IHO Working Group Makes MSDI a Reality
The 8th IHO Marine SDI Working Group (MSDIWG-8) meeting was held at The Metropolitan Hotel, Vancouver, Canada, from 31 January to 2 February 2017 and was hosted by the Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS), which is part of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. The OGC Maritime Domain Working Group meeting took place on 30 January, the day prior to the MSDIWG-8.
The meeting of the IHO MSDI working group was attended by 22 participants from 9 counties including expert contributors from OGC, GSDI Association, Teledyne Caris, Esri Inc. OceanWise and IIC Technologies.
MSDI White Paper
The meeting discussed specific activities of the IHO MSDI working group such as its new MSDI White Paper, final revisions to 2nd edition of IHO publication C17 - Spatial Data Infrastructures: ‘The Marine Dimension’ - Guidance for Hydrographic Offices. National MSDI reports included presentations from Malaysia, South Korea, Brazil, Canada and Denmark, along with regional MSDI initiatives in the Baltic Sea and Arctic Regional Hydrographic Commission areas; all of which showed significant developments towards building the framework for MSDI.
The group also developed its new MSDIWG Work Plan for 2017-2020 which includes tasks to promote greater data sharing and improved data management, policy development and governance, standards, horizon scanning / innovation and to increase the MSDI body of knowledge on the IHO website.
It was proposed to hold the next working group meeting in early 2018 in Brazil.
