The City of Copenhagen's online GIS is constantly in flux. Data is updated everyday. New data is coming in. New maps are needed. New people need access. The goal for those managing the system is to provide a technology structure to underlie the different departments' workflows, including making sure data is up-to-date, and maps are delivered with the wanted cartographic setup and relevant functionality when they are needed. Part of the solution for this city of 500,000, which covers 90 square kilometers, and is home to 10% of Denmark's population, involves OpenGIS Specifications.

Canada is big, with millions of acres of forested land. What if you were in charge of making sure your organization could access and report on information from all country organizations that deal with forests and forestry? Information about the sustainable management of the forests, trees available as timber, those that are protected, those that are not healthy… That's not a theoretical task; it's the job of the federal Department of Natural Resources Canada - Canadian Forest Service (CFS).

Open is one of those words used everyday with respect to technology. I for one have to take a moment to consider exactly which meaning is in use at any one time. Open in Open GIS Consortium and OpenGIS Specifications highlights the meaning relating to published, accessible interfaces. Open in open source means published in the sense of including source code, but also has a specific meaning relating to licensing and other matters.

In this issue of OGC User, those two uses of open come together, uniting OpenGIS Specifications with open source software. Both implementations, the first supporting data from across Canada, and the second united data sets for the City of Copenhagen, mix commercial software with open source software via open standards.

by Maurits van der Vlugt And Jonathan Doig

A Data Sharing Challenge

"There is so much data out there, why can't we just use it?" If you work in geospatial technology, there's no doubt you've heard this sentiment. The question is even more important if these anecdotal numbers are anywhere near true: More than 80 per cent of all data has a spatial component, and more than 80 per cent of the time spent on spatial information projects is wasted on non-productive activities such as data acquisition, negotiation, loading and transformation.

In the state of New South Wales (NSW), Australia the Community Access to Natural Resources Information (CANRI) program has addressed this issue with significant success. CANRI has implemented a framework for online data sharing between NSW government agencies and community organizations using OpenGIS specifications The CANRI portal serves as the NSW focal point for all natural resource-related applications, atlases and metadata.

The staff at Ping Interactive Broadband in Australia is tackling a problem as big as the earth. For some time the team has dreamed of a 3D interactive, Web-based world map. The application, they hope, will include a hypermedia viewer that renders geographic information in high-definition real time 3D over broadband networks. Another key idea: the platform will allow users to publish data into the system. With a grant from Telstra Broadband Fund, the project, called 3D Metanet Atlas Platform (3map), is moving right along.

Putting together a healthy state GIS solution is not easy, but most GIS users and politicians would agree, it's essential. Putting together one that embraces open standards, may soon be essential, too. While OGC puts a solid emphasis on the technology that enables interoperability, there's another side of the equation critical to making an open interoperable implementation possible: interoperable public policy.

Susan Cromwell, current Chair of the Arkansas State Land Information Board, is one leader who understands how state GIS, open standards for interoperability and public policy come together. Her history of work with Academic, Research, and Client Services at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and later at the State Office of Information Technology put her in a position to appreciate what open standards can do for technology in general, and GIS in particular. That history helped Arkansas choose interoperability early on, and grow it through the years.

Weaving. It means taking threads to make cloth, or strips of cloth to make blankets and other useful items. In weaving something new comes from bringing together, in just the right way, some core elements. GIS, too, makes something new by building up maps from data building blocks.

This month we bring you stories of efforts in Australia to weave together environmental data, the story of how the state of Arkansas continues to weave GIS into public policy, and how a young company, also from Australia, hopes to weave data contributions from all over the world into a powerful, stunning and useful interactive, 3D world map. All three are moving forward with the aid of OpenGIS Specifications.

Say "MassGIS" in at any gathering of GIS professionals in Massachusetts and they think of one thing: data. But that's changing. MassGIS is rolling out new data delivery tools and a variety of geospatial Web services that take advantage of OpenGIS® Specifications to help maximize information sharing and delivery. As a result, in time, MassGIS may also be thought of as a provider of Web services that power the Commonwealth's agencies' and partners' map-enabled websites.

 Vaud is a state in Switzerland. And, like states all over the world, Vaud, via its Central Administration (CA, the state government) plays a key role in the collection and distribution of geographic data for the region. Many other organizations - public and private - within the state and country provide spatial data as well. That's part of the reason the state decided ten years ago, before any OpenGIS® specifications were approved, to pull those resources together. The state wanted to provide the rich datasets to anyone, and enable searching for specific resources via a metadata catalog. Vaud also wanted to simplify and streamline data ordering so that interested parties need visit only one website (prototyped in the graphic below) to gather data from many organizations.

Welcome to the first issue of OGC User. This new quarterly publication is intended to illustrate the value of OpenGIS® specifications in action in the global user community. I believe that the sharing of our collective experiences in application of interoperable solutions at the community level is important. Community examples connect us with the innovative ways that users are drawing on standards-based solutions to apply new technologies quickly, to reduce integration costs, and to expand the systems and enterprise solutions flexibly. These examples form the basic elements of a Return on Investment (ROI) model that others can use to better understand and apply interoperability to advantage. OGC User will also provide you with information on availability of products that use OpenGIS specifications.