A number of ISO/TC 211 regulars attended the recent OGC Member Meetings at the European Space Agency facility in Frascati, Italy. It was impressive to have the larger meetings in a room with satellites suspended from the roof!

More professionally, it is always interesting to hear of our standards being used in various ways. In OGC meetings, that is mainly those standards which have been jointly developed over the years or prepared at OGC and fast tracked to ISO standards. As usual in an OGC Member Meeting week, there were about 70 different meeting sessions. As the meetings were hosted at ESA, I’ll mention a couple particularly from a space perspective:

• Can ISO 19111 Geographic information – Referencing by coordinates be used in non-terrestrial situations? Such CRSs already exist for many bodies in our Solar System. OGC and ESA are working on some interesting scenarios involving reference systems tied to the centre of mass of the solar system, and the reference systems of moving space platforms. They’ll let us know if they recommend any changes. When (and how) should a launch vehicle and payload switch from a terrestrial reference frame to a solar system one, and then if it’s landing, to the reference system of the destination?
• And nearer to earth, “Analysis Ready Data” is a phrase “almost standardised” by the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites. OGC and ISO/TC 211 have a joint new project to consider this specification and whether it can be extended to describe analysis ready data from sources other than satellites. The ISO new work item proposal will be voted on soon as ISO 19176-1 Geographic information —Analysis Ready Data — Part 1: Framework and Fundamentals; OGC will start a vote soon on establishing an Analysis Ready Data Standards Working Group.

OGC’s Chief Standards Officer, Scott Simmons, has produced a useful 15-minute overview of the week and given us permission to publish it. The full set of slides presented to the closing plenary is publicly available here.