Snowflake Software, specialist in data exchange solutions via Open Standards, has been awarded a contract by the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO) to provide an open standard Geography Markup Language (GML) encoding and profile for a basic route specification S-100 based maritime data specification.
This work builds on Snowflake’s leading role implementing the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Model Driven Approach to managed GML application schema design and optimisation for use in practical applications and web services.
The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) technical working group Transfer Standard Maintenance and Applications Development Working Group (TSMAD) is currently developing new product specifications for electronic chart data based on the recently published S-100 Standard. Electronic Navigational Charts (ENC) are used in Electronic Chart Display and Information Systems (ECDIS) and currently a wide range of formats exist for the exchange of route information. A requirement has been identified to create a standard basic route specification to sit alongside the new ENC Product Specification based on S-100 and the ISO/OGC open standards for geospatial data products. Snowflake was initially contracted to review the draft specification and has now been tasked to provide an optimised GML application schema and profile which could potentially be used across other S-100 GML maritime vector product specifications.
The work awarded by the UKHO sits alongside recent contract awards from the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain for CityGML Application Domain Extensions and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) projects for the Aviation (AIXM) GML profile and Weather (WXXM) GML application schemas. Snowflake has also been contracted by the UKHO to provide extensive XML and GML training to UKHO staff.