June 5, 2015 — At the June meeting of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC(R)) Technical Committee in Boulder, Colorado, USA, Paul Scarponcini, PE, PhD received the OGC’s prestigious Kenneth D. Gardels Award (http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/awards).
Carl Reed, PhD, who recently retired from his position as OGC’s CTO, received an honorary Gardels Award for his many years of Technical Committee leadership. The Gardels Award is awarded each year to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to advance OGC’s vision of geospatial information fully integrated into the world’s information systems.
Over almost two decades, Paul Scarponcini, a Senior Information Architect at Bentley Systems, has been an important OGC Technical Committee contributor. He has also done much to help OGC advance spatial information technology standards in collaboration with other standards organizations. He helped develop some of the OGC’s foundational geospatial standards, and he has also played a pioneering role in bridging the critical gap between geospatial standards and information technology standards for the built environment. His years of technical leadership and liaison work in this area are now beginning to benefit information sharing in activities such as civil engineering, urban planning, facilities management and indoor location services.
The Gardels Award is the OGC’s highest honor bestowed upon a Consortium member representative. It is given annually in memory of Kenneth Gardels, a founding director of OGC and OGC’s former director of academic programs. Mr. Gardels coined the term “Open GIS,” and devoted his life to the humane and democratic uses of geographic information systems. He died at the age of 44 in 1999.
The OGC is an international geospatial standards consortium of more than 500 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.
