OGC Spatial Data Quality update

24 January 2008, 10:11am

Wayland, MA, January 24, 2008. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Spatial Data Quality Working Group is pleased to announce that there has been a great response to the survey on spatial data quality measures. The survey will close by the 25 th of January. This working group, under the leadership of Seb Lessware (Chair) from 1Spatial and Patrick Cunningham (Vice-Chair) of Blue Marble Geographics has been gathering secondary research information and requirements from OGC members for the past year and is now conducting a primary research phase. A survey on spatial data quality has been live since mid-October 2007, targeting thousands of geospatial data suppliers and users from around the world. Over six hundred responses have been received to date.

The mission of the Data Quality Working Group (WG) of the OGC Technical Committee is to establish a forum for describing an interoperable framework or model for OGC quality Assurance Measures and Web Services, to enable access and sharing of high quality geospatial information, to improve data analysis and ultimately to influence policy decisions. However, before this is possible it is necessary to ascertain what organizations involved in the marketplace understand and mean when they use the term "spatial data quality." The Working Group hopes this survey will reach
thousands of geospatial data users and provide a solid foundation for developing relevant terms of measure and a powerful spatial data quality model.

The survey takes only 15 minutes to complete and the results will remain anonymous. To participate please follow the link:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=_2ffWZCQbm2ugKS_2fW8A0MWIQ_3d_3d

Access to the results of the research will be available to respondents upon completion of the survey.

"This survey is a very important part of what the Working Group is doing for the geospatial technology industry," explained Sam Bacharach, Executive Director of Outreach, OGC. "As Web services become more widely used for publishing, discovering, assessing, accessing and using geospatial data, it is most important that users have a means for including quality measures in automated data searches. The Working Group's outreach to the user community helps ensure that users' needs will be met by the standards that result from this work."

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 350 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards.

OpenGIS Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless
and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled.

www.opengeospatial.org

Geo: International