by Rebecca Walker — August 26, 2009—The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) and the Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate (OSCRE) recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to collaborate in standards development and to enable and promote the use of Web-based geospatial technologies in real estate commerce and real property management.
“There’s a growing interest among OGC members in standards related to the built environment, and we are fortunate to have the opportunity to work with OSCRE,” said Mark Reichardt, president and CEO of the OGC. “There’s a tremendous need for better information transfer among companies and agencies that buy, sell, own, occupy, inspect, appraise, manage, design, build, repair and protect real estate, and geospatial information is important in all these activities.”
“The use of geospatial data is expanding rapidly particularly by the Private sector since geospatial information can be used by many real estate stakeholders for site selection, appraisal, brokerage, mortgage, insurance, facility management and other professions who seek information about demographics, crime, sales comparatives, foreclosures, and natural and man-made hazards such as wildfires, hurricanes, floodplains, terrorism and hazardous materials,” said OSCRE CEO Andy Fuhrman. “We expect enormous value for members of OSCRE and OGC from this working relationship”
OSCRE Americas, Inc. is a non-profit, voluntary, member-based standards adoption and development consortium of 52 companies. 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.
For more information, see the OGC Web site.
