View source for SOCoP/History

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.