The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) recently announced the formation of the Moving Features Standards Working Group (Moving Features SWG). “Moving features” data describes such things as vehicles, pedestrians, airplanes and ships.

This group is chartered to develop a candidate Moving Features standard from the discussion paper (OGC 12-117r1, OGC Standard for Moving Features; Requirements), which summarises the requirements and basic idea of an encoding standard for moving feature data. This candidate standard will be brought into the OGC consensus process to be vetted and approved as an adopted OGC standard.

The OGC members convening this group invite the public to comment on the Moving Features SWG Charter and will consider comments received before 13 March 2012.

The proposed OGC Moving Features Encoding Standard will provide a standard for web-based Applications using moving feature data. The volume of such data, typically describing vehicles and pedestrians, has begun growing at an exponential rate along with the growth in location-aware mobile devices. Innovative applications are expected to require the overlay and integration of moving feature data from different sources to create social and business value. A standard that supports smoother handling and integration of moving feature data across applications and platforms will broaden the market for geo-spatial information of this type.