Members of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®), an international standards development organization, invite participation in an Energy & Utilities Geospatial Standards Ad Hoc Meeting to be held on Monday, 18 June 2012 at 1600-1755 BST (UTC/GMT +1 hour)in Exeter, England. This meeting, focused on Smart Grid standards, will be part of the upcoming OGC Technical Committee meeting to be held June 18-21 in Exeter.

In the energy and utility information standards worlds, compatibility with geospatial standards from other domains such as meteorology, urban planning and emergency response is an increasingly critical communication requirement. This group of OGC members, who are finalizing an OGC Energy & Utilities Domain Working Group (E&U DWG) charter, plan to focus on geospatial standards that impact the energy and utility domain, of which one subset are those that are Smart Grid related. At this meeting, the members seek further input on both the draft charter and on Smart Grid standards from the European energy and utilitiy standards community. Those interested in presenting or attending should contact Renee Bogle Hughes <rhughes at synaptitudeconsulting.com>. As the agenda develops, details will be posted at http://www.opengeospatial.org/event/1206tcagenda.

The ability to communicate geospatial information is seen as a crosscutting requirement in Smart Grid standards efforts worldwide. The OASIS eMIX (Energy Market Information Exchange) standard uses the OGC Geography Markup Language (GML) Encoding Standard. The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) CIM (Common Information Model) standard is in the process of being "harmonized" with WXXM (Weather Information Exchange Model). WXXM is an industry standard based on GML. More standards coordination and development, however, is required to enable efficient geospatial communication within smart grids and between smart grids and "neighboring" activities such as emergency response, disaster management, urban planning and building energy management.

Many of the OGC's domains of activity – sensor webs, weather, indoor/outdoor location integration, 3D city models, location services, data fusion and others – have significance in the energy and utilities domain. Many OGC members have a stake in the Smart Grid information technology market, the growth of which depends on the evolution of a standards infrastructure that includes location standards.

This meeting (an "ad hoc" meeting in the OGC's formal meeting nomenclature) follows a similar meeting in Austin, Texas on March 20 that confirmed strong interest among US Smart Grid standards players in addressing open geospatial standards for the Smart Grid. International participants at the Austin meeting met subsequently to draft an Energy & Utilities Domain Working Group charter, which will be voted on by the OGC membership at the Exeter meeting.

See details of the OGC Technical Committee meeting and instructions for registration at http://www.opengeospatial.org/event/1206tc.

OGC staff and Renee Bogle Hughes of Synaptitude Consulting will facilitate the meeting. We hope you will attend.

About the OGC

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 445 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.