Invited by Geospatial Media and Oman National Survey Authority (NSA) to deliver overview of current activities relating to international geospatial standards, including ongoing work through United Nations initiative on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM).

1. The value of international
geospatial standards
Steven Ramage
Head of Ordnance Survey International
Member of the OGC Global Advisory Council

2. 12 years of OS MasterMap® in GML!
Went live on
30 Nov 2001
Flagship product
First industrial strength GML implementation
460 million features
Updated and supplied on a daily basis
Available in GML only

3. International standards development
ISO 19158: Geographic Information: Quality assurance
of data supply - Ordnance Survey’s accreditation
system is now an ISO standard.
Ordnance Survey working in collaboration with:

4. 3D-enabled
National Data Model
• Ordnance Survey International partnership for
development of national 3D-enabled data model;
• Ordnance Survey International awarded contract to
develop spatial data models for Kingdom of Bahrain
following open tender process in March 2013;
• Five year strategic advisory services framework
agreement signed in November 2013;
• Vendor and platform independent solutions,
based on international standards.

5. Interoperability: information issues
“We don't have a common
language to speak
about our geospatial
data or our services.”
“We need to find and pull
together data from our
automated sensors.”
”We need to deliver data
to different systems.”
Location
data
“We need to share maps on the Web,
across devices or platforms.”
Location
data
Location
data
Value of
international
geospatial
standards
Location
data
Location
data
“We have security issues relating
to geospatial data exchange.”
© 2012 Open Geospatial Consortium

6. Interoperability: information context
Breaking down barriers between:
• Nations, languages and cultures
• Disciplines, professions and industries
• Industry, government, academia and the public
• Local, regional and national government
• Teams, departments, organisations
• Different technologies and vendor products
• Legacy systems and new components/solutions
© 2012 Open Geospatial Consortium

7. Interoperability: information access
• Technical documents that detail interfaces or encodings;
• Software developers use these documents to build open
interfaces and encodings into their products and services;
• These standards are the main "products" and have been
developed to address specific interoperability challenges;
• Ideally, when standards are implemented in products or
online services by two different software engineers
working independently, the resulting components
plug and play, that is, they work together
without further debugging.
Copyright © 2012 Open Geospatial Consortium

8. Interoperability: information value
Help policy and decision makers
to address the following:
a) Is the activity for public benefit?
Measure and record value or ROI
b) What is the business driver?
Internal efficiency, customer satisfaction
c) Does a capability already exist?
Enable reuse, avoid duplication
© 2012 Open Geospatial Consortium

9. Standards in policy
European INSPIRE Directive
European Space Agency
GeoConnections Canada
Global Earth Observation
System of Systems (GEOSS)
National legislation, e.g. India,
Japan, Netherlands…
US FGDC, USGS
US NGA, US NOAA
UK Location Programme
UK Ministry of Defence
Copyright © 2012 Open Geospatial Consortium

10. UN-GGIM and open standards
In the outcome document “The future we want”
Governments and organisations urged to commit to
disaster risk reduction to enhance the resilience of
cities and communities to disasters.
Regarding geospatial standards we must consider
mechanisms to assist Member States:
• Create a baseline or mechanism for data sharing;
• Adopt existing standards and implement them in
national legal and policy frameworks;
• Include IHO, ISO, OGC and others.

11. Benefits of international standards
Drive activities that underpin
emergency response and
humanitarian assistance;
Support evidence-based
decision making
and policy development;
Share and provide access
to accurate, current, highquality, authoritative data.

12. UN-GGIM inventory of issues
a)
Developing a national, regional and global
strategic framework for geospatial information;
b)
Establishing institutional arrangements and legal
and common frameworks;
c)
Building capability and capacity,
especially in developing countries;
d)
Assuring the quality of geospatial information;
e)
Promoting data sharing, accessibility and dissemination;
f)
Embracing trends in information technology;
g)
Promoting geospatial advocacy and awareness;
h)
Working in partnership with civil society and the private sector;
i)
Linking geospatial information to statistics.

