Geographic/geospatial data are heterogeneous, multidisciplinary, and distributed. Geographic research and applications commonly involve data, sometimes in large volumes, of different formats from different providers. It is often difficult for end users to search, find, and acquire data and to prepare data obtained from different sources into a form readily to be analyzed. It is desirable that a set of consensus-based data standards are available to describe geographic data as well as tools providing such data so that data providers can publish and end users can find and acquire data using standard protocols. In this presentation, standard based interoperable protocols developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) for geographic data cataloguing, accessing, and processing will be introduced, including data models and service interfaces for different types of geographic data.

The Geography Seminar Series is organized by the Geographical Honors Society Gamma Theta Upsilon Eta Omicron Chapter.