Social Change joins Tsunami Relief WebMapping project

Social Change Online and a new Geospatial Industry Alliance, 'Spatial Integrity', announced the launch today, in Washington DC, of an international webmapping initiative to support UN and aid agencies

The 'Open Geospatial Interoperability Tsunami Relief Initiative' is designed to help United Nations and other tsunami relief operations by providing ready access to maps and other spatial information.

'Spatial Integrity' is a US-led, international partnership of geo-spatial companies working to help the global community. Social Change Online is one of the partners.

Speaking today in Washington DC, Spatial Integrity Director, Mr. Jeff Harrison, said that, "the magnitude and scope of the tsunami assessment, relief and redevelopment effort will require an unprecedented level of collaboration throughout both GIS and CAD lifecycles."

Spatial Integrity is working closely with the United Nations to facilitate multi-vendor geospatial collaboration in response to the catastrophic event.

The Initiative is being organized to address this long-term need through the application of geospatial web services compliant with Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards.

Mr. Harrison said that, "this will allow all vendors to come together to efficiently share data resources while leveraging the power of individual software platforms to aid in the assessment and long-term redevelopment effort."

The Open Geospatial Tsunami Relief Initiative is a collaborative, multi-vendor and international effort including contributions and commitments from Social Change Online, Autodesk, The Carbon Project, CubeWerx, CustomWeather, DM Solutions Group, Intergraph, ObjectFX, Skyline Software and Spatial Integrity.

The effort aims to bring focus, expertise, coordination and support to all organizations seeking to access and share geographic information resources of the tsunami affected region using OGC standards.

The Spatial Integrity team will be available to assist all data providers, such as government and non-governmental organizations, in deploying OGC-compliant web services and applications which benefit the relief and redevelopment effort.

Organizations wanting further information or wishing to support and/or contribute to the Open Geospatial Interoperability Tsunami Relief Initiative are asked to contact relief@spatialintegrity.com.