Planet Georezo » Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

Un Planet est un site Web dynamique qui agrÃ¨ge le plus souvent sur une seule page, le contenu de notes, d'articles ou de billets publiÃ©s sur des blogs ou sites Web afin d'accentuer leur visibilitÃ© et de faire ressortir des contenus pertinents aux multiples formats (texte, audio, vidÃ©o, Podcast). C'est un agrÃ©gateur de flux RSS. Il s'apparente Ã un portail web.
Vous pouvez lire le billet sur le blog La Minute pour plus d'informations sur les RSS !

Feeds

1610 items (12 unread) in 55 feeds

Dans la presse

Du côté des éditeurs

Toile géomatique francophone

Géomatique anglophone

Blogs GeoRezo.net

Abonnez vous à cette page (RSS) !

Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

30 November 2023
18:39
How OGC Contributes to FAIR Geospatial Data
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

Standards are a key element of the FAIR Principles of Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability. As such, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has been supporting the FAIR Principles for geospatial information since its formation 30 years ago.

Following the more recent codification of the FAIR principles, the growing recognition of their potential to improve data production, storage, exchange, and processing is seeing them being used to support and enhance recent technological developments such as artificial intelligence, crowdsourcing, data spaces, digital twins, cloud computing, and beyond. This blog post, therefore, offers an overview of select OGC standards and components that support FAIRness in geospatial data.

Within the whole OGC Standards suite, we can broadly distinguish two types of Standards: data format and transfer standards that facilitate data exchange between systems; and semantic interoperability standards that support a common understanding of the meaning of data. For example, OGC Standards that define interoperable geometrical information formats, such as 3D Tiles, GML, GeoPackage, GeoTiff, or KML, support FAIRness by facilitating data Access and Reuse.
Communication Standards
Starting with OGC Web Map Service (WMS) 1.0 in 2000, the suite of OGC Web Services Standards grew to become OGC’s most popular and successful suite of Standards. Services that implement OGC Web Services Standards give access to different kinds of data through the web. Most OGC Web Services provide instructions on how to post a message or build a query URL that gives access to the data behind the service. The URL contains an action to perform and parameters to modify the action and specify the form of the result.

While perfectly functional, the OGC Web Services Standards do not completely follow modern practices on the Web. In particular they do not focus on resources but on operations. To correct that issue, the OGC is evolving the OGC Web Services into the OGC APIs – open web APIs that define resources and use HTTP methods to retrieve them. OGC APIs have diverse functionalities, as explained below.
Communication Standards for Finding Data
The Catalog Service for the Web (CSW) is an OGC Web Service that provides the capacity to query a collection of metadata and find the data or the services that the user requires. Deploying a CSW (e.g. a GeoNetwork instance) is a way to comply with the FAIR sub-principle “F4. (Meta)data are registered or indexed in a searchable resource.” CSW is compatible with Dublin Core and ISO 19115 metadata documents. An interesting characteristic of the GeoNetwork is its capability to store attachments to the metadata. This provides a way to store the actual data as an attachment and link it to the distribution section of an ISO 19115. This ensures not only Findability of the metadata but also Findability of the data. In the Open Earth Monitor (OEMC) project, CSW can be effectively used to store metadata about the in-situ data and some of the results of the pilots, making them Findable on the web. The original Remote Sensing data is offered through a SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC).

The OGC API – Records Standard is an alternative to CSW that uses the aforementioned resource-oriented architecture. It gives a URL to each and every metadata/data record stored in the catalog, making it compliant with the FAIR sub-principle “F1. (Meta)data are assigned a globally unique and persistent identifier.” The OGC API – Records Standard is still in its draft phase and the authors are making efforts to exploit STAC good practices and make the two compatible.

