OGC Seeks Comments on Charter for Big Data Domain Working Group

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is seeking comments on the charter for a new OGC Big Data Domain Working Group (DWG). Big Data is an umbrella term denoting the digital data surge in terms of volume, velocity, variety and the importance of the data's trustworthiness. The widespread need to perform rapid, flexible analytics on Big Data has become a major driver in the information and communications technology industry.

Location-based and geospatial data applications are major contributors to this data deluge. Such applications involve, for example, high volume transactions with mobile devices and location-aware sensors, growing use of diverse high-resolution airborne, orbiting and undersea imaging devices, numerical model outputs, navigation through 3D representations of indoor and outdoor environments, and new policies aimed at preserving and reusing geoscience and environmental data. Members of the proposed Big Data DWG believe that the OGC needs to make statements and provide guidance on the use of OGC standards in managing Big Data.

The OGC Big Data DWG initiators aim to provide an open forum for work on Big Data management, analytics and interoperability. The group is being chartered to encourage collaborative development among participants representing many organisations and communities. It will ensure appropriate liaisons to relevant working groups inside and outside the OGC.

The group will consolidate findings on an OGC Big Data DWG public wiki to inform OGC members and the public and allow for feedback during and after document editing. Final reports will be submitted to OGC for publication as a Best Practice papers.

The initial membership of the BigData DWG will consist of the following OGC member representatives, who have extensive education and experience in Big Data issues:

• Peter Baumann, Jacobs University (co-chair)

• John Herring, Oracle (co-chair)

• Jürgen Seib, Deutscher Wetterdienst

• Stan Tillman, Intergraph

• Marie-Françoise Voidrot, Meteo France

• Jeff de la Beaujardiere, US NOAA

• Bruce Gritton, US Navy MetOc

• Chuck Heazel, WISC (co-chair)

• Mike McCann, MBARI

• Pedro Goncalves, Terradue

• Don Sullivan, NASA

• Ed Parsons, Google

• Robert Gibb, Landcare Research New Zealand

• Jean Brodeur, Geoconnections, NRCAN

• Jinsongdi Yu, Fuzhou University

• Arnaud Cauchy, Airbus Defence & Space

The initiators encourage comments on the charter and participation in the OGC Big Data Domain Working Group.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 475 companies, government agencies, research organisations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that 'geo-enable' the web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website here.

The charter is available here.