The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) invites participation in a Groundwater Interoperability Experiment (GWIE2).

This activity, which began on 23 October 2012, will develop and test the candidate OGC Groundwater Markup Language (GWML) 2 standard by harmonizing and advancing existing initiatives such as GWML1, the EU-INSPIRE effort, GeoSciML, and others. Participants will then prepare an engineering report with the intent to develop it into a data encoding specification that will be advanced toward adoption as the OGC Groundwater Markup Language 2 (GWML 2) Standard. This activity is being carried out within the Hydrology Domain Working Group, which operates under the auspices of the OGC and the World Meteorological Organization.

GWML 2 will meet the requirements for a human-readable and machine-readable transfer standard for groundwater feature data, including data about water wells, aquifers, and related entities. GWML 2 will also serve as a reference for hydrological observations related to these features. (See the OGC WaterML2.0 Encoding Standard.)

The OGC members that are acting as initiators of the Interoperability Experiment are:

• Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
• European Commission (JRC)
• Natural Resources Canada (NRCan)
• US Geological Survey (USGS)

A summary of the activity plan, requirements for participation, schedule, and kick-off meeting details are available at: http://external.opengeospatial.org/twiki_public/HydrologyDWG/GroundwaterInteroperabilityExperiment2.

Expressions of interest for participation are due by 27 December 2012.

Contact Boyan.Brodaric@nrcan.gc.ca for further details or to register as a participant.

OGC testbeds, pilot projects and interoperability experiments are part of the OGC's Interoperability Program, a global, hands-on collaborative prototyping program designed to rapidly develop, test and deliver proven candidate specifications into the OGC's Standards Program, where they are formalized for public release. These initiatives enable users and providers of geospatial technology to share the costs of developing standards that provide a foundation for "future-proof" enterprise architectures. Providers reduce their costs of developing and maintaining interfaces and encodings while gaining industry recognition, the confidence of an initiative's sponsoring organizations, and the market growth that results from open standards.

An OGC Interoperability Experiment is a rapid, low overhead, formally structured OGC-facilitated activity in which members achieve specific technical objectives that further the OGC Technical Baseline.

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 470 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. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact/