OGC Calls for Participation in Architecture Implementation Pilot

The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) (MA, USA) has issued a Call for Participation (CFP) in the "Architecture Implementation Pilot," which is a coordinated interoperability initiative of GEOSS, FedEO and Tri-Lateral initiatives.

Responses are due by 11 May 2007 and the "Pilot Kickoff Meeting" will be held 5-6 June 2007 in ESRIN the European Space Agency's establishment in Italy.

This CFP seeks participants in a coordinated Architecture Implementation Pilot. A Pilot is a collaborative effort that applies open standards for interoperability to achieve user objectives in an environment representative of operational use. Outcomes include best-practices and interoperability arrangements suitable for an operational capability.

This CFP seeks proposals from organizations involved with Earth Observation systems to:

- Identify components with services, e.g., portals, catalogs and other services;

- Participate in confirming the interoperability of those identified services using standards and interoperability arrangements as identified in the preliminary architecture of the CFP; and,

- Participate in the collaborative development of societal benefit scenarios to guide testing and demonstrations of the identified interoperable services.

The CFP was initiated to solicit response for the GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot.

The Pilot aims to incorporate contributed components consistent with the GEOSS Architecture - using a solicited GEO Web Portal and a GEOSS Clearinghouse search facility - to access services through GEOSS Interoperability Arrangements in support of the GEO Societal Benefit Areas.

The Pilot benefits from the collaborative support of two OGC Interoperability Program Pilots:

- The Tri-Lateral Interoperability Pilot is a collaborative, operational test of open standards deployment, supporting collective requirements of organizations responsible for national and regional "Spatial Data Infrastructures" in Europe (INSPIRE), Canada (GeoConnections), and the U.S. Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC).

- The Federated Earth Observation Missions (FedEO) Pilot provides a broad international venue for operational prototyping and demonstration of Earth Observation (EO) data access harmonization, interoperability requirements and protocols as defined by the European Space Agency (ESA), together with other space agencies and other OGC members.

The Architecture Implementation Pilot CFP documents can be downloaded from .