For flexibility, in the CSW and OGC API – Records Standards, a metadata record is not obligatory, though it is desirable in many cases. This is useful for improved findability, but also for preservation purposes when the dataset may no longer be available. This ensures compatibility with the FAIR sub-principle “A2. Metadata are accessible, even when the data are no longer available.”
Communication Standards for Accessing Data
The OGC Web Feature Service (WFS) and the Web Coverage Service (WCS) give access to feature or coverage data independently of the data’s data model or schema. Implementations of these services are based on Open Standards that can be implemented for free. This complies with the FAIR sub-principle “A1.1 The protocol is open, free, and universally implementable.” It is possible to get the whole resource or a subset of it based on spatial or thematic queries. However, these services are based on a service-oriented architecture and do not necessarily provide a URI for each resource.

The newer OGC API – Features and OGC API – Coverages Standards, though, provide similar functionality with a resource-oriented architecture. They provide a URI for each resource they expose. This makes the OGC API Standards, as well as the SensorThings API, compliant to the FAIR sub-principle “A1. (Meta)data are retrievable by their identifier using a standardized communications protocol.” OGC Web Services and OGC APIs both use the HTTP protocol over the Internet and can make use of the current standards and practices for authentication and authorization, such as OpenID Connect.

However, the resource-oriented architecture of the OGC API Standards means they are better positioned to adopt best practices for authentication and authorization. In this paradigm, authorization on geospatial resources can be fine-tuned for each resource URI in the same way as any other resource on the Web. As such, OGC API – Features, OGC API – Coverages, and The Sensor Things API comply with the FAIR sub-principle “A1.2 The protocol allows for an authentication and authorization procedure, where necessary.”
Semantic Interoperability Standards The OGC RAINBOW
To better support the “Interoperable” FAIR principle as it applies semantic interoperability, OGC is implementing the OGC RAINBOW (formerly the OGC Definitions Server) as a Web accessible source of information about concepts and vocabularies that OGC defines or that communities ask the OGC to host on their behalf. It applies FAIR principles to the key concepts that underpin interoperability in systems using OGC specifications.

The OGC Registry for Accessible Identifiers of Names and Basic Ontologies for the Web (RAINBOW) is a linked-data server, published and maintained by OGC, used to manage and publish reference vocabularies, standard definitions with profiles, ontologies, and resources. It is intended to be a node in an interoperable ecosystem of resources published by different communities. It supports a wide spectrum of resources and allows more value to be realized from data. It can be accessed at opengis.net/def.

OGC RAINBOW is implemented using Linked Data principles that provide enhanced findability, making it compliant with the FAIR sub-principles “F1. (Meta)data are assigned a globally unique and persistent identifier” and “F4: (Meta)data are registered or indexed in a searchable resource.” It is accessed using the HTTP protocols over the Internet, so is also compliant with “A1. (Meta)data are retrievable by their identifier using a standardised communication protocol” and “A1.1 The protocol is open, free, and universally implementable.”

The set of concepts stored in the RAINBOW or in other vocabularies can be used by data and metadata to comply with the FAIR sub-principles “I1. (Meta)data use a formal, accessible, shared, and broadly applicable language for knowledge representation” and “I2. (Meta)data use vocabularies that follow FAIR principles.”
The OGC SensorThings API
The OGC SensorThings API is an open and free standard that complies to the FAIR sub-principle “A1.1 The protocol is open, free, and universally implementable.” It incorporates a data model that includes two properties that allow for linking to URLs for “units of measurement” and “observed properties” (e.g. references to variable definitions) that makes it compliant with the FAIR sub-principle “I2. (Meta)data use vocabularies that follow FAIR principles.” However, other services and APIs, such as OGC API – Features and OGC API – Coverages, do not specify how this could be done in practice, so more work needs to be done in that respect.

On the other hand, the new OGC APIs use link mechanisms to connect datasets, resources, and resource collections to other resources for different purposes, making them compliant with the FAIR sub-principle “I3 (Meta)data include qualified references to other (meta)data.”

