Joint Steering Group on Spatial Standardization and Related Interoperability

Chairman : Olaf Østensen, Chairman of ISO/TC 211

Secretariat : ISO/TC 211 Secretariat (NSF, Ms. Bjørnhild Sæterøy).

URL : http://www.statkart.no/jsgspatial/

To : see distribution list at the end

INFORMATION AND INVITATION TO JOIN AND TO ATTEND THE FIRST MEETING/WORKSHOP

All businesses that produce, distribute, or utilize spatial information alone or in conjunction with non-spatial information will benefit from spatial standards. Environments supported include geographic information, decision support, data mining, data warehousing and modeling and simulation. Application areas include for instance automated mapping, geo-engineering, computer aided drafting and design, entertainment, modeling, and simulation. These span the planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of facilities and their supporting infrastructure such as communications, transportation, and utilities.

There are many places in the marketplace that will benefit significantly from interoperable access to spatial information and services. Industry sectors include such areas as the travel and tourism industries, the mapping and routing industries, communications, utilities, transportation, national defense, agriculture, disaster management and public safety, location/mobile services, inventory management, real and synthetic environmental modeling and gaming, and the emerging needs of electronic commerce for spatial information.

Achieving more interoperability requires proactive coordination of spatial standards at both the abstract and implementation levels of detail. Proactive cooperation between spatial standards activities should also help to utilize, more efficiently, available resources by minimizing technical overlap, where appropriate. Such coordination and cooperation should lead to more market relevant spatial standards and could serve as a useful roadmap for all interested parties.

To achieve this, several organizations have collaborated through an initiative by ISO/IEC JTC 1 to form a Joint Steering Group on Spatial Standardization and Related Interoperability. The group was established at a meeting in Geneva on May 2-3 this year. Initial members are ISO Central Secretariat, ISO/TC 211, Open GIS Consortium, Inc., and SEDRIS:

The membership of this group is open to all Spatial Standards Setting Organizations (SSSOs), including those that use or have requirements for spatial standards. For this purpose, standards include all formal specifications and consensus agreements. SSSOs shall have a suitable Charter or be an accredited international standards authority.

Direct membership will not include National Standards Bodies and equivalent, or for-profit companies or individuals.

One duty of the Chairman will be to review SSSO credentials on behalf of the members.

As an advisory group, the forum will respect the different culture, practices and rules of the member organizations. Such a forum will serve to draw attention to potential loss of interoperability at an early stage and identify opportunities for synergistic co-operation.

A preliminary web-site for the group is set up at www.statkart.no/jsgspatial/ . There you will find the charter of the Joint Steering Group and additional information. You can also access this site through www.spatialstandards.org which was the up for the ISO/IEC JTC 1 initiative that led to the establishment of the Joint Steering Group.

The first meeting of the group is planned for September 11-12 in Reston, Virgina, close to Washington DC. This meeting will be in conjunction with the ISO/TC 211 plenary and working groups taking place the week before. As a first meeting, it will be open to all organizations that would qualify for membership, whether they have applied for membership or not. A draft agenda for the meeting is attached. For hotel information, please see the ISO/TC 211 web-site, www.statkart.no/isotc211/ (11th ISO/TC 211 Plenary meeting: Reston, VA, USA - 2000-09-07/08, Meeting homepage). Please register for the meeting through www.spatialstandards.org.

I hope the invited organizations will acknowledge the benefit of this effort and consider joining the group. I also hope that you will take the opportunity to be represented at the 1^st meeting of the joint steering group in Reston, Virginia.

Yours sincerely,

Olaf Østensen

Chairman of the Joint Steering Group

Attachment : Draft agenda of 1^st meeting of the Joint Steering Group

Distribution list :

Current members :
ISO Central Secretariat
ISO/TC 211 
OGC 
SEDRIS

Other organizations :
DGIWG
IETF
ISO/TC 184 /SC 4 
ISO/TC 204
ISO/IEC JTC 1
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 24
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 31 
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 32
OMG
POSC
SAE International
SISO
W3C
WAP forum