Martin Ford is the director for GISTANDARDS Ltd (www.gistandards.eu), a new start-up company. However, GIST unincorporated has been active for many years in the field of geospatial and environmental information. The company has experience in organising international workshops, which attract high level international speakers and delegates. Topics have included climate change, biodiversity issues, land cover and land use, incident management and location based services. A 2008 workshop was held in the United Nations General Assembly in Rome. 20 countries were represented and 160 global experts, including members of the World Bank, met to discuss environmental issues around land cover and land use relating to Spatial Data Infrastructure. In 2009 a similar sized workshop was held in Madrid, hosted by the Department of Environment. This workshop was pivotal in contributing to the establishment of the new thematic working groups of INSPIRE, relating to environmental issues. This GIST workshop enabled GEOSS, GMES, INSPIRE and CEN/TC 287 to be brought together for the first time, providing needed input to the INSPIRE TWGs. GIST has been involved with standards writing for the last 15 years dealing with environment, geospatial, incident management and eGovernment. GIST hosts several websites, including the CEN/TC 287 website including several portals.

Role in the project

GIST will participate to definition of requirements in WP1 with particular attention to existing standards. Then it will contribute to the standardisation activity planned for WP3 (both at the core CityGML level and to create new ADEs). Finally GIST will ensure dissemination and awareness activities also through a number of workshops organised with CEN/TC 287.

Key Staff involved in the project

Martin Ford is the founder of GIST and currently holds the post of secretary of CEN/TC 287. In his role as secretary he has created a stronger working relationship between DG- JRC, OGC, GMES, GEOSS, ISO/TC 211 and CEN/TC 287. Previously he held the post as President of the Italian Commission for Geographic Information and of convenor of ISO/TC 211 WG8 Location Based Services, and he is the author of IS: 19132 Geographic information – Location- Based Service- Reference model as well as several other standards and guidelines.