The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) Hydrology Domain Working Group and the OGC Meteorology and Oceanography Domain Working Group, both of which are Joint Working Groups of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the OGC, announced an Oceans/Meteorology/Hydrology Water Cycle Summit to be held on Wednesday 21 September 2011. The summit will be a part of the week-long OGC Technical Committee and Planning Committee   Meetings [http://www.opengeospatial.org/event/1109tc] , which will take place at Center Green, UCAR/NCAR,
Boulder, Colorado, USA.

Members and non-members of the OGC are invited to attend the "Oceans/Met/Hydro Water Cycle Summit" to learn what has been accomplished so far by the two working groups and to discuss what remains to be done.

The ability to easily exchange hydrological, oceanographic, meteorological and climatological information in a timely and useful fashion is becoming increasingly important for operational purposes as well as research. New information technologies present new opportunities for collecting, publishing, discovering, accessing and using data, but open, international interface and encoding standards and best practices are necessary to make the most of these opportunities.

These two OGC working groups provide venues and a mechanism for seeking technical and institutional solutions to the challenge of describing and exchanging data about the state and location of water resources and atmospheric and oceaonographic phenomena. The groups work to ensure that OGC standards allow the hydrological, meteorological, and ocean observation communities to achieve effective interoperability across the world's information technology infrastructure.

The summit will focus on information system interoperability as it relates to understanding the water cycle, though other domain requirements also shape the development of the relevant interface and encoding standards.

While the WMO's Commission for Hydrology (CHy) has the recognized mandate to publish and promote international hydrology standards, the OGC contributes to the process with its resources and experience in guiding collaborative development among disparate participants in a rapidly evolving technological environment. The OGC Hydrology Domain Working Group is open to both member and non member participation and is intended to be a public forum for communication. A similar relationship exists between the WMO's Commission for Basic Services

(CBS) and the OGC Meteorology and Oceanography Domain Working Group.

The   email list [https://lists.opengeospatial.org/mailman/listinfo/hydro.dwg]  and the wiki [http://external.opengis.org/twiki_public/HydrologyDWG/WebHome] for the Hydro Working Group and the   email list

[https://lists.opengeospatial.org/mailman/listinfo/meteo.dwg]  and wiki [http://external.opengis.org/twiki_public/MetOceanDWG/WebHome] for the Meteorology and Oceanography Domain Working Group are open to all interested parties.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 415 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 OGCwebsite at   http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.