Lessons learned from promoting interoperability in Europe

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• Lessons learned from promoting interoperability
  in Europe

Maurits van der Vlugt van.der.vlugt_at_geoinfo.tuwien
.ac.at
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Overview

• 1. GIPSIE What, why and how?
• 2. GIPSIE achievements
• 3. Experiences and lessons learned
• 4. Conclusions

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GIPSIE What?

• GIS Interoperability Project, Stimulating the
  Industry in Europe

• Partners
• TU-Vienna, Dept. Geoinformation
• Open GIS Consortium
• University of Muenster, Institute for
  Geoinformatics
• JRC-SAI
• SICAD Geomatics
• Intergraph
• Laser Scan

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GIPSIE Why?
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The European GIS-market

• Relatively large share of SMEs
• Specialised services for specific user
  communities
• Regionalised market
• Increasingly hard to compete with GIS giants
• Requiring interoperability to exploit their
  strengths

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Open GIS can help!

• SMEs benefit from GI-componentisation
• no need to build GIS monoliths
• focus on core business and expertise
• new business opportunities!
• Europe underrepresented in the Open GIS
  Consortium (OGC)
• need for increased awareness about Open GIS
• need for European representation input in OGC

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GIPSIE How?
Create a bridge between the Open GIS consortium
(OGC) and the European GI-community
GIPSIE-IS
EuropeanSIG
Debriefings
Information days
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European Special Interest Group(European SIG)

• For OGC members with an interest in European GI
  business
• Objectives
• Unite European GI-industry
• Identify specific European interoperability
  issues
• Represent European business interests within OGC
• Established April 1999

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GIPSIE Information Service(GIPSIE-IS)

• OpenGIS discussion forum (Email list)
• gipsie-is_at_geoinfo.tuwien.ac.at
• Goals
• form an OpenGIS discussion forum (particularly
  for non-OGC members)
• be a medium for information distribution on
  interoperability issues
• function as an OpenGIS news service
• form opinions on current interoperability issues
• Established April 1999, 142 members

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Technical Debriefings

• Present the results of the OGC Technical
  Committee meetings to non-OGC members
• Published bi-monthly
• Give an overview of the progress in the
  specification of the interoperability standards.
• 10 debriefings published so far, one more to come

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Information Days

• Aimed at higher level management
• Held throughout Europe
• Goals
• inform the GI industry, users and potential users
  about benefits from participation in OpenGIS,
• raise awareness about OpenGIS, and
• collect special regional requirements to feed
  back into the OGC process.
• Total of 6 information days held Austria, Italy,
  Germany, Netherlands, UK, France.

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GIPSIE achievements

• Since GIPSIE has been founded (June 1998)
• European SIG established
• GIPSIE-Information Service established
• 10 debriefings published
• Six information days held, total attendance gt 450
• gt40 new European OGC members (gt20 industry)

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Contributions to OGC process

• Semantics and information communities (U.
  Muenster)
• Raster-vector topology (TU-Vienna)
• Web mapping (SICAD, Intergraph, Laserscan)

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Experiences lessons learned

• Official end August 2000
• Bridge between Europe and OGC successfully
  established
• raising awareness, making OpenGIS an issue
• direction of traffic unbalanced
• Some SMEs exploiting business benefits
• Ionic (B) , Geodan (NL), Cadcorp (UK),
• Threshold for active participation still high
• language
• high investment cost, relatively small,
  regionalised markets
• strong traditional approach, especially in public
  sector
• long time no tangible results available
• awareness about business opportunities can be
  improved wait and see

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Suggestions (1)

• Potential role for national GI-bodies
• Reduce language cost barriers
• e.g. AGI (UK), CNIG (Portugal), RAVI
  (Netherlands)
• Example Australian WWW-consortium

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Suggestions (2)

• Need for tangible Open GIS products demos in
  Europe
• raise interest
• demonstrate benefits
• break the ice
• technology emerging since last year (e.g. Web
  Mapping catalogs)
• Great opportunity for NMAs
• make small (demo?) dataset publicly available
  (image, 150.000,)
• wrap one server with OGC interfaces (catalog, SF)
• Announce it to existing OGC Web mapping clients
  (catalogs)
• 1-2 weeks of programming
• Some co-ordination
• Show it can be done!

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Follow up

• GIPSIE tasks will be continued by a number of new
  European projects, where GIPSIE results are used
  as input, and GIPSIE partners actively
  participate
• CITUI
• PreANVIL
• ETeMII
• GETIS

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Conclusions

• Involvement in OpenGIS crucial for the future of
  the industry
• GIPSIE has improved communication and raised
  awareness
• Still minimal participation from SMEs and NMAs
• Smaller players or user communities could bundle
  their strength, gt potentially important role
  for national GI bodies
• Need for tangible products and demos, gt
  Important opportunities for NMAs

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Thank you, any questions?

• The GIPSIE project
• gipsie.uni-muenster.de
• The Open GIS Consortium
• www.opengis.org
• Web Mapping Testbed
• www.opengis.org/WMT
• preANVIL
• www.ec-gis.org/preanvil
• ETeMII
• www.ec-gis.org/etemii