- The global aviation community is moving forward on the adoption of an international framework of standards that enable communication in a net-centric, globally interoperable Air Transport System (ATS).  Major government aviation organizations working with large and small aviation companies have developed the Aeronautical Information Exchange Model (AIXM) and the Weather Information Exchange Model (WXXM), both of which are based on the OGC Geography Markup Language (GML) Encoding Standard. The OGC has been assisting in the evaluation, advancement and adoption of AIXM and WXXM by leading a series of rapid prototyping testbeds.

The ninth OGC Web Services testbed (OWS-9) will have sponsorship from numerous organizations including the FAA and Eurocontrol. The Aviation Thread of OWS-9 builds on the Aeronautical Information Management (AIM) and aviation threads of OWS-6, OWS-7 and OWS-8. Participants will further develop and demonstrate the use of AIXM and WXXM in an OGC Web Services environment.  The request for participation and quotes will be issued this week with responses due in April 2012. The kickoff meeting will be held in April, all deliverables are due in December, and a demonstration event will be held in January 2013.

The Aviation Thread will advance the Aviation Architecture to support several Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) Joint Undertaking (SJU) project requirements as well as the FAA's AIM and SWIM (System Wide Information Management) AatS (Aircraft Access to SWIM) requirements. Some efforts in the thread will advance system stability and compliance and others will focus on the SESAR’s ATM Information Reference Model (AIRM). 

To raise awareness of AIXM and WXXM and the value of open geospatial standards, the OGC, in collaboration with EUROCONTROL and the FAA, has organised the ATC Global 2012 workshop “Use of Open Standards in the Modernisation of ATM.” ATC Global (6 - 8 March 2012) is the largest international ATM exhibition of its kind, featuring 200 exhibitors and 40+ free seminars and workshops.

The workshop will cover the role of open standards in supporting and accelerating the ongoing modernization of ATM worldwide and is for ATM data providers, integrators, ANSPs (air navigation service providers), avionics system implementers, EFB (electronic flight bag) implementers, airline representatives, dispatch/operation centre representatives and users of ATM information.

View the agenda here.  Speakers include George Percivall, Chief Architect and Executive Director, Open Geospatial Consortium; Paul Bosman; SWIM/EA Unit manager, Agency AIM focal point, EUROCONTROL; Kevin Haggerty, FAA International Program Officer for Europe, Africa, and Middle East;  Hubert Lepori, AIXM Change Control Board, Information Management / Enterprise Architecture Unit, EUROCONTROL; Frank Suykens, Head of Research & Development, Luciad; Ian Painter, Managing Director, Snowflake Software; Ulrich Kaage, Product Manager, Comsoft; Fatimah Madari, SmartAIM Product Manager, Frequentis; Paolo Stefani, Project Manager, IDS and senior representation from SESAR JU.

The workshop will take place on the morning of Tuesday, 6 March from 10:00 to 13:00 in the Workshop Theatre, Hall 9 at the Amsterdam RAI Exhibition & Congress Centre in the Netherlands. Go to http://www.atcglobalhub.com/register to register as a free exhibition visitor. Make sure to tick the relevant workshop to register your interest in attending. Please arrive at the Workshop theatre, Hall 9 at 09:45 as places are allocated on a first come, first served basis.

About the OGC

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 440 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC 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/contact.