Massachusetts, USA, 24 July 2006: The membership of the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) has released the “OGC GeoRSS White Paper” (OGC Document 06-050r3 [https://www.opengeospatial.org/pt/06-050r3]) and the OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) White Paper (OGC Document 06-046r2 [https://www.opengeospatial.org/pt/06-046r2]) as an official public OGC White Paper.
GeoRSS
GeoRSS is a simple proposal for geo-enabling, or tagging, “really simple syndication” (RSS) feeds with location information. GeoRSS standardizes the way in which “where” is encoded with enough simplicity and descriptive power to satisfy most needs to describe the location of Web content. It is extensible and upwardly-compatible with more sophisticated formats like the OGC GML (Geography Markup Language). It is the product of an informal collaboration of geospatial professionals applying expertise in Web standards, syndication, and the Semantic Web.
Sensor Web Enablement (SWE)
A sensor network is a computer accessible network of many spatially distributed devices using sensors to monitor conditions at different locations, such as temperature, sound, vibration, pressure, motion or pollutants. A Sensor Web refers to Web accessible sensor networks and archived sensor data that can be discovered and accessed using standard protocols and interfaces.
In the OGC SWE activity, members of the OGC are defining, testing, and documenting a consistent framework of open standards for exploiting Web-connected sensors and sensor systems of any type. Sensor Web Enablement presents many opportunities for adding a real-time sensor dimension to the Internet and the Web. This has significance for science, environmental monitoring, transportation management, public safety, facility security, disaster management, utilities’ SCADA operations, industrial controls, facilities management and many other domains of activity. The OGC voluntary consensus standards setting process coupled with strong international industry and government support in domains that depend on sensors is expected to result in SWE specifications that will become established in all application areas where such standards are of use.
