GeoData Policy

 

Sam Bacharach
Executive Director, Outreach and Community Adoption
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc
tel: +1-703-352-3938
sbacharach@opengeospatial.org

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Wayland, MA, March 09, 2009. The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) (http://www.opengeospatial.org) announced that theNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (http://www.noaa.gov) has become a Principal Member of the OGC.

Principal Members evaluate and provide guidance on market direction and Consortium focus, and have authority over the development, release and adoption of OpenGIS. Specifications through their voting rights in the OGC Planning Committee (PC). Principal Members also have approval authority for OGC policies and procedures.

Mark Reichardt, President, OGC, said “NOAA’s move to Principal Membership in the OGC reflects the significant value the Agency places on the OGC international standards and programs as a means of improving information sharing and reducing costs. By becoming a Principal Member, NOAA increases its leadership role among the OGC’s government, industry, academic and research members, who are working worldwide to tackle interoperability challenges related to monitoring, forecasting and predicting of weather, climate, and ocean processes.”

Ken McDonald, Data Management Architect of NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service, Technical, Planning & Integration (TPI) Program Office, said, “the motivation to raise our level of membership was really driven by the widespread and growing interest in OGC specifications and activities found in numerous NOAA programs and projects from across the agency. As a Principal Member, we look forward to becoming more engaged with OGC’s many relevant and important initiatives.”

About NOAA

From daily weather forecasts, severe storm warnings and climate monitoring to fisheries management, coastal restoration and supporting marine commerce, NOAA’s products and services support economic vitality and affect more than one-third of America’s gross domestic product. NOAA’s dedicated scientists use cutting-edge research and high-tech instrumentation to provide citizens, planners, emergency managers and other decision makers with reliable information they need when they need it.

NOAA’s roots date back to 1807, when the Nation’s first scientific agency, the Survey of the Coast, was established. Since then, NOAA has evolved to meet the needs of a changing country. NOAA maintains a presence in every state and has emerged as an international leader on scientific and environmental matters.

About The OGC

The OGC? is an international consortium of more than 370 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. Visit the OGC website at
http://www.opengeospatial.org/ .

If you’re a Google Lunar X Prize team and you’re planning to take a photo of the Earth, you may want to get a NOAA license. Thanks to Res Communis and Launch Pad for the heads up!

The Launch Pad blog reported that:

NOAA had been contacted by a Google Lunar X PRIZE team to make some inquiries about potential license requirements. NOAA had in turn gotten in touch with us, and asked us for a quick briefing about the prize. … In a friendly and relatively brief meeting, Brett and I talked to NOAA about the prize, and told them that it was one open to international teams where teams were not explicitly required to but might optionally chose to image the Earth, either for navigation purposes or for commercial purposes outside of the scope of the prize requirements… The NOAA officials were appreciative for the brief, but stated a desire to communicate to teams as quickly and as thoroughly as possible that some teams in some circumstance might need a NOAA license. To that end, NOAA has now published an open letter to the teams on their website (link goes to a .PDF), providing some quick details and contact information. …

Source: The Launch Pad, July 24, 2008

NOAA’s Letter to X Prize Participants and U.S. Remote Sensing Law

• NOAA Open Letter to Google Lunar X Prize Participants, Res Cumminis, July 24, 2008.
• 15 CFR Part 960, describing NOAA’s licensing and regulation of such systems.
• Law Behind the NOAA Open Letter to Google Lunar X Prize Participants, Res Communis, July 28, 2008.

Google Lunar X-Prize

The X PRIZE Foundation and Google, Inc. today announced the first ten teams to register for the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon to win a remarkable $30 million in prizes. This international group of teams will compete to land a privately funded robotic craft on the Moon that is capable of roaming the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending video, images and data back to the Earth. …

Source: Google X Prize Foundation, February 21, 2008

 

 

As reported by GISCafe.com on June 10, 2008:

DULLES, Va., June 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — GeoEye, Inc. a premier provider of satellite, aerial and geospatial information, announced that the glass mirror blank for its advanced, next-generation Earth imaging satellite has been delivered to ITT Corporation. Last fall, GeoEye announced it had contracted with ITT to begin the phased development of the camera for GeoEye-2, slated for launch in the 2011 timeframe. …

GeoEye-2’s glass blank mirror was completed and delivered to ITT last month. The company’s Rochester, N.Y.-based Space Systems Division will begin grinding and polishing the mirror that measures 1.1 meter in diameter later this summer. The satellite will be of the same general class as GeoEye-1 but will benefit from significant improvements in capability, including enhanced direct tasking, and the potential to collect imagery of the Earth’s surface at 0.25-meter or 9.75-inch ground resolution [underlining added].

Rob Mitrevski, vice president and director of Commercial and Space Science Systems, ITT Space Systems, said, “The telescope and camera assembly for GeoEye-2 will benefit from decades of expertise ITT has amassed on behalf of the U.S. Government and other commercial customers. Once operational, the satellite’s imaging system will provide a resolution and accuracy never achieved before in commercial remote sensing.”

GeoEye believes the market will be ready for another sensor to serve the growing geospatial or location-based market in the U.S. and overseas in the 2011-2012 timeframe. While GeoEye has an operating license from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to build and launch a satellite constellation with this extremely high ground resolution of a quarter meter, the final decision regarding GeoEye-2’s resolution has not yet been made. If the satellite is built to achieve this high resolution, under current licensing constraints, only the U.S. Government would be allowed access to imagery at this highest resolution. All other customers would receive imagery at the highest resolution allowed by U.S. regulations, currently 0.5-meter or 19.5-inch ground resolution[underlining added]. In addition, GeoEye’s agreements with foreign customers involving large volumes of imagery generally require approval from NOAA.

For full text of the article, visit: http://www10.giscafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?section=CorpNews&articleid=543530