– The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) has announced a Call for Participation (CFP) in the 5th phase of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) Architecture Implementation Pilot (AIP-5). The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) provides leadership in AIP-5 and invites OGC members and other organizations to respond to the CFP. The CFP document is available at: http://earthobservations.org/geoss_call_aip.shtml.

AIP-5 places a priority on these areas:

• Increase GEOSS capacity to support several societal benefit areas (SBAs): Disasters, Health, Energy, Water and Agriculture. 

• Deploy user management and authentication to support GEOSS Data-CORE

• Conduct research to be considered for the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI)

Responses to this CFP are requested by 11 April 2012. Discussion and clarification of the CFP and the initiation of AIP-5 will be the topic of weekly teleconferences. Agenda and logistics for these telecons are posted at http://www.ogcnetwork.net/AIPtelecons.

The Point of Contact for the AIP initiative is George Percivall, gpercivall@opengeospatial.org.

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 435 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Learn more about the OGC at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact. See our recent "What is the OGC?" video.

GEO (Group on Earth Observations) is a voluntary partnership of 151 governments and international organizations, launched in response to calls for action by the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development and by the G8 (Group of Eight) leading industrialized countries. GEO is coordinating efforts to build a Global Earth Observation System of Systems, or GEOSS.

See http://earthobservations.org/about_geo.shtml.