Use of online disaster-related geographic information

5 December 2018: The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is seeking additional sponsors to support the OGC Disasters Pilot. Current sponsors include Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC), participants of member agencies, and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

The Disasters Pilot will run as an OGC Innovation Program initiative that aims to help all disaster stakeholders benefit from improved access to the expanding sphere of online disaster-related geographic information.

OGC recently completed the Disasters Concept Development Study (CDS). The CDS helped capture the requirements, gaps, and priorities needed to advance Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) in the use of disasters. The study found that the ability to effectively share, use, and re-use geospatial information and applications across and between public and private sector organizations in support of disaster preparation, response, and resilience is dependent upon having an SDI already in-place when disaster strikes.

The emerging Disasters SDI, an evolving technical and organizational network of diverse information resources and collaborating players, will play a key role in Disaster Management by providing support to governments, agencies, NGOs, and citizens while preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disasters.

This Pilot will use the results of the CDS to advance prototyping activities involving OGC member expert organizations. This Pilot will concentrate on the following key aspects:

• Improve the ability of users to quickly and efficiently locate and synthesize sources of data.
• Improve the portrayal of data from different sources that might use different symbology.
• Improve workflows when data is being annotated and re-shared.

This Initiative provides an opportunity for stakeholders to mutually define, refine, and evolve service interfaces and protocols in the context of hands-on experience and feedback. The outcomes are expected to shape the future of geospatial software development and data publication.

By sponsoring the Disasters Pilot, organizations will share, with other like-minded organizations, the costs associated with development, engineering, and demonstration of these outcomes.

Interested potential sponsors are requested to contact Terry Idol [email protected] by January 15 2019. For more information on the Disasters Pilot see the OGC website. Background information on the Disasters Concept Development Study that lead to this Pilot is also available.

Learn more about OGC's role in Emergency Response and Disaster Management. OGC also runs an Emergency & Disaster Management Domain Working Group.