saneamento-gisThe Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) invites participation in a Groundwater Interoperability Experiment (GWIE2).

This activity, which began on 23 October 2012, will develop and test the candidate OGC Groundwater Markup Language (GWML) 2 standard by harmonizing and advancing existing initiatives such as GWML1, the EU-INSPIRE effort, GeoSciML, and others. Participants will then prepare an engineering report with the intent to develop it into a data encoding specification that will be advanced toward adoption as the OGC Groundwater Markup Language 2 (GWML 2) Standard. This activity is being carried out within the Hydrology Domain Working Group, which operates under the auspices of the OGC and the World Meteorological Organization.

GWML 2 will meet the requirements for a human-readable and machine-readable transfer standard for groundwater feature data, including data about water wells, aquifers, and related entities. GWML 2 will also serve as a reference for hydrological observations related to these features. (See the OGC WaterML2.0 Encoding Standard.)

The OGC members that are acting as initiators of the Interoperability Experiment are:

• Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO);
• European Commission (JRC);
• Natural Resources Canada (NRCan);
• US Geological Survey (USGS).

A summary of the activity plan, requirements for participation, schedule, and kick-off meeting details are available.

Expressions of interest for participation are due by 27 December 2012. Contact Boyan.Brodaric@nrcan.gc.ca for further details or to register as a participant.