The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) will launch a Hydrology Interoperability Experiment (HDWG_IE1) on December 8, 2009. The initiators of the experiment seek participation by other organizations interested in developing standard ways of discovering, sharing and interpreting groundwater data using OGC Web Services (OWS) interface and encoding standards.

This interoperability experiment will advance the development of WaterML 2.0 and test its use with various OWS standards, including the OGC Sensor Observation Service (SOS), Web Map Service (WMS), Web Feature Service (WFS), and Catalog Service Web (CSW) Interface Standards. The experiment will also investigate the interaction of WaterML 2.0 with GroundwaterML (GWML) in scenarios involving the sharing of groundwater data between the USA and Canada.

Initiators of the experiment are: Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), US Geological Survey (USGS), and Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). Organizations participating in the experiment will include the Geology Survey of Canada (GSC), NRCan; USGS; CSIRO, the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI) and others.

Applications for participation are due by December 8, 2009. For further details or to register as a participant visit: http://external.opengis.org/twiki_public/bin/view/HydrologyDWG/GroundwaterInteroperabilityExperiment.

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. The OGC's OpenGIS® standards

Support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. These 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.