The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC) have renewed their collaboration agreement to enhance the development and use of geospatial standards.
The ongoing collaboration enables JRC to more effectively contribute to the OGC Standards process and facilitate the consideration of European objectives, requirements, and policies during the development of international open geospatial standards.
The agreement formalizes the partners’ collaboration in the field of development, application, maintenance, and promotion of international open geospatial standards and best practices that support the implementation of EU policies, for example, INSPIRE, European Data Spaces, Open Data, and Earth Observation, including Copernicus and Galileo.
Further, the agreement will enable OGC and JRC to jointly organize workshops for exchanging scientific and technological information on topics of mutual interest, for example, spatial law and policy, Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) Best Practices, and emerging technologies (e.g. metaverse, digital twins, cloud/edge computing, platforms, and Artificial Intelligence (AI)).
“We at OGC are pleased to continue our collaboration with the JRC,” commented Ingo Simonis, Ph.D, OGC Chief Technology Innovation Officer. “With the modernization of national and international spatial data infrastructures, the semantic enhancement of existing data offerings, and the development of cross-domain yet flexible solutions for heterogeneous communities, we have many core activities in common. Bringing the JRC and OGC communities together allows us to address these important topics far more efficiently.”
About JRC
The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre provides independent, evidence-based knowledge and science, supporting EU policies to positively impact society. It plays a key role at multiple stages of the EU policy cycle.
It works closely with research and policy organisations in the Member States, with the European institutions and agencies, and with scientific partners in Europe and internationally, including within the United Nations system. In addition, the JRC offers scientific expertise and competences from a very wide range of disciplines in support of almost all EU policy areas.