Wayland, MA, 1 February 2010. The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC®) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to enhance the development and use of geospatial standards. It is anticipated that this collaboration will support the implementation of the WMO Information System which aims at providing a single coordinated global infrastructure for the collection and sharing of information in support of all WMO and related international programs.
The MoU formalizes the partners' planned collaboration in the development, application, and promotion of standards and best practices for the content and exchange of meteorological, climatological and hydrological data for the benefit of the worldwide scientific and operational communities of meteorologists and hydrologists.
“This is an important step forward for both of our organizations,” explained Mark Reichardt, President and CEO of the OGC. “OGC benefits from the WMO's application of OGC's open standards and direct WMO community involvement in OGC standards process. Members and stakeholders of the WMO will benefit greatly from open standards that improve discovery, sharing and application of diverse collections of information to address important issues related to meteorology.”
According to Mr Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General of WMO, “the joint activities of OGC and WMO will be instrumental in promoting and advancing technology interoperability for the discovery, access and use of information related to weather, climate and water”.
About the WMO
WMO is the United Nations' authoritative voice on weather, climate and water, and WMO has a long history in the development of standards for the presentation and exchange of information in these domains.
About the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®)
The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 385 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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