Scope and Activities
Scope of Work
OGCii has three main guiding thrusts for selecting research projects. The first is to improve interoperability of scientific data, particularly that which could conceivably pertain to studying and improving our understanding of the causes and implications of global climate change. This encompasses datasets for the geosciences, biosphere, atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, and any other aspect of earth observation. Projects in this area require research and experimentation in semantics and ontologies, data preservation, security and digital rights management, cognition within a cyber environment, web services, and other aspects of cyberinfrastructures and social sciences. Research objectives will not be to conduct basic studies of these specific areas, but to define and lead workshops and interoperability pilot projects to develop reference architectures which address the combination of these factors in concert.
An important focus of work in this direction is our role in developing the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), see www.earthobservations.org. OGC is a Participating Organization of GEO. OGC and OGCii participate in the GEOSS Architecture and Data Committee, helping to harmonize efforts in data and information management and interoperability. OGC leads the Architecture Implementation Pilot (GEO Task AR-07-02) with participation by OGCii, see www.ogcnetwork.net/AIpilot. One of the activities of OGC and OGCii is the GEOSS Workshop Series, which is focused on how the GEOSS architecture can meet user needs. Workshops and demonstrations are conducted several times each year around the world. For more information about this program, see http://www.ogcnetwork.net/GEOSSdemos.
The second thrust is to help direct research and development of regional, national and global spatial data infrastructures (SDI). The purpose for this focus is to facilitate better planning, response, and mitigation for natural and manmade emergencies, such as devastation from hurricanes, tsunamis, acts of terrorism, etc. The scope of data for this research tends to be standard aerial and satellite imagery, and topographic base map data such as transportation networks, hydrographic networks, land use and land cover areas, built-up areas, contours, and other classes of features that represent critical infrastructure and other points of interest. Projects in this area will involve similar directions for research and experimentation as mentioned for scientific data, with the additional objective of architecting specific centralized and federated integrations of data across local, regional, state, national, and global government agency jurisdictions. Specific research may be needed in addressing best ways of updating data through this hierarchy of differing requirements for scales, data density, attribution, and metadata. Different institutional barriers are also likely in this area than with scientific datasets.
The third thrust is to nurture knowledge transfer and education in the importance and means of improving interoperability. We can help in developing curriculum and materials to support education for creating and improving interoperability. We are also coordinating with selected universities and museums to develop NSF-funded programs for Informal Science Education (ISE) focused on climate change and other significant social and scientific issues.
Operational Model
In the first two of these thrusts, the primary business and technical model is to conduct one or more invitational workshops to develop candidate reference architectures that satisfy the stakeholders' functional requirements, followed by interoperability pilot projects that implement, test, and (if practical) improve the architectures that actually solve the problem at hand. The pilot projects could span multiple years, with 6-month to 1-year spirals designed to allow review and possibly revision of the requirements and design based on results so far. Program management of the pilots is generally conducted through coordination with the OGC Interoperability Program (IP) pool of pre-qualified program managers.
Outreach
OGCii staff regularly attend OGC Technical Committee meetings, and participate in the University Working Group, the Data Preservation Working Group, Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) Working Group, and the Working Group on Earth Observation, Natural Resources and Environment (EONRE). We also attend and make presentations at scientific community conferences such as AAAS, Geoinformatics, Open Grid Forum, and others as possible. OGCii has activities and workshops planned in the US, UK, and Europe.