19 June 2014 -- The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) and the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) have signed a collaboration agreement to enhance the development and use of geospatial standards. It is anticipated that this collaboration will enable the JRC to more effectively contribute to the OGC standards process, and facilitate the consideration of European objectives and requirements during the development of international open geospatial standards.

The agreement formalises the partners’ planned collaboration in the field of development, application, maintenance and promotion of international open geospatial standards and best practices in support of European objectives and requirements, in particular in relation to the implementation of the INSPIRE Directive.

"This is an important step forward for both of our organisations," explained Mark Reichardt, President and CEO of the 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."

According to Mrs. Maria Betti, Director of the JRC's Institute for Environment and Sustainability, "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.”

About the JRC

As the Commission's in-house science service, the Joint Research Centre's mission is to provide EU policies with independent, evidence-based scientific and technical support throughout the whole policy cycle. Working in close cooperation with policy Directorates-General, the JRC addresses key societal challenges while stimulating innovation by developing new methods, tools and standards, and sharing its know-how with the Member States, the scientific community and international partners. Visit the JRC Science Hub at https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/ .

The JRC is the technical coordinator of the Directive establishing an Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE - 2007/2/EC).

About the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®)

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 475 companies, government agencies, research organisations, 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. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/.



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