Last night, at the November meeting of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Technical Committee in Toulouse, France, Linda van den Brink received the OGC’s prestigious Kenneth D. Gardels Award. The Gardels Award is presented each year to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to advancing OGC’s vision of using location to connect people, communities, technology, and decision making for the greater good.

Linda van den Brink was awarded because of her effective coordination between the OGC and other standards and industry bodies. As noted by one of the nominating committee: “Linda has been an outstanding representative both internal to OGC and external. She has worked hard to gain OGC standards acceptance in the wider community.” Another committee member commented: “Linda’s value to OGC is reflected simply because of the number of areas in which she has participated. Over the years, Linda has been involved in CityGML, GeoSemantics, Linked Data, and the joint working group with W3C. In these groups, Linda has not only been involved, but also taken a very active part in each…”

Linda has co-chaired the GeoSemantics Domain Working Group and has also been very active in the GML and CityGML Standards Working Groups, often identifying issues based on experience gained through standards implementations. Linda has been the primary voice in highlighting the need to better align common elements in the CityGML, InfraGML, and IndoorGML standards.

“I’m very happy that Linda van den Brink has received the 2019 Gardels Award,” commented Bart De Lathouwer, President of OGC. “With her down-to-earth approach, she has been instrumental in significantly advancing semantic and linked data interoperability in the geospatial domain, together with our alliance partner W3C. Linda’s real-world based interoperability activities, and strong international community building skills, are appreciated not only by OGC, but also many outside of OGC. Kenn would be very proud.”

“We thank you for demonstrating the true spirit of the OGC in striving for what is best for the geospatial community,” commented Jeffrey K. Harris, Chairman of the OGC Board of Directors. “You have served countless hours in OGC activities, including leading, attending, and actively participating in Technical Committee Meetings and serving as a Technical Committee (TC) representative to the Planning Committee (PC), where you are charged to summarize PC discussions that impact the TC from the member perspective.”

In all this work, Linda has exemplified the principles, courage, humility, and accomplishment in promoting spatial technologies to address the needs of humanity that characterized Kenn Gardels’ career and life.

About OGC
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is an international consortium of more than 530 businesses, government agencies, research organizations, and universities driven to make geospatial (location) information and services FAIR – Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.
OGC’s member-driven consensus process creates royalty free, publicly available geospatial standards. Existing at the cutting edge, OGC actively analyzes and anticipates emerging tech trends, and runs an agile, collaborative Research and Development (R&D) lab that builds and tests innovative prototype solutions to members’ use cases.
OGC members together form a global forum of experts and communities that use location to connect people with technology and improve decision-making at all levels. OGC is committed to creating a sustainable future for us, our children, and future generations.
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