The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®), in cooperation with Directions Magazine, invites the international geospatial community to participate in a one-hour webinar on 12 th  January 2012 at 5:00pm UTC (12:00 noon EST).

This is the second webinar in the OGC GovFuture webinar series. The title of the webinar is, " How the OGC’s CityGML Standard Supports 3D Innovation for Business and Government : Developments achieved in the Netherlands including use cases from the City of Rotterdam."

Attendees will learn about the 3D Pilot NL (http://www.opengeospatial.org/pressroom/pressreleases/1503), an award-winning collaborative pilot project to establish a national standard for 3D geo-information in the Netherlands. The Netherlands 3D standard is an implementation of the OGC CityGML Standard (http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/citygml) (see also http://www.citygml.org/index.php?id=1531), which is based on the OGC GML (Geography Markup Language) Standard. By joining CityGML with the existing national 2D standards framework, 3D Pilot NL laid the groundwork for one of the world's most comprehensive national 3D geo-information infrastructures.

Speakers will describe how CityGML was integrated with the Netherlands' national 2D standard and how open public sector CityGML data is being used by public and private sector application developers in Rotterdam, Europe's largest seaport. Steven Ramage, executive director marketing and communications of the OGC, said, “This is a really exciting standards-based development coming out of Europe. Using CityGML, local governments in the Netherlands and in other countries are creating open and semantically rich 3D data collections. These provide diverse stakeholders with a shared resource for municipal operations, urban development and economic development."

Webinar agenda:

* Introduction:  Joe Francica , Directions Media

* The OGC's GovFuture Program:  Steven Ramage , Executive Director Marketing and Communications, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

* Introduction to CityGML:  Carsten Roensdorf,  Ordnance Survey Great Britain

* The 3D Pilot NL:  Jantien Stoter , Associate Professor, GISt, OTB, TU Delft; Consultant Product and Process Innovation, Kadaster, Apeldoorn; and Consultant Geo-ICT, Geonovum, Amersfoort

* CityGML Applications in Rotterdam:  Joris Goos , City of Rotterdam

* Next Steps from a National Perspective:  Jantien Stoter

* Questions and answers

Webinar details and registration are available at:http://www.directionsmag.com/webinars/.

The webinar will be in English.This webinar is part of the OGC's GovFuture program for local and subnational governments. The OGC's affordable   GovFuture-Local Government and GovFuture-Subnational Government membership levels [http://www.ogcnetwork.net/node/1568] offer local and sub-national governments unique online resources and an insight into global geospatial policy and technology developments. This OGC membership level focuses on the value of using standards in a government organization rather than on the process of creating and maintaining standards. Further, GovFuture members have an opportunity to network with their peers worldwide, with representatives from other levels of government, and with suppliers and universities through OGC events and communication channels.

About the OGC

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 430 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.

About Directions Media

Directions Media's mission is to inform readers and serve advertisers.Directions Media strives to be the very best resource for geospatial professionals and information technology workers who want to understand and capitalize on location-based information. Directions Media was founded in 1998 as Directions Magazine, which continues to be the flagship publication.Directions Magazine was the first regularly published online magazine covering geospatial technology. Today Directions Media maintains several online publications including Directions Magazine, the All Points Blog and the Map Hawk blog.