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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ability to share information on a spatial basis promotes better understanding, cooperation and trade amongst nation states,\u201d said Brooks. \u201cStandards provide the common language of location to facilitate such sharing. After all, everything is somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
OGC\u2019s mission is to promote the creation and use of open standards<\/span>\u00a0with geospatial information. These standards promote interoperability <\/span>among computing systems and the ability to share information across organizational boundaries.<\/p>\n In this instance, the team\u2019s mission is to advance a \u201ccore essential standards guide\u201d for use by United Nations member nations to improve their<\/span> understanding of the value of standards, and guide the adoption and application of open geospatial standards to meet their geospatial missions.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThe essence of this effort is to discuss the value and role of geospatial standards in the context of implementation and government mission accomplishment,\u201d said Brooks. \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.).<\/p>\n