Info notes

Info note No.60

For use of the information media. Not an official record

WMO AND INTERNATIONAL CONSORTIUM TO COLLABORATE
ON GEOSPATIAL STANDARDS

Geneva, 27 January 2010 (WMO) - The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC), 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 programmes.

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.

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”.

“This is an important step forward for both organizations,” Mark Reichardt, President and CEO of OGC, stated. “OGC benefits from the WMO’s application of OGC’s open standards and direct WMO community involvement in the OGC standards process. Members and stakeholders of 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”.

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. Its standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled.

WMO has a long history in the development of standards for the presentation and exchange of information related to weather, climate and water. OGC and ISO developed and are developing standards for the presentation and exchange of geographic information such as the ISO 19100 series of geographic information standards, OGC Web Map Service (WMS), Web Feature Service (WFS), Web Coverage Service (WCS), Catalogue Service for the Web (CSW), Geography Mark-up Language (GML) and Sensor Web Enablement (SWE).

WMO is the United Nations' authoritative voice on weather, climate and water

Contact information:

At WMO:

Ms Carine Richard-Van Maele, Chief, Communications and Public Affairs, tel: +41 (0) 22 730 8314, e-mail: cpa@wmo.int

Ms Gaëlle Sévenier, Press Officer, Communications and Public Affairs, Tel. +41 (0) 22 730 8417. Email: gsevenier@wmo.int

Website: www.wmo.int

At OGC:

Mr Mark Reichardt, President and CEO, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC), tel: +1-301 840-1361; Email: mreichardt@opengeospatial.org  

website: http://www.opengeospatial.org

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