Similarly, the new OGC SensorThings API plus (STAplus) Standard includes an additional element called “Relation” that allows for relating an observation to other internal or external observations. It also adds an element called “License” associated with the datastream or observation group that complies with the FAIR sub-principle “R1.1. (Meta)data are released with a clear and accessible data usage license.” Further, the STA data model can be extended to domain-specific areas by subclassing some of the entities, such as “Thing” and “Observation,” allowing it to meet the FAIR sub-principle “R1.3. (Meta)data meet domain-relevant community standards.”

STAplus includes many considerations for secure operations and can support authentication and authorization through the implementation of business logic, making it compliant with the FAIR sub-principle “A1.2. The protocol allows for an authentication and authorization procedure where necessary.”
Other Standard Thematic Data Models
OGC also offers Standards that define thematic data models and knowledge representations. For example, WaterML is an information model for the representation of water observations data. In addition, PipelineML defines concepts supporting the interoperable interchange of data pertaining to oil and gas pipeline systems. The PipelineML Core addresses two critical business use-cases that are specific to the pipeline industry: new construction surveys and pipeline rehabilitation.

Another example is the Land and Infrastructure Conceptual Model (LandInfra) for land and civil engineering infrastructure facilities. Subject areas include facilities, projects, alignment, road, railway, survey, land features, land division, and “wet” infrastructure (storm drainage, wastewater, and water distribution systems). CityGML is intended to represent city objects in 3D city models. The (upcoming) Model for Underground Data Definition and Integration (MUDDI) represents information about underground utilities. IndoorGML offers a data model to represent indoor building features. Finally, GeoSciML is a model of geological features commonly described and portrayed in geological maps, cross sections, geological reports and databases. This standard describes a logical model for the exchange of geological map data, geological time scales, boreholes, and metadata for laboratory analyses.

The existence of these Standards can help each thematic sector to comply with the FAIR Interoperability sub-principle “I1. (Meta)data use a formal, accessible, shared, and broadly applicable language for knowledge representation.” As well as these standards, connecting their vocabularies to information systems or databases would significantly increase their usefulness and encourage the principle of Reusability “R1.(Meta)data are richly described with a plurality of accurate and relevant attributes” and sub-principle “R1.3 (Meta)data meet domain-relevant community standards.”
FAIR in Everything We Do
OGC’s Mission, to “Make location information Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR),” places the FAIR Principles at the heart of everything we do. This post has shown how OGC Standards explicitly address the FAIR Principles to contribute to FAIR geospatial data.

The Standards shown here were chosen due to their popularity and utility, but represent only a small portion of what’s available from OGC. You can see the full suite of OGC Standards at ogc.org/standards.

For more detailed information on OGC API Standards, including developer resources, news of upcoming code sprints, or to learn how the family of OGC API Standards work together to provide modular “building blocks for location” that address both simple and the most complex use-cases, visit ogcapi.org.

The post How OGC Contributes to FAIR Geospatial Data appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
23 November 2023
15:00
OGC Compliance Certification now available for the GeoPose 1.0 Data Exchange Standard
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is excited to announce that the Executable Test Suite (ETS) for version 1.0 of the OGC GeoPose Data Exchange Standard has been approved by the OGC Membership. Products that implement OGC GeoPose 1.0 and pass the tests in the ETS can now be certified as OGC Compliant.

The OGC Compliance Program offers a certification process that ensures organizations’ solutions are compliant with OGC Standards. It is a universal credential that allows agencies, industry, and academia to better integrate their solutions. OGC Compliance provides confidence that a product will seamlessly integrate with other compliant solutions regardless of the vendor that created them.

Implementers of the GeoPose 1.0 Data Exchange Standard are invited to validate their products using the new test suite in the OGC validator tool. Testing involves submitting an OGC GeoPose 1.0 document produced by the product being assessed. These tests typically take only 5-10 minutes to complete. Once a product has passed the test, the implementer can apply to use the ‘OGC Compliant’ trademark on their product.

OGC GeoPose is a free and open Implementation Standard for exchanging the location and orientation of real or virtual geometric objects (“Poses”) within reference frames anchored to Earth’s surface (“Geo”) or within other astronomical coordinate systems. The Standard specifies a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) encoding for representing conformant poses.

