OGC and OSCRE Work Together to Advance Real Estate Standards across the Globe

March 31, 2011 – OSCRE (the Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate) today announced that they have updated their Memorandum of Understanding with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to reflect OSCRE’s new global focus following last year’s merger between PISCES and OSCRE Americas.

OSCRE and the OGC organizations are now putting a new level of emphasis on collaborative standards development and are working specifically to enable and promote the interoperable use of Web based geospatial technologies in real estate and property management.

"There’s a growing interest among OGC members involved in 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 exchange among companies and government administrative bodies that buy, sell, own, occupy, insure, inspect, appraise, manage, design, build and protect real estate. Leveraging this information in a location and time context is critically important for decision-making. Advances in many other economic sectors await a strong indoor/outdoor location standards foundation, and we look forward to bringing diverse stakeholders together with OSCRE in a coordinated standards effort."

"The use of geospatial data is expanding rapidly among real estate stakeholders who seek information about demographics, crime, sales comparatives, foreclosures, and natural and man-made hazards," states Catherine Williams, OSCRE’s Chief Executive. "We expect enormous value for members of OSCRE and OGC from this working relationship, particularly as we are now able to bring significant international expertise to the real estate standards process."

OSCRE seeks to enable the real estate industry to work more effectively through the use of cost-effective, standardized and automated electronic information exchange. OSCRE is about bringing real estate professionals together with their solution providers to agree on intelligent and effective ways to exchange information over the Internet and within their businesses. We believe an open standard for real estate offers the potential to lower cost, stimulate innovation and grow markets whilst retaining a free choice of technology.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 410 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC 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/contact.

About OSCRE (the Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate)

OSCRE is a not for profit market led initiative that facilitates increased business productivity through the development and delivery of standards across the real property sector. OSCRE’s mission is to drive the standards development process among key real estate stakeholders, including owners, tenants/occupants, investors, operators, developers, service providers, regulatory agencies, consulting firms, vendors and suppliers – to benefit all stakeholders and enable the real estate industry to function more efficiently in the digital economy. OSCRE is the only global e-commerce standards body for the real property sector. Its members, whose valued financial and professional contribution enables the continuation of the work of OSCRE, fund the organisation.

For more information please visit our website at http://www.oscre.org.