The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) announced the formation of a new OGC Technical Committee Standards Working Group(SWG) to advance the candidate OGC IndoorGML Standard. The OGC members invite the public to comment on the SWG charter (https://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=47562  ) and will consider comments received before 10 February 2012.

This SWG aims to provide a common schema framework for interoperability between indoor navigation applications, which cover a wide spectrum of application areas such as indoor LBS, indoor web map services, indoor emergency control, guiding services for visually handicapped persons in indoor space, and indoor robotics. Several commercial services for indoor spatial information have been recently launched such as Google Maps and Bing Indoor Maps. In order to meet the market demands from these application areas, we need indoor navigation information as an essential component. There are also strong demands for indoor navigation information from other standardization organizations including ISO/TC204 and IEEE RAS to extend existing standards to cover indoor space as well as outdoor space in a seamless way.

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 useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.