The GeoPose Standard specifies a number of conformance classes, most being optional. One conformance class is defined for each corresponding set of Structural Data Units (SDUs), where each SDU is linked to the Logical Model as an alias for a class or attribute. The following conformance classes from the OGC GeoPose 1.0 Data Exchange Standard (OGC 21-056r11) are supported by the ETS:
- Basic-YPR (Yaw-Pitch-Roll) SDU JSON
- Basic-Quaternion SDU JSON – Permissive
- Advanced SDU JSON
- Graph SDU JSON
- Chain SDU JSON
- Regular Series SDU JSON
- Stream SDU JSON
Some of the products implementing the GeoPose Standard that have already been certified as OGC Compliant include Away Team Software’s 3D Compass 1, OpenSitePlan’s SolarPose 1.0, and Ethar Inc.’s GeoPose C# Library 1.0. These products apply GeoPose in a wide variety of applications, such as Augmented Reality (AR), mobile Location Based Services (LBS), web APIs, and more. To implement GeoPose in your product, please refer to the OGC GeoPose 1.0 Data Exchange Standard document, freely available from OGC. Additional documentation is also available on the GeoPose website.

More information about the OGC compliance process, and how it can benefit your organization, is available at ogc.org/compliance. Implementers of the OGC GeoPose 1.0 Data Exchange Standard – or other OGC Standards – can validate their products now using the OGC Validator Tool.

The post OGC Compliance Certification now available for the GeoPose 1.0 Data Exchange Standard appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
15 November 2023
15:09
OGC India Forum 2023: Key Highlights from Hyderabad
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

A meeting of the OGC India Forum was held on October 18, 2023, in Hyderabad, where over 40 experts from government, industry, and academia met to discuss the future of geospatial technologies in India. With its booming tech industry, Hyderabad provided an apt backdrop for discussions on innovation and standards in the geospatial realm.

The event was supported by the following organizations: The Association of Geospatial Industries (AGI India), which represents India’s geospatial private sector capabilities; the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), the national standards body that underpins technical excellence; and Geospatial World, a media company and the host for GeoSmart India 2023, where the forum was organized.

A pivotal moment at the event was the unveiling of the OGC India Forum’s new Charter, heralding a renewed commitment to advancing geospatial standards and innovation within the Indian context. Also at the Forum, OGC and AGI India renewed their partnership in line with the policy priorities of India.
Harsha Madiraju, OGC, and Sreeramam GV, AGI India, exchanging the partnership agreement.
The forum facilitated a series of expert-led panels, dissecting the latest trends, challenges, and opportunities in the geospatial and Earth Observation sectors. It provided a platform for participants to contribute insights and actively shape the Forum’s committees and future directives.
Emphasizing the Economic Value of Geospatial Standards
Harsha Madiraju, Lead – OGC India Forum, set the stage with a presentation on the economic impact of standards in geospatial technologies. Citing the 2012 ISO publication on Standards and Economic Growth, he highlighted the positive correlation between the proliferation of standards and national economic development. This underscores the importance of investment in geospatial interoperability and its tangible benefits to industries and economies.
Harsha Madiraju, Lead – OGC India Forum, delivering his opening address.
From the Indian Context, Harsha said that we need proven methodologies and best practices for implementing Standards in India’s diverse and complex landscape. From this perspective, he said, the “Guide to the Role of Standards in Geospatial Information Management” prepared by ISO/TC 211, OGC, and IHO, and endorsed by UN-GGIM, provides a reliable framework around geospatial standards implementation. Quoting the guide, he said the Indian community can refer to the Goal-based Approach to geospatial standards implementation, where different maturity levels from Tier 1 to Tier 4 are prescribed.
Goal-based Approach to geospatial standards implementation
Harsha said about the interoperability scenario in India: “Our data and systems are not yet fully interoperable, and our community is at varying stages of maturity compared to more developed geospatial ecosystems. The opportunity here is immense. It’s not just about sharing maps: it’s about evolving towards a spatially enabled nation where we can take advantage of the authoritative datasets coming up for India.”

