeoDRM): Standards to support geospatial DRM including underlying security standards.
  
• Computer Aided Design/Geospatial/Building Information Model integration (CAD/GIS/BIM)
  
• OGC Location Services (OpenLS): Extending OGC standards for Location Based Services
  
• Compliance Testing (CITE): Improving tools for testing compliance and interoperability of products and services that implement OGC standards.

The RFQ/CFP includes details of these threads as well as details of the bidders' conference, selection process and kickoff. Responses are due by 5 May 2006. If your organisation is interested in participating, contact George Percivall at percivall@opengeospatial.org.