18 February 2014 – The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) invites MobileWorld Congress attendees to attend workshops on the new OGC GeoPackage ServiceInterface Standard, the candidate OGC IndoorGML Encoding Standard, and thecandidate OGC Augmented Reality Markup Language (ARML2) Encoding Standard.Attendees at this free event will also see a demonstration of ARML2 being usedto enable interoperability among leading Augmented Reality platform providersLayar, Metaio and Wikitude. The demo andworkshops will be held in the afternoon after the morning presentations on”OGC Location Standards for a Mobile World” by representatives from OGC, OMA (Open Mobile Alliance), W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and the Small CellForum. More information and to register, visit http://www.myogc.org/go/mobile2014
The day's events will be held from 0900 to 1500 on 25 February2014 in Barcelona, Spain at the InstitutCartogràfic I Geològic de Catalunya (ICGC), formerly the Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya (ICC) (see map), during the Mobile World Congress. The MobileWorld Congress, running 24-27 February 2014 in Barcelona, is the world's largest exhibition,conference and networking event for mobile operators, cell phone and devicemanufacturers, and providers of mobile software.
Therecently approved OGC GeoPackage Encoding Standard enables easier exchange and sharing ofgeospatial (or location) information across different devices, applications andweb services throughout the mobile world. A modern, service-oriented alternative to conventionalspatial data formats, GeoPackage's SQLite-based format efficiently stores and transfersgeographic vector features and image tiles. GeoPackage was developed for mobileapplication developers whose applications need to provide users with geospatialapplication services and associated data in disconnected or limited networkconnectivity environments, or whose applications depend on geospatial data andprocessing services from diverse sources.
Beginningtomorrow, the candidate OGC IndoorGML Encoding Standard will be in its final 30-day public commentperiod before its adoption vote by members of the OGC. It has been developed to provide a common schema framework forinteroperability between indoor navigation applications. These cover a widespectrum of application areas such as indoor location services, indoor web mapservices, indoor emergency control, guiding services for visually handicappedpersons in indoor space, and indoor robotics.
Inaddition to these presentations about location standards that maximize the valueof mobile devices' location awareness, the OGC will host the world's first AugmentedReality (AR) Browser Interoperability Demonstration. Layar, Metaio and Wikitude,the largest AR platform providers, have cooperated to make it easy for ARcontent to be shared across their technology platforms. This cooperation has resulted in the development of threeunreleased but fully functioning browsers from the three companies. The common AR interchange format that enables thisAR interoperability is based on the candidate OGC ARML 2.0 Encoding Standardthat Martin Lechner of Wikitude introduced into the OGC. ARML is expected tocome to an adoption vote within OGC in the next couple of months.
Attendeeswill have an opportunity to meet developers familiar with these three standardsand discuss the opportunities that arise from standards-based integration onmobile devices of spatial data and services.
George Percivall, ChiefEngineer, OGC, said, “This event marks an important milestone in progress ofopen standards for spatial data and location services becoming easy toimplement on mobile devices for a very wide variety of applications. SmartCities require a convergence of spatially enabled information to improve theefficiency, equity and quality of urban living. The data will come from manysources and be used for many purposes. Come to ICC next Tuesday and talkto OGC about GeoPackage, IndoorGML, ARML and our plans for a Smart CitiesTestbed.”
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)is an international consortium of more than 470 companies, government agencies,research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus processto develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC standards supportinteroperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web, wireless andlocation-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC standards empower technologydevelopers to make geospatial information and services accessible and usefulwith any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGCwebsite at http://www.opengeospatial.org.
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