Wayland, MA, June 16, 2010. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) (http://www.opengeospatial.org ) and AGISEE, the Association for Geospatial Information in South-East Europe (http://www.agisee.org) announced that they have established a cooperative relationship to promote the importance of open standards in the development of spatial data infrastructures and raise the awareness of interoperability in South-East Europe.
The ultimate goals of the relationship are to create a group of people who will advance innovation and use of standards in the geospatial domain and to present the interest and requirements of this South-East Europe group to international standardisation efforts.
The two organizations encourage interested persons to join a new mailing list that has been created to:
1. Inform members of the mailing list about issues of standardisation in the geospatial domain and related domains;
2. Inform members about new standards developments, innovations and implementations;
3. Provide a forum for the exchange of information and experience.
Interested people are invited to open the following link and register to the mailing list:
https://lists.opengeospatial.org/mailman/listinfo/agisee.forum . The mailing list will be mainly in English to enable participation from all countries in the region, but posts in national languages such as Bulgarian are nevertheless welcome.
Interested people are also invited to a workshop on Spatial Data Infrastructures on 16 June 2010 in Nessebar, Bulgaria, as part of the International Conference for
Cartography and GIS (ICCG3) (http://www.cartography-gis.com ). The workshop aims at informing participants about: requirements for geographic information systems and spatial data infrastructures, the benefits of standards and involvement in standards processes, and practical examples that show what can be accomplished.
See http://www.agisee.org/sdiwsbg.php for more details. You will be welcome at this workshop and we are looking forward to meeting you there.
The Association for Geospatial Information in South-East Europe (AGISEE) (http://www.opengeospatial.org ) promotes geospatial data use and Spatial Data Infrastructures in South-East Europe. AGISEE is a non-for-profit organization which supports the needs of all groups in South-East Europe for access to, sharing and use of geospatial information (GI). To this end, AGISEE works towards the development of an infrastructure that will allow users globally and inter-regionally to access spatial data at a variety of scales from multiple sources that will ultimately appear seamless to the user.
The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 395 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OpenGIS® Standards support interoperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/.
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