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Brooks named to Open Geospatial Consortium team

Talbot Brooks, director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Geospatial Information Technologies at Delta State, along with the GIS center were selected to perform the geospatial information system work associated with the Delta’s regional hazard mitigation plan.

Talbot Brooks, director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Geospatial Information Technologies at Delta State University, was recently selected to work as part of an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) team addressing the United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management activity.

“The ability to share information on a spatial basis promotes better understanding, cooperation and trade amongst nation states,” said Brooks. “Standards provide the common language of location to facilitate such sharing. After all, everything is somewhere.”

OGC’s mission is to promote the creation and use of open standards with geospatial information. These standards promote interoperability among computing systems and the ability to share information across organizational boundaries.

In this instance, the team’s mission is to advance a “core essential standards guide” for use by United Nations member nations to improve their understanding of the value of standards, and guide the adoption and application of open geospatial standards to meet their geospatial missions.

According to Brooks, the plan is to engage OGC and International Organization for Standardization members and staff over the next few weeks to scope the document.

“The essence of this effort is to discuss the value and role of geospatial standards in the context of implementation and government mission accomplishment,” said Brooks. “The goal is an easy-to-understand and relatively non-technical document focusing on communicating and educating key decision makers within member nations on numerous topics.”

Some of these topics include: the role and value of open geospatial standards; core geospatial standards and related best practices explained; implementation examples; and references (national, regional and international cookbooks, Serial Digital Interface guides, etc.).

To learn more about the Center for Interdisciplinary Geospatial Information Technologies, visit https://www.deltastate.edu/college-of-arts-and-sciences/center-for-interdisciplinary-geospatial-information-technologies.