The Spatial Ontology Community of Practice (SOCoP) was established in October of 2006. SOCoP was origninally chartered as a Community of Practice under the Best Practices Committee of the Federal CIO Council with a purpose of:

• Fostering collaboration among researchers, technologists & users of spatial knowledge representations and reasoning towards the development of spatial ontologies for use by all in the Semantic Web and

• Support for open collaboration and open standards for increased interoperability of spatial data across government as a collaborative network to help achieve greater levels of geospatial interoperability over that presently available.

As stated in its Charter, the purpose of SOCoP is to foster collaboration among researchers, technologists, and users of spatial knowledge representations and reasoning towards the development of a set of core, common spatial ontologies for use by all communities connected across a Semantic Web. SOCoP will increase the understanding, development, and use of spatial ontology and semantic tools and capabilities.

SOCoP is a "Networked" community and is positioned as a community effort for spatial ontology and semantic initiatives. It also has leadership to bring together others in the larger geospatial, IT, and scientific communities.

One goal of SOCoP is to reach out to these communities to broaden the Network and expand the sphere of influence.