The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) formalised their collaboration by signing a collaboration agreement to enhance the development and use of geospatial standards. The outcome is expected to be a more effective contribution of JRC to the OGC standard process, "and facilitate the consideration of European objectives and requirements during the development of international open geospatial standards" as stated by the announcement of OGC.
Both organizations will benefit from this cooperation in the field of development, application, maintenance and promotion of international open geostandards in relation to the implementation of the INSPIRE directive. According to Mark Reichardt, President and CEO of OGC, "OGC benefits from the JRC’s leadership in advancing geospatial information sharing across Europe, enabled by open standards, including those of the OGC. The European Union benefits greatly from open standards that improve discovery, sharing and application of diverse collections of information to address a range of important issues."
Ms Maria Betti, Director of the JRC's Institute for Environment and Sustainability, for her part affirms that "during the development and implementation of INSPIRE, the JRC has gathered a lot of experience on the implementation of infrastructures for geospatial and environmental data based on interoperability standards - on an unprecedented scale. The joint activities of the OGC and the JRC will be instrumental in feeding this experience into the international standardisation process.”