13. UN-GGIM and international standards
2/103
Inventory of issues to be addressed by the
UN-GGIM Committee of Experts
Concept proposed
New York,
13-15 August 2012
Second session of the
UN Committee of Experts on
Global Geospatial
Information Management
(d) Suggestion by Technical Committee 211
(geomatics and geographic information) of the
International Organization for Standardization
(ISO/TC211) to put forward, jointly with the Open
Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the International
Hydrographic Organization (IHO), a paper related to
standard-setting issues in the international community
…
International
Organization for
Standardization
TC 211

14. UN-GGIM and international standards
Draft report submitted
Second High Level Forum on Global
Geospatial Information Management
Qatar National Convention
Centre, Doha, Qatar, 4-6 February 2013
Full report
Third Session of UN-GGIM
Committee of Experts
Cambridge, UK,
24-27 July 2013
International
Organization for
Standardization
TC 211

15. http://tinyurl.com/mmfxjh5

16. Existing standards and inventory of issues

17. UN-GGIM Future trends
•
Key trends
•
Cloud computing
•
Linked data
•
Big data
•
Internet of Things
•
New data creation
•
Volunteered Geographic Information
•
Open standards
•
Open source
•
Legal and policy frameworks
•
Data standards and policy
•
Coordination and collaboration
•
Skills and training
http://ggim.un.org/docs/meetings/3rd%20UNCE/UN-GGIM-Future-trends.pdf

18. International Hydrographic Organization (IHO)
• Intergovernmental consultative and technical
organization established in 1921
• To support safety of navigation and the protection of
the marine environment
• One of the IHO objectives:
 To bring about the greatest possible uniformity in
nautical charts and documents (i.e. standardization)
www.iho.int

19. UN-GGIM and international standards: IHO
For disaster response lack of
data has major impact:
resolution and density of data
for good tsunami inundation
modelling far exceeds
capabilities of existing data in
most coastal areas of world.
“Regarding data interoperability and
standardisation the principal issue in
the maritime domain is lack of data.”
Robert Ward, President, International
Hydrographic Organization (IHO)
Governments should establish
holistic bathymetric data
gathering programmes that
serve all requirements
concurrently - not just
improvement of nautical charts.
Image courtesy of NOAA

20. UN-GGIM and international standards: IHO
IHO S-10x standards depend on several ISO19100 series standards
3D &
Temporal
Bathy
ENC
Inland
ENC
S-10x
Web Services
Nautical
Pubs
AML
MIO
S-101
Next Generation
ENC
Gridded

21. UN-GGIM and international standards: ISO
• World's largest developer of standards founded in 1946
 Network of national standards institutes from 163 countries
 19 500 standards published
• Recognized by the UN, particularly agencies involved in the
harmonization of regulations and public policies, and that
provide assistance and support to developing countries
• Technical Committees (TCs)
 Range from food safety to computers to healthcare
 ISO/TC 211, Geographic information/geomatics
www.iso.org
www.isotc211.org

22. Components of Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI)
Standards
Access,
Technology
Content (data)
Organization
Education

23. UN-GGIM and international standards
ISO/TC 211, OGC and IHO have
.
been cooperating since 1994, mainly
under the liaison mechanism of ISO.
ISO/TC 211 and OGC also benefit
from a range of people working
actively in both organizations and
have a Joint Advisory Group (JAG).
This includes representatives from
Ordnance Survey.

24. UN-GGIM and international standards: OGC
• Industry consortium, circa 500 member organisations
• 30+ geospatial standards, many also ISO standards
• Goal is to define, document and test implementation
standards for use with geospatial content and services
 integration of geospatial content and services into
applications
www.opengeospatial.org

25. Standards are like
parachutes: they
work best when
they're open.
Mary McRae, OASIS

26. WFS for data supply works
Kyle Dow, Senior Data Analyst, Corporate Data Team, CCC

27. Some issues
 Christchurch City holds
Authoritative Data, e.g…
 WasteWater
 Building Status
 Construction partners manually
submit data in variety of formats
 Time and money wasted on
data loading and management
 WFS has no capability to receive
updates through interoperable web
services