He further called for collaboration by saying “In a country like India, with its unique challenges and opportunities, the role of standards in accelerating the maturity of our technology ecosystems is crucial. At OGC India Forum, we aim to work on standards, compliance, and innovation. It’s not just the responsibility of a few: it’s a collective endeavor. Your expertise and contributions can shape the future of geospatial technology in India.”

Concluding his talk, he said, “We have the framework, the global endorsement, and, most importantly, a community willing to drive change. Let’s invest wisely in standards to shape a future that benefits us all.”
Panels and Discussions for India – Tech Trends, Adoption of Standards, and Academic Perspectives.
The event then proceeded with three panels on the following topics:
Panel on Geospatial and Earth Observation Technology Innovation in India
The panel discussed India’s contributions to geospatial and Earth Observation technologies and the possible advancements that may come from the Indian government, private sector, and especially start-ups. The session also discussed the untapped sectors and applications that these technologies could significantly impact. Finally, the discussions identified key challenges in technology adoption and scalability and discussed how the community can help overcome these challenges.
Panelists on Geospatial and Earth Observation Technology Innovation in India, along with along with AGI and OGC Staff (on the right side)
Rajesh Mathur, Esri India, said that federated GIS architecture is a new paradigm enabling collaboration and data sharing. According to him, India’s National Geospatial Policy 2022 is a progressive and transformational initiative that will accelerate the adoption of geospatial technologies by encouraging collaboration and data sharing among all the stakeholders. This opens up exciting opportunities for GIS deployment – both on the Cloud and in a federated architecture. Data partnerships enabled by Standards and interoperability will allow users from multiple organizations to collaborate and share content through trusted and secure workflows.

Shubham Sharma, GalaxEye Space, said that the OGC India Forum provided a great platform to interact with the panel members and the audience with diverse experiences. With discussions ranging from the evolution of technology in the geospatial sector to standardization, the discussions centred around the implementation of OGC standards in India. With the continued expansion of the geospatial sector, Open Standards will pave a smoother road for building scalable and sustainable products.

S S Raja Shekar, National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), said OGC standards have changed how geospatial data and applications are handled, providing simple solutions to complex exchanges of data and services. A growing focus on standards in the space domain and in sectors of priority to the country where geospatial applications are critical is needed. This session also brought perspectives and ideas from entrepreneurs and proved to be highly constructive.

Akshay Loya, Founder & CEO of GISKernel Technologies, said “I was asked how I envision the evolution of the geospatial industry in India. My response was straightforward: we, as young founders, can share our insights alongside esteemed figures on a platform like OGC India Forum, which is a significant evolution in our industry.”
Panel on Geospatial and Earth Observation Standards in India
The second panel examined the current adoption of BIS/ISO and OGC standards in India, focusing on areas where they are most – and least – implemented. The panel also discussed the avenues available for contributing to geospatial and Earth Observation Standards, both at a national and international level. The session then also delved into the compliance and procurement aspects.
Speakers at the Panel on Geospatial and Earth Observation Standards
Abhiroop Bhatnagar, Lead, Platform at Aereo, said “I would like to share the message regarding the importance of cloud-native geospatial formats. The essential property of cloud-native formats is that they allow data delivery directly from cloud-based storage to clients without involving any compute in between – for example consider direct requests to S3 from web browsers. The world is quickly transitioning towards a cloud-based data-delivery paradigm. Under this new paradigm, if we have to ensure scalability along with preserving efficiency, it is critical to utilize cloud-native geospatial formats. In that respect, Cloud-optimized GeoTIFF has already been accepted as an OGC standard and is well-supported by the ecosystem. We at Aereo have already integrated support for COGs in our WebGIS platform, Aereo Cloud. We actively promote it as the preferred format for raster data within the industry and the government.”

