Dr. Kumar Navulur, Sr. Director of Strategic Business Development at Maxar Technologies, was elected to the Board of Directors of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), a consortium of 500+ companies, government agencies and universities developing open standards and services for geospatial data. As location becomes integral to our daily life, whether navigating to a coffee shop or trying to find the nearest bus stop, it is paramount that location data from multiple sensors can be brought together seamlessly, processed and served to millions of customers globally. This is the mission of OGC: creating standards for all location-based data providers to follow so that end-users are able to leverage the data quickly.
Maxar has been a member of OGC for 15 years and follows several of the standards established by OGC. Dr. Navulur has been representing Maxar as a participant in OGC for 10 years, and was an invited speaker at their concept definition workshops on disaster resiliency in 2018. Maxar has been transforming the commercial remote sensing industry for decades by pushing the technology limits - with increased pixel resolution of 30 cm, increased number of spectral bands to map and monitor our changing planet, and frequent revisit - providing a comprehensive and current view of the globe.
“As a member of the OGC Board of Directors, I will be able to represent the view of a satellite imagery provider as new standards are created,” said Dr. Navulur. “It will also give DigitalGlobe the ability to understand various geospatial ecosystem players and advance the industry standards for the new technological developments in the geospatial industry.”
Satellite imagery is one of the critical sources of location data with global synoptic coverage, both in 2D as well as 3D. OGC also provides standards for Current technology trends (global smartphone adoption, evolution of IoT, autonomous cars and 5G telecommunications networks, among others) require accurate and reliable location data from these sensors to be integrated for various real world applications.