{"id":11307,"date":"2024-06-27T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-27T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ogc.org\/?p=11307"},"modified":"2025-11-15T15:40:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T15:40:19","slug":"a-recap-of-the-129th-ogc-member-meeting-montreal-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fm-connect1.fortmindz.in\/wp-ogc\/blog-article\/a-recap-of-the-129th-ogc-member-meeting-montreal-canada\/","title":{"rendered":"A recap of the 129th OGC Member Meeting, Montreal, Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The 129th OGC Member Meeting was held in Montreal, Canada, from June 17-21, 2024. The meeting was hosted by OGC Strategic Member Natural Resources Canada<\/a>, with additional support from Esri Canada<\/a>, CAE<\/a>, Safe Software<\/a>, and Bentley Systems<\/a>. The week saw more than 200 leaders and experts from industry, academia, and government come together\u2014with a further 100 online\u2014to learn about the latest innovations from OGC Members, advance Standards, network, and shape the future of geospatial technology. The meeting was also notable as it marked the beginning of OGC\u2019s 30 year anniversary celebrations, which will culminate at an event in Washington, D.C., this December.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThemed \u201cStandards enabling collaboration for global challenges,\u201d the meeting focused on discussing, aligning, supporting, and promoting geospatial solutions around climate change, disasters, marine, AI\/ML, and beyond.\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Alan\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAlan Leidner<\/span>Board of Directors Member, NYC GISMO<\/span><\/cite>\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Under the theme \u201cStandards enabling collaboration for global challenges\u201d the 129th Member Meeting focused on discussing, aligning, supporting, and promoting geospatial solutions that address challenges as far reaching as climate change and related disasters, and application domains as far-reaching as marine, Artificial Intelligence\/Machine Learning (AI\/ML), and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alongside the many OGC Standards and Domain Working Group meetings, there also included a Methane Summit, a Sensor Summit, a two-day meeting of the Canada Forum, a Quantum Computing ad hoc, a Metadata Workshop, and the kickoff of Testbed-20. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friday\u2019s OGC Executive Planning Committee<\/a> Meeting was hosted by CAE at their nearby factory, and included a memorable tour of their factory floor. Social occasions included a Monday evening reception and a Wednesday night dinner was held at Northern Italian restaurant, Le Richmond<\/a>. During the dinner, Andreas Matheus from Secure Dimensions GmbH was presented the 2024 Gardels Award<\/a> for his persistent efforts to ensure best practices in security and API design in OGC. Congratulations, Andreas!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Andreas Matheus (L) is presented the 2024 Gardels Award by OGC Chief Standards Officer, Scott Simmons (R).<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the challenges and domains covered by the meeting theme, two additional areas of discussion that stood out during the week: Digital Twins & Sensors, and Ethics in Geospatial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Digital Twins & Sensors.<\/strong> OGC members are increasingly demonstrating the use of digital twins of the built environment (e.g., city and building models) as the context and framework in which sensors are managed. Sensed information in the real world can be displayed on digital representations of that digital reality to enable better understanding of environmental conditions, human activity, and system responses to those factors. The Urban Digital Twins DWG, 3D Information Management DWG, and the Autonomy, Sensors, Things, Robots, and Observations DWG are each actively discussing and collaborating on this integration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ethics in Geospatial.<\/strong> The OGC Executive Planning Committee has established a new subgroup on Ethics in Geospatial to set strategy for how OGC might address\/respond to the ethical use of geospatial data or the use of those data for ethical purposes. The group will organize an initial meeting this July. If you would like to contribute to the conversation, you can sign up to the OGC Ethics in Geospatial email list here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building on the success of the demonstration at the 128th Member Meeting in Delft, The Netherlands<\/a>, members of the OGC GeoPose and Points of Interest Standards Working Groups, in collaboration with the Open AR Cloud<\/a> team, XR Masters<\/a>, and Augmented City<\/a>, expanded the GeoPose demonstration to include a native browser developed by OGC member Ethar, Inc<\/a>. With the Ethar implementation, the team successfully demonstrated that a GeoPose can be encoded into a QR code. You can read more about the demonstration on the Open AR Cloud blog post<\/a>, which includes a video showing how GeoPose can be used for anchoring content indoors and how it can be recognized by different Augmented Reality Clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Opening Plenary<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Opening Plenary was hosted by OGC\u2019s Dr. Rachel Opitz and featured a keynote presentation from Eric Loubier, Director General of the Canada Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation<\/a> at Natural Resources Canada. Mr. Loubier highlighted the use of geospatial data and technologies to address the needs of Canadian citizens, with examples including flood and wildfire risk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introductory messages were then delivered by Louis-Martin Losier from Bentley Systems, Gordon Plunkett from Esri Canada, Hermann Brassard from CAE, and Dean Hintz from Safe Software. Finally, Prashant Shukle, Chair of the OGC Board of Directors, presented on \u201cCanada and the OGC \u2013 30 years of impact,\u201d which reflected on the important parts that Canadian organizations have played in OGC\u2019s 30 year history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Special tribute was then paid to an instrumental figure in OGC\u2019s history who sadly passed away in May this year, Dr. John Herring. John was OGC\u2019s first Gardels Award<\/a> recipient back in 1999, and also received an OGC Lifetime Achievement Award<\/a> in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Chair of the OGC Board of Directors, Prashant Shukle, presents \u201cCanada and the OGC \u2013 30 years of impact\u201d during the opening session.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Future Directions<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This Meeting\u2019s Future Directions session focused on Artificial Intelligence in Geoinformatics. Four presentations were made to provide updates since this topic was last addressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n