The Forum will bring the community together to collaborate on common drivers of geospatial programs.

By Chris Body

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) membership has re-established many of its Regional Forums after the pandemic, including the Australia/New Zealand Forum (OGC ANZ Forum)

The Regional Forums are important within OGC as they provide national and regional members the opportunity to highlight their geospatial programs or other local geospatial innovation. In general, the forums focus on:

• helping to identify and discuss common interoperability issues in a local or regional context;
• identify specific interoperability research, development and demonstration activities that can be usefully carried between OGC members within their local/national contexts;
• outreach to raise awareness of the benefits of OGC innovation, standards and their impact;
• provide for coordinated representation in the OGC; and
• provide a platform for growing OGC membership and project participation by organisations not presently represented in OGC membership.

The re-establishment of the ANZ Forum will bring the local geospatial community together to understand, discuss and collaborate on the common drivers of various geospatial programs by:

• developing awareness, acceptance, and implementation of geospatial interoperability best practices based on Australian and New Zealand National policies;
• supporting the promotion and adoption of existing OGC standards appropriate to Australian and New Zealand markets;
• identifying requirements related to Australian and New Zealand needs and introducing them into OGC processes;
• developing supportive and synergistic working relationships with similar national organisations so as to complement their programs and achieve authentic mutual benefit; and
• highlighting the impact and benefits of OGC innovation and standards in Australia and New Zealand, based on specific regional use cases, with a focus on local government, and academic and research organisations.

Anyone interested in supporting the re-establishment of the OGC ANZ Forum, is encouraged to contact Trevor Taylor (ttaylor@ogc.org) or Chris Body (cbody@ogc.org). OGC members and non-members alike are encouraged to join.

In addition to the OGC Regional Forums, OGC holds three Member Meetings each year — one each in Europe, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific — where OGC’s Standards Working Groups, Domain Working Groups, members and other geospatial experts meet. The meetings serve to progress standards, provide feedback on innovative initiatives being run by the OGC Collaborative Solutions and Innovation (COSI) program, hear about the latest happenings at OGC, network with the leaders of the geospatial community, and see what’s coming next.

The meetings are open to the public, though there are some closed sessions, and provide a great way to start to get to know — and get involved with — the OGC Community.

The next OGC Member Meeting will be held in Seoul, Republic of Korea, from 4 to 8 November 2024. The meeting will focus on such diverse topics as:

• Artificial intelligence for geospatial
• Urban digital twins
• Climate resilience
• Indoor navigation
• Sensor integration
• API development
• Land administration
• Blockchain and DLT
• Geodesy and coordinate referencing systems
• Metadata

Registration is opening soon. Visit ogcmeet.org to learn more.

In addition, Standards Australia will host the ISO/TC 211 Geographic Information/Geomatics Committee meeting in Sydney from 11 to 15 November 2024.