ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the location services standards work of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). The OGC began location-based standards work in 1999. This early work resulted in the development and approval of the OGC Open Location Services Core Interface standards. This standard has been widely, if not quietly, implemented. Since then, the OGC has enhanced the OLS standard as well as defined a range of standards that have been and can be used in location services (LS) applications. These include Open GeoSMS, the Geography Markup Language, the OGC sensor standards, and most recently standards work for augmented reality applications. Specifically, this chapter will discuss: the evolution of the LS standards work in the OGC; key OGC standards that have been deployed in LS applications; where OGC standards “fit” in the LS stack; how OGC standards are being used in LS applications; how OGC standards have been integrated into LS standards developed by other standards organizations, such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA); how OGC LS standards are evolving for use in mobile smart devices; and recent work for augmented reality (AR) and location-enabled short message service (SMS).
We begin with an overview of the key OGC standards that have been deployed and used in location service applications as well as incorporated into other standards developed by other standards organizations. These short descriptions provide a reference for the information provided in subsequent sections of this chapter.
