The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the Ordnance Survey, with the support of the Association for Geographic Information (AGI), are leading the first of a series of events called the United Kingdom Interoperability Assessment Plugfest (UKIAP) 2013. (See http://www.opengeospatial.org/OSplugfest). The purpose of UKIAP 2013 is to advance the interoperability of geospatial products and services based on OGC standards within the UK geospatial information (GI) community.
The results of the Plugfest will allow Ordnance Survey to provide best practice guidance to those who want to consume or implement geospatial web services or products based on OGC standards. UKIAP 2013 is open to commercial and open source vendors and to all GI organisations in the UK. The OGC and Ordnance Survey would like to involve as many participants in the initiative as possible.
Participation in the UKIAP offers vendors and open source projects significant national and international exposure to the UK GI community, as well as geospatial technology purchasers in general. The UKIAP is a prime opportunity for the UK GI user community and software vendors to cooperatively test and refine services, interfaces and protocols in the context of a hands-on engineering experience that raises the visibility of all participants. The UKIAP also calls attention to the importance and availability of interoperability. This effort has well-defined objectives, whilst also providing a significant opportunity to explore alternatives. The UKIAP initiative is designed to increase particular client-server interoperability capabilities in a way that leverages and contributes to Ordnance Survey’s vision of interoperable geospatial services across the UK GI sector.
The Call for Participation document is available here. The OGC and Ordnance Survey will have a clarification call on 25 September starting at 10:45 BST. (See details of the call in a footnote at the end of the document.) Proposals must be received by OGC no later than 1700 BST 2 October 2013.
Ordnance Survey is a government department founded in 1791 and is the national mapping agency of Great Britain. Ordnance Survey maintains the definitive geographic framework of Great Britain and is responsible for the surveying, production, maintenance and marketing of a wide range of geographic information, relied on by government, business and individuals. A dynamic, self-financing £120-million-a-year civilian organisation, Ordnance Survey is at the forefront of the digital economy, producing digital mapping products and paper maps for business, leisure, administrative and educational use. The mission of the Ordnance Survey is to maximise the use of geographic information (GI) for the benefit of the citizen, good governance and commerce.
The AGI exists to represent the interests of the UK’s GI industry, a wide-ranging group of public and private sector organisations, suppliers of GI software, hardware, data and services, consultants, academics and interested individuals. It is the membership body for everyone in the UK with an interest or involvement with GI. AGI is a member of the UK Location Council, an INSPIRE Spatial Data Interest Community (SDIC) and provides logistical and expert support to the British Standards Committee for Geographic Information (IST36), amongst its many other activities. The AGI aim to bring you the latest industry and AGI news, information about AGI’s many Special Interest Groups (SIGs), Regional Groups, events programme, Continuing Professional Development (CPD), plus our highly acclaimed annual AGI GeoCommunity conference, which is the largest independent geospatial event in the UK.
The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 475 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Learn more about the OGC at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact. See our recent “What is the OGC?” video.
