The OGC announced that a consortium that includes the OGC and OGC members has been accepted as an Associate Partner of the Single European Sky ATM Research programme (SESAR Joint Undertaking).

This consortium, called Modeling Support with standards for Information and Architecture models applied to Aviation (MOSIA), is prepared to play a substantial role in the development of the technology architecture for the Single European Sky (SES), a next-generation air traffic control infrastructure in Europe enabling the safe and environmentally friendly development of air transport.

In aviation information technology as in other domains, standards are recognized as providing a critical platform for innovation and market development.

The international MOSIA consortium is led by SINTEF and includes other partners: Snowflake, Envitia, Carmenta, IGSI, OGC, NoMagic, M-AIS and the University of Munster.

As a member of this team, OGC will help provide important recommendations to help SESAR support a major European Commission goal to transition from a product-centric to a data-centric approach in exchanging air transportation management (ATM) information.

The team will advance architectural recommendations based on proven international standards in a cutting edge service-oriented architecture (SOA) and modeling context.

Athina Trakas, Director of European Services at the OGC, said, "As a member of the MOSIA team, and in our capacity as Standards Coordinator for the project, we look forward to working with the team to ensure that recommendations and solutions are compliant and harmonized with OGC and complementary standards.

It is also important to be sure that European requirements are addressed in international standards.

We will leverage the broad range of formal liaison and partnership agreements the OGC has already established with international standards development organizations, and we will also reach out to other standards organizations whose work is relevant to the MOSIA consortium's goals."

This partnership has been driven by the OGC Aviation Domain Working Group's leadership in organizing rapid prototyping testbeds and pilots aimed at validating and enhancing emerging information exchange standards and web services in the aviation domain.

Nadine Alameh, Director Interoperability Programs, provides OGC staff support to the working group.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 430 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards.

OGC Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, sensors and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled.