| POSC Caesar Association | |
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Logo for POSC Caesar Association. |
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| Abbreviation | PCA |
| Formation | 1997-11-14 |
| Legal status | Association |
| Purpose/focus | Promote the development of open specifications to be used as standards for enabling the interoperability of data, software and related matters |
| Location | Bærum, Norway |
| Region served | Worldwide |
| Membership | 36 |
| Official languages | English |
| General Manager | Nils Sandsmark |
| Main organ | Board of Directors |
| Website | http://www.posccaesar.org |
POSC Caesar Association (PCA) is an international, open, not-for-profit, member organization that promotes the development of open specifications to be used as standards for enabling the interoperability of data, software and related matters.
PCA is the initiator of ISO 15926 “Integration of life-cycle data for process plants including oil and gas production facilities" and is committed to its maintenance and enhancement.
Nils Sandsmark has been the General Manager of POSC Caesar Association since 1999[1] and Thore Langeland, Norwegian Oil Industry Association (Norwegian: Oljeindustriens Landsforening, OLF), is the Chairman of the Board.
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The first predecessor of POSC Caesar Association, the Caesar Offshore program, started in 1993[2][3][4][5][6]. The original focus was on standardizing technical data definitions for capital intensive projects at the handover from the EPC contractor to the owner/operators of onshore and offshore oil and gas production facilities. The program was sponsored by The Research Council of Norway, two EPC contractors (Aker Maritime and Kværner), three owners/operators (Norsk Hydro, Saga Petroleum and Statoil) and DNV as service provider and project owner.
During the period 1994-96, Caesar Offshore Program was defined as a project of Petrotechnical Open Software Corporation (POSC) (now Energistics), and changed its name to the POSC Caesar Project[2][3][4][6].
In 1995 the project was joined by BP, Brown and Root and Elf Aquitaine and in 1997 by Intergraph, IBM, Oracle, Lloyd's, Shell, ABB and UMOE Technologies[3].
During that time, POSC Caesar also became member of European Process Industries STEP Technical Liaison Executive (EPISTLE) where it collaborates with PISTEP (UK), and USPI-NL (The Netherlands) on the development of ISO 10303, also known as "Standard for the Exchange of Product model data (STEP)."[7].
In 1997, POSC Caesar Association was founded as an independent, global, non-profit, member organization. POSC Caesar Association serves an international membership and collaborates with other international organizations. It has its main office in Norway.
Albeit the name of POSC Caesar Association still hints to its past as a project within the Petrotechnical Open Software Corporation (POSC) (now Energistics[8]), from 1997 onwards, the organization has been independent. Energistics and POSC Caesar Association do collaborate, and are formally member in each other's organization.[9][10].
POSC Caesar Association has with its current 36 members[11] from around the world established an international footprint (with a strong membership in Norway) that includes a wide range from academia, solution providers to engineering contractors and owners/operators. The members are (subdivided by organization type):
In general, the organization holds three membership meetings a year[12]; one in January / February in North-America (typically USA), one in April / May in Europe (typically Norway) and one in October in Asia (typically Malaysia).
In consultation with the other EPISTLE members and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), it was decided in 2003 (some say already in 1997) that for modeling-technical reasons it was better to discontinue the development of ISO 10303[13] and to initiate the development of ISO 15926 "Integration of life-cycle data for process plants including oil and gas production facilities."[14]
Over the years, the scope of the standard has increased from the initial capital-intensive projects in the upstream oil and gas industry, to include also relevant terminology for downstream oil and gas industry applications and to deal with real-time data related to the actual oil and gas production.
ISO 15926 has also over the years evolved from a dictionary (a list of terms with definitions), over a taxonomy (added hierarchy) to an ontology (a formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts). ISO 15926 is therefore sometimes nicknamed the "Oil and Gas Ontology."[15], for some considered to be an essential prerequisite together with Semantic Web technologies[16] to get to better interoperability, an optimal use of all available data across boundaries and an increase in efficiency. This is what some call the next generation of Integrated Operations.[15]
Placeholders:
Placeholders:
There are a number of projects (co-)organized by POSC Caesar Association working on the extension of the ISO 15926 standard in different application areas.
The following projects are running at the moment (August 2009):
The following projects are currently running (August 2009):
Finalised projects include:
POSC Caesar is collaborating with a number of standardization bodies,[22] including: