Wayland, MA, 1 February 2010. The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.
(OGC®) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) have signed
a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to enhance the development and use
of geospatial standards. It is anticipated that this collaboration
will support the implementation of the WMO Information System which
aims at providing a single coordinated global infrastructure for the
collection and sharing of information in support of all WMO and
related international programs.

The MoU formalizes the partners’ planned collaboration in the
development, application, and promotion of standards and best
practices for the content and exchange of meteorological,
climatological and hydrological data for the benefit of the worldwide
scientific and operational communities of meteorologists and
hydrologists.

“This is an important step forward for both of our organizations,”
explained Mark Reichardt, President and CEO of the OGC. “OGC benefits
from the WMO’s application of OGC’s open standards and direct WMO
community involvement in OGC standards process. Members and
stakeholders of the WMO will benefit greatly from open standards that
improve discovery, sharing and application of diverse collections of
information to address important issues related to meteorology.”

According to Mr Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General of WMO, “the joint
activities of OGC and WMO will be instrumental in promoting and
advancing technology interoperability for the discovery, access and
use of information related to weather, climate and water”.

About the WMO

WMO is the United Nations’ authoritative voice on weather, climate and
water, and WMO has a long history in the development of standards for
the presentation and exchange of information in these domains.

About the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®)

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 385
companies, government agencies, research organizations, and
universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly
available geospatial standards. OpenGIS® Standards support
interoperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web, wireless and
location-based services, 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. Visit the OGC website at
http://www.opengeospatial.org.