George Percivall , Chief Architect & Executive Director – Interoperability Program, OGC, will deliver a keynote “Connecting Islands in the Internet of Things” at COM.Geo 2012 conference which will be held on July 1-3, Washington, DC.
With the increasing pace of change in computing technology, islands of relative stability become important to reaping the benefits of geospatial information. Geospatial standards are bases for persistent developments in the complex adaptive ecosystem of geospatial computing technology. Standards are the backbone of the Geoweb and will be also for the Internet of Things (IoT).
At COM.Geo 2011, the workshop, “Expanding Geoweb to An Internet of Things”, explored ways in which the success of the Geoweb were a basis for the emerging Internet of Things. COM.Geo 2012 aims to continue this discussion of sensor and mobile computing for geospatial research and application.
IoT can be seen as a fuller expression of a vision of The Computer for the 21st Century (M. Weiser, 1991, Sci. Amer.). That vision of “Ubiquitous Computing” anticipated computers disappearing into the fabric of everyday life. What perhaps could not have been anticipated was how computing would be changed by the WWW making information ubiquitously accessible via the internet. Now, everyday objects with embedded computers are becoming ubiquitously accessible and interactive via the internet and mobile communications to the benefit of researchers, decision-makers, developers, and application users.
Sensor webs and RFID are major elements of IoT. Beginning in 2000, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) anticipated the proliferation of network-accessible sensors and defined a set of Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards. SWE allows sensors to be used in user applications not anticipated with the initial deployment of the sensors. The AutoID lab is a pioneer identifying how RFID systems and SWE can work together to for understanding real world objects both from physical measurements and identity.
Geospatial location is fundamental to IoT with the spaces in which IoT operates going beyond the geographic positioning technologies currently on mobile devices. Fusion of information from new sensors on-board mobile devices will enable positioning indoors and other locations where GPS is not present. “Indoor maps” with the complexity of 3 dimensions and complex route topology are needed for IoT be placed and used in a rich spatial computing context.
End user applications will reap the benefits of ubiquitous information from IoT. Augmented Reality applications will allow users to view a rich set of information about the space around them both historical information and real-time information. The many domains of Business Intelligence will be informed by this stream of information enabling better decisions.
OGC brings several innovative, yet stable standards to the computing and geospatial world of IoT. The second generation of SWE standards is currently being finalized. CityGML and IndoorGML meet the need for indoor maps. And the Augmented Reality Markup Language is poised to bring IoT information into a context aware visualization on mobile devices. OGC will continue to work with other standards developing organizations that address IoT, e.g., ITU, JTC1, IETF, OMA.
Mr. George Percivall is an accomplished leader in the development of information systems and international standards for geospatial information. As OGC’s Chief Architect, he is responsible for the overall vision for the OGC baseline and its evolution through developments by OGC members. As Executive Director of OGC’s Interoperability Program, he is responsible for managing OGC’s Interoperability Program, which involves planning and executing testbeds, pilot projects, interoperability experiments etc., and for running OGC’s compliance testing program.
Prior to joining OGC, Mr. Percivall had leadership roles on several NASA projects. He was Chief Engineer of the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) for the Landsat/Terra release; Principal engineer for NASA’s Geospatial Interoperability Office; and, represented NASA in OGC, ISO TC211, and CEOS. He was the Director of the Geospatial Interoperability Group of GST, Inc. Previously, he led developments in Intelligent Transportation Systems with the US Automated Highway Consortium and General Motors Systems Engineering.
For more information on the COM.Geo 2012 conference, please visit: http://www.com-geo.org/conferences/2012/index.htm
About COM.Geo Institute
Computing for Geospatial Research Institute (COM.Geo Institute) is one of the leading-edge geospatial computing research organizations in the world. COM.Geo institute offers R&D, training courses and certificate program, and conferences. Now COM.Geo is playing a guiding role to advancing the technologies in computing for geospatial research and application fields. COM.Geo R&D focuses on the latest computing technologies for multidisciplinary research and development that enables the exploration in geospatial areas. COM.Geo training center offers the most up-to-date training for working professionals to boost their technical knowledge and skills of computing for geospatial technology. The training courses and certificate program is for a multitude of backgrounds and professions. COM.Geo conference is an exclusive international event that connects researchers, developers, scientists, and application users from academia, government, and industry in both computing and geospatial fields.
