"OGC(R) Seeks Comment on Observations & Measurements Specification".

WAYLAND, Mass. -- The members of the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) have approved the candidate OpenGIS[R] Observations & Measurements (O&M) Specification for release for a thirty day public comment period. The document can be downloaded from; http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/37.

The O&M candidate specification describes a framework and encoding for measurements and observations. This framework is required specifically for use by other OGC standards known as the OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) capability as well as for general support for OGC compliant systems dealing in technical measurements in science and engineering.

The aim is to define a number of terms used for measurements, and the relationships between them. This document discusses observation, measurement, result, procedure, feature of interest, observed property, phenomenon, coverage and related terms, presented using UML class diagrams and in equivalent OGC Geography Markup Language (GML) conformant XML serializations. The scope of the specification covers observations and measurements whose results may be quantities, categories, temporal and geometry values, coverages, and composites and arrays of any of these.

The OGC[R] is an international industry consortium of more than 335 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available interface specifications. OpenGIS Specifications support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. The specifications empower technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org.