28. What was needed
 Transactional Interoperability between
recovery partners:
 CERA, CCC, SCIRT
 ESRI, Intergraph
 OGC Standards (NZGO SDI Cookbook)
 Practical, short-term solution (can’t wait)
 Focus on issues with existing (OGC)
standards interfaces, notably WFS-T
 Immediate results that will accelerate
recovery & reconstruction efforts

29. Solution: WFS-T Plugfest
 Short Duration
 Collaborative
 Hands-on
 Independent Facilitation & WFS-T Architect
 “Just Make it Work”
Image: http://www.ispcs.org

30. Technology agnostic
Organisation
CCC
Technologies
Intergraph GeoMedia Pro
Intergraph GeoMedia WebMap
SCIRT
ESRI ArcGIS Server
ESRI ArcGIS Desktop
Safe Software – FME
WFS ‘Pump script’
CERA
Benoli Silverfish
ESRI GeoDatabase
WFS ‘Pump script’
InsureCorp*
Pitney Bowes Software MapInfo
Professional
* fictitious name to protect any commercial interests

31. Before and After

32. OGC Business Value Committee (BVC)
The goals of the BVC are:
1. Determine the value of using open standards;
2. Assess the business reasons for developing standards;
3. Provide an independent forum for discussion.
business.value@lists.opengeospatial.org

33. Costs
 Scale: 1-7
 Both technology users and providers expect some costs
associated with OGC standards adoption
 No 1 Costs: employee training
 Overall, technology users expect higher costs than
technology providers
Technology Users
Security/Privacy
Technology Providers
Uncertainty
4.26
Employee Training
2.97
Employee Training
4.86
4.73
Organizational Changes
4.6
Organizational Changes
4.19
Integration Costs
4.42
Integration Costs
4.25
Implementation Costs
4.23
Implementation Costs
4.1
1
36
2
3
4
5
6
Prepared by Kexin Zhao & Mu Xia 2012
7
1
2
3
4
5
6
12/22/2013
7

34. Benefits
 Scale: 1-7
 Both technology users and providers expect
significant benefits from adopting OGC standards
 No. 1 benefit: better customer service (users) and
customer satisfaction (providers)
Technology Users
Technology Providers
Productivity
5.01
Customer Service
Reduce Development Costs
5.46
Competitive Advantage
Productivity
4.93
Reduce Operating Costs
4.64
Market Expansion
37
2
3
4
5
5.22
Market Expansion
6
Prepared by Kexin Zhao & Mu Xia 2012
7
5.46
Customer Satisfaction
5.35
1
4.98
New Market
4.96
Partner Coordination
5.38
Reduce Operating Costs
4.71
New Market
4.62
Competitive Advantage
5.28
Bargain with IT Vendor
4.94
5.55
1
2
3
4
5
6
12/22/2013
7

35. BVC motion: form a MENA Regional Forum
• The Business Value Committee recommended that the OGC
Technical Committee approve the Middle East/North Africa
forum charter and requested that the OGC Planning Committee
approve formation of this new proposed OGC Forum.
• The goal for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Regional
Forum is to address OGC outreach and education needs of
government, academic, research and industry organizations in
the Middle East and North Africa.
• The MENA Forum charter is available here:
https://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=52791&version=1
Copyright © 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium

36. With thanks to the following contributors:
Naji Sabt, Director General, General Directorate of Survey,
Survey and Land Registration Bureau, Kingdom of Bahrain
Robert Ward, President, IHO
Olaf Ostensen, Chair, ISO/TC211
Mark Reichardt, President, OGC
Maurits van der Vlugt, Mercury Project Solutions, Australia
Richard Murcott, LINZ, New Zealand
Samer Atiya, ADSIC, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Contact details:
Steven Ramage, Head of Ordnance Survey International
Member of the OGC Global Advisory Council and
Chair of the OGC Business Value Committee
steven.ramage@ordnancesurvey.co.uk