At the request of the OGC Architetecture Board, the OGC hosted a special Geospatial Search Meeting at the Atlanta meetings, September 15, 2008.

Overview of the Meeting

Geospatial description and discovery of resources is becoming a critical opportunity and challenge for many communities and enterprises. The requirements expressed by various groups are broad but have many common elements, such as discovery of both data and service resources within a services framework. Work on service and resource description and discovery is being done in multiple standards organizations as well as in the open source community. There has also been considerable discussion about the OGC Catalogue Service standard and how it could better align with community and industry practices and emerging technologies. Results to date show many positive but incomplete signs of convergence.

In order to enhance collaboration and improve convergence, the OGC Architecture Board has recommended that OGC convene a meeting of invited guests to discuss geospatial search technology. The scope of discussion will include requirements, proposed solutions, and implementation experience. Planned discussion includes requirements, proposed solutions, and implementation experience. The goals of the summit are:

1) to identify points of convergence or harmonization among prominent search and retrieval practices on the Internet, and
2) to begin the process of cross-community collaboration to identify a common and consistent geospatial search mechanism for internet and web resources.

The meeting was held on Monday, September 15th from 10 AM until 5 PM (or later). The meeting was collocated with the OGC Technical Committee meetings in Atlanta, Georgia (sponsored by ERDAS).

Problem Statement

A need exists to 1) identify the predominant catalog/indexed collection search standards and practices that OGC Catalogue should adopt or  harmonize with and 2) promote a minimum set of geospatial search 'best practices' that should be promoted and adopted in search protocols  external to the OGC.

Desired Summit Outcomes

Identify and document trends, audience, and market presence of current Internet search technology external to OGC

Define a roadmap for future OGC Catalogue Service (Web) technology baseline

Identify and document geospatial search requirements and techniques that should be promoted for adoption by the broader Web (catalog/collection) search community