This meeting will be partly framed by the theme of Modelling and Simulation, and the week’s special events include the usual host of Domain and Standards Working Group meetings, as well as plenaries with addresses from the Modeling and Simulation industry; a 3D Geospatial Modeling & Simulation Summit; Location Powers: Big Data workshop; the North American Forum meeting; several ad hoc meetings; the announcement of the Gardels award winner for 2016; and a variety of networking and social opportunities, including a dinner on Wednesday 21st September.

Occurring on Monday 19 September will be the 3D Geospatial Modeling and Simulation Summit, to be co-convened by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO), and the US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF). The summit occurs the week after SISO’s 2016 SIW, and is designed to bring together experts from the M&S and geospatial communities to discuss the current state of practice, and to develop a roadmap to establish greater interoperability of M&S with particular focus on the integration of geospatial / location information and technologies with the M&S environment. The event will also feature an ice breaker session, with further details to be announced soon. For more information and to register for this event at no cost, please visit: https://portal.opengeospatial.org/public_ogc/register/3dms.php.

The Location Powers: Big Data workshop, to be held on Tuesday 20th September, will bring together leading developers of big geospatial data systems. This is an opportunity for participants to hear about the latest developments in the field, as well as contribute to the collective discussion concerning advancing the use of big data computing techniques being applied to geospatial data.

The OGC North American forum will meet on the Monday. OGC regional forums are open to members and non-members alike, and are designed to facilitate region-specific open geospatial standards discussion as a knowledge sharing facility.

Several ad hoc meetings will occur in Orlando to propose or advance plans for new Working Groups. These include: Spectrum ML; HDF SWG; Quality Of Service; CDB SWG; Citizen Science DWG; Vector Tiling; UAV/UAS; and Common Object Model Container SWG.

As part of the event, the 2016 recipient for the Gardels Award will also be announced. The Kenneth D. Gardels award is a gold medallion presented each year by the OGC Board of Directors to an individual who has made exemplary contributions to the OGC’s consensus standards process. Award nominations are made by members – the prior Gardels Award winners – and approved by the Board of Directors. The Gardels Award was conceived to memorialize the spirit of a man who dreamt passionately of making the world a better place through open communication and the use of information technology to improve the quality of human life.

The purpose of OGC Technical and Planning Committee meetings is to network, knowledge share and advance the development of Open Geospatial Standards. To enjoy access to all the standards meetings on offer during the week you will need to be an OGC member. However, the Opening & Closing plenaries, Regional Forums, Summits, Domain Working Groups and networking opportunities are open to participation for anyone that is interested in learning about and furthering the development of open geospatial standards (registration fees will apply to non-members).

The Technical and Planning Committee Meeting in Orlando will mark OGC’s 100th Technical meeting since its inception in 1994. At this event we will acknowledge the incredible contributions our members have made over the previous 100 meetings and look toward the next hundred. For an overview of the history of OGC, visit http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/history, or if you’d like an extended Sunday morning read, visithttp://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/historylong.

For the 100th OGC TC Meeting agenda, further details, and registration, visit ogcmeet.org.About the OGC

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 515 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web, wireless and location based services, and mainstream IT. OGC standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org.