Ashish Tiwari, Joint Director of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), said that ISO/TC211 and OGC have a strong history of collaboration on geospatial standards. BIS, through the Geospatial Information Sectional Committee, has adopted over twelve Standards and is working on adopting fourteen more. BIS looks forward to collaborating with the OGC community, as this will be valuable in many areas where BIS can understand recent trends and best practices.

Participating in this session, Vishnu Chandra, Former Deputy Director General & HOG -NIC, Geospatial Technology Services Division, said that open geospatial Standards are the core foundation of geospatial information interoperability and play a crucial role through open geospatial APIs for the exchange of data and Service Delivery. OGC India Forum can play a critical role in bringing the global OGC standards to India in collaboration with various government, industry, and academic stakeholders.

OGC standards have a significant role given the context of the Indian National Geospatial Policy 2022, which calls for the creation of the National Geospatial Foundation around 14 Thematic Areas to support UN-GGIM objectives associated with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. These themes also have relevance in digital public infrastructures and platforms for specific governance, planning, and service delivery in the Indian context. Therefore, each data theme needs Standards implemented across the entire geospatial information value chain.
Panel providing Perspectives from Academia & Research on Innovation and Standards in India
The final panel discussed the current awareness and usage of geospatial and Earth Observation Standards in academic programs and research projects. The discussions explored the extent to which Standards are integrated into educational curricula. The panel also delved into how academic and research institutions can contribute to standards development, implementation testing, and even lead the creation of new standards.
Speakers at the Panel Providing Perspectives from Academia & Research
Dr. Sanjay Chaudhary, Professor and Associate Dean, Ahmedabad University, School of Engineering and Applied Science, said “There is a lack of interest in geospatial technologies in India from the students in the broader computer science and IT community. Helping them understand the value and opportunities available in this sector will be important. With the evolution of OGC Standards into APIs and the availability of developer resources, we can make these students learn and invest in this direction, which will be valuable to their professions and bring skilled resources to India.”

Professor Dr. Karbhari Vishwanath Kale, Vice-Chancellor of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Technological University, Lonere, Raigad, Maharashtra, said “Through our engagement with the Bureau of Indian Standards, I have been making personal efforts to bring awareness in our professional circles on the value and importance of Standards. As an OGC Member, our university closely follows the development of international Standards by OGC. Some of our core interests lie in the intersection of multi- and hyper-spectral sensor data for agriculture, material detection, disaster management, and health care. We must invest in developing sensors and data dissemination platforms and make applications and data more broadly available, specifically in agriculture. In line with the Indian National Education Policy 2020, our university has set goals to establish and design the course curriculum with a research lab where IoT, sensors, and Standards can be brought together for the overall benefit of end users. We look forward to collaborating with the international network of OGC and taking this on.”

Dr. Sumit Sen, GISE Hub, IIT Bombay, said “Our Hub is established as an interdisciplinary project funded by the Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India, to enable the research and development of geospatial technology solutions. In turn, our hub works with many academic and research organizations to further fundamental research in GIScience. Standards and Interoperability is one of the focus areas, and we continue to work closely with OGC and other stakeholders like IIT Kanpur, IIT Tirupati, and IIIT Hyderabad in enabling the geospatial community with the right skills on OGC Standards and APIs. The Winter School is one of India’s unique learning programs on geospatial standards. It is a fifteen-day on-campus training program supported by OGC Staff and Members. It provides hands-on and practical training on OGC Standards to India’s government, private, and research organizations. The 2023 program will be on the OGC API Stack. We will continue our international engagement and work closely with the OGC India Forum community.”
Next Steps
The OGC India Forum 2023 event was a success. The event concluded with a broader agreement around the need to identify areas of engagement in the coming days. It was agreed that there is a need for partnerships and to organize events, training programs, and policy roundtables on geospatial standards, in collaboration with OGC Members and Partners in India and the broader community.

The post OGC India Forum 2023: Key Highlights from Hyderabad appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
08 November 2023
15:00
OGC and Joint Research Centre renew Collaboration Agreement to enhance Geospatial Standards
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC) have renewed their collaboration agreement to enhance the development and use of geospatial standards.

The ongoing collaboration enables JRC to more effectively contribute to the OGC Standards process and facilitate the consideration of European objectives, requirements, and policies during the development of international open geospatial standards.

The agreement formalizes the partners’ collaboration in the field of development, application, maintenance, and promotion of international open geospatial standards and best practices that support the implementation of EU policies, for example, INSPIRE, European Data Spaces, Open Data, and Earth Observation, including Copernicus and Galileo.

Further, the agreement will enable OGC and JRC to jointly organize workshops for exchanging scientific and technological information on topics of mutual interest, for example, spatial law and policy, Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) Best Practices, and emerging technologies (e.g. metaverse, digital twins, cloud/edge computing, platforms, and Artificial Intelligence (AI)).

“We at OGC are pleased to continue our collaboration with the JRC,” commented Ingo Simonis, Ph.D, OGC Chief Technology Innovation Officer. “With the modernization of national and international spatial data infrastructures, the semantic enhancement of existing data offerings, and the development of cross-domain yet flexible solutions for heterogeneous communities, we have many core activities in common. Bringing the JRC and OGC communities together allows us to address these important topics far more efficiently.”

About JRC
The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre provides independent, evidence-based knowledge and science, supporting EU policies to positively impact society.?It plays a key role at multiple stages of the EU policy cycle.
It works closely with research and policy organisations in the Member States, with the European institutions and agencies, and with scientific partners in Europe and internationally, including within the United Nations system. In addition, the JRC offers scientific expertise and competences from a very wide range of disciplines in support of almost all EU policy areas.

The post OGC and Joint Research Centre renew Collaboration Agreement to enhance Geospatial Standards appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
03 November 2023
14:00
Climate, Disaster, and Emergency Communities invited to Innovation Days 2023
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) invites anyone involved in climate resilience, disaster response, and emergency management to attend OGC Innovation Days 2023. The event will be held December 5-7 at the American Red Cross Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Attendance is free for OGC Members using this link.

OGC Innovation Days 2023 brings together diverse members of the climate, disaster, and emergency resilience and response communities to explore what OGC-enabled geospatial technologies have made possible and to ask: what do we need to do next?

This multi-day event will benefit anyone interested or involved in climate resilience, disaster response, or emergency management by providing an opportunity to learn about the latest geospatial data and technology developments from the OGC community, contribute to shaping future work, and interact with stakeholders from industry, government, research, and the private sector.

OGC has for many years been developing solutions that support climate and disaster resilience and response, from supporting the development of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) climate resilience information systems, to empowering first responders with the information they need, when they need it.

But to most effectively address the multi-faceted challenges of the changing climate and associated disasters, we want to hear about the problems being faced by city-managers, community members, first responders, climate scientists, insurers, government bodies, and others, as they respond to the changing climate and associated disasters – so that we can use OGC’s collective expertise to address them.

By bringing the climate, disaster, and emergency communities together, OGC Innovation Days 2023 provides a unique opportunity for attendees to meet people facing similar challenges to their own and learn about the solutions that worked for them, while guiding OGC towards creating impactful free and open solutions where none currently exist.

The event runs across three days: a day of panels and discussions, a day of demonstrations, and a day exclusively for the OGC Strategic Member Advisory Committee, OGC Executive Planning Committee, and special guests.

Gain insights from experts from leading organizations, including: event hosts American Red Cross, OGC Strategic Members Department of Homeland Security (DHS) / Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), and United States Geological Survey (USGS), as well as others from across government and industry. See the full agenda here.

Day 1 consists of panels and discussions centered around 4 topics: Disaster Response & Emergency Management; Wildfires; Climate Change & Disaster Risk Reduction; and the role that Artificial Intelligence and related technologies can play in building disaster and climate resilience. Throughout each panel, expect information on the FAIR solutions and workflows developed through OGC initiatives – such as the Disasters Pilot 2023 and the Climate Resilience Pilot – the gaps that remain between the data & tools we have and the ones we need, panelists’ successes & challenges, and audience feedback.

