Collaborative development of open standards for expanding GeoWeb to the internet of things

In a multi-vendor environment, development of the Internet of Things (IoT) will be limited without the emergence of open, consensus standards that enable collaboration. Such standards will define an infrastructure that raises the level of services and quality of information for the marketplace thereby providing more opportunities, particularly for the vendors that collaborate to define the standards. Collaborative development is key to consensus adoption and wide use of information technology standards.Development of effective open standards is a balancing act. The standards need to be agile and adaptive to the rapidly changing developments in the marketplace. The standards also need to have a sound engineering foundation and respect relevant aspects of the existing technology base. The use of open standards to connect components, applications, and content -- allowing a "white box" view on the components' functionality and interfaces without revealing implementation details -- fulfills the industry requirement for protection of intellectual property and the user requirement for transparency.The COM.Geo Workshop on "Expanding GeoWeb to an Internet of Things" is an excellent opportunity to discuss how organizations can increase their business based on quality location information in the Internet of Things. Quality information in a multi-vendor environment can only be obtained using standards. An industry-based consortium is needed to establish effective standards for information sharing about location in the Internet of Things. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has a proven process for industry-wide collaborative development of efficient standards for spatial and location information.The mission of OGC is to serve as a global forum for the development and promotion of open standards and techniques in the area of geoprocessing and related information technologies. The OGC has 410+ members - geospatial technology software vendors, systems integrators, government agencies and universities - participating in the consensus standards development and maintenance process. Through its Specification Program, Interoperability Program, and Marketing and Communications Program, the OGC develops, releases and promotes open standards for spatial processing. Technology and content providers collaborate in the OGC because they recognize that lack of interoperability is a bottleneck that slows market expansion. They know that interoperability enabled by open standards positions them to both compete more effectively in the marketplace and to seek new market opportunities.The OGC recommends the following steps for advancing the GeoWeb to an IoT-based marketplace:• Definition of a standards-based "GeoWeb meets IoT" framework to spur coordinated application development.• Coordination of standards for location in IoT with other relevant standards development organizations.• Discussions of the framework in the OGC Specification Working Groups to identify if additional standards are needed.• Conduct an Embedded Mobile Ecosystem Testbed using the OGC Interoperability Program approach.