OGC and ASTM International to Jointly Develop Standards and More

The organizations plan to work together in areas such as data acquisition and dissemination, location-based services, and unmanned (autonomous) navigation.

Daniel Smith, vice president, technical committee operations at ASTM and Mark Reichardt, President and CEO, OGC, signed the MOU.

"For more than 20 years, we have been bringing people together to support interoperability among IT systems that leverage location-based information," said Reichardt. "Partnering with ASTM on standards development is a logical next step in meeting our mission, the interests of our 500+ member organizations, and needs of the global community that our organizations collectively represent."

As part of their work, the two organizations plan to assess the current state of adopted and de facto standards for Point Cloud data (sets of data points that help determine geographical locations). Then, the organizations could identify the scope of future standards to support interoperability of this data for sharing and analysis. In some cases, this could involve collaborative publication of standards.

"We are pleased that OGC, whose members include industry, government, and academia will be collaborating with ASTM members in this fast-changing field," said Smith. "This partnership aligns perfectly with the growing number of activities in ASTM committees E57 on 3D Imaging Systems and F42 on Additive Manufacturing Technologies."

The group plans to organize joint activities such as working groups, regional forums, workshops, pilot initiatives, and more.