Day 2 provides attendees the opportunity to see working demonstrations of cutting-edge solutions for climate, disaster, and emergency resilience and response developed in OGC COSI Program Initiatives or using OGC innovations in geospatial technologies such as Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, Earth Observation, Analysis Ready Data (ARD), Decision Ready Indicators (DRI) for emergency response, FAIR systems & data, cloud-native geospatial, and more.

Day 2 will also include a demonstration of General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT)’s standards-based Raven mobile command-center, which collects and distributes mission-critical information at the edge. Powered by AI systems, the Raven can filter information so data-driven decisions can be made and disseminated to first responders, analysts, and decision makers in real-time.

Join us at the American Red Cross Headquarters in Washington, DC, USA, to tackle climate, disasters, and emergencies together using FAIR geospatial data and systems. A video overview of the 2022 OGC Innovation Days event is available on OGC’s YouTube channel.

For more information, including registration, agenda, venue & accommodation info, and more, visit the OGC 2023 Innovation Days webpage. The event is free for OGC Members – see this page on the OGC Portal for your discounted registration link. Sponsorship opportunities remain available, contact OGC to find out more.

The post Climate, Disaster, and Emergency Communities invited to Innovation Days 2023 appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
30 October 2023
14:00
OGC Compliance Certification Available for v2.0 of the Web Processing Service (WPS) Standard
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is excited to announce that the Executable Test Suite (ETS) for version 2.0 of the Web Processing Service (WPS) Standard has been approved by the OGC Membership. Products that implement the Standard and pass the tests in the ETS can now be certified as OGC Compliant.

The OGC Compliance Program offers a certification process that ensures organizations’ solutions are compliant with OGC Standards. It is a universal credential that allows agencies, industry, and academia to better integrate their solutions. OGC Compliance provides confidence that a product will seamlessly integrate with other compliant solutions regardless of the vendor that created them.

The WPS Standard supports the wrapping of computational tasks into executable processes that can be offered by a server through a web service interface and be invoked by a client application. The processes typically combine coverage, raster, vector, and/or point cloud data with well-defined algorithms to produce new information. Some of those algorithms may apply Machine Learning and other Artificial Intelligence (AI) approaches, as demonstrated by the OGC Testbed-16 initiative.

Implementers of the WPS 2.0 Standard are invited to validate their products using the new test suite, which is available now on the OGC Validator Tool. Testing involves submitting the endpoint of a WPS implementation to be assessed. The validator tool sends the appropriate requests to the endpoint of the implementation and then evaluates the responses. These tests typically take only 5-10 minutes to complete. Once a product has passed the tests, the implementer can submit an application to OGC for use of the OGC Compliant trademark on their product.

To support developers with implementation of the standard, GeoLabs ZOO-Project 2.0 and the 52°North 52N Web Processing Service 4.0.0-beta.10 product have been designated as reference implementations of the standard after the software products successfully passed the compliance tests.

More information about the OGC compliance process, and how it can benefit your organization, is available at ogc.org/compliance. Implementers of version 2.0 of the WPS Standard – or other OGC Standards – can validate their products using the OGC Validator Tool.

The post OGC Compliance Certification Available for v2.0 of the Web Processing Service (WPS) Standard appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
24 October 2023
17:00
CLIMOS and a FAIR data-to-information value chain
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The visible effects of climate change continue to grow over time, in both frequency and severity. Extreme meteorological events, such as heavy rains, severe storms, strong winds, and high temperatures, are causing extreme floods, landslides, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, biodiversity loss, desertification and more, and severely impacting infrastructure, crops, livestock, and lives.

As such, the last three decades have seen policy initiatives put in place to try and limit the impacts of global warming, reverse land degradation/desertification, stop the loss of biodiversity, protect finite natural resources, and reduce the risks associated with environmental disasters. These initiatives are summarised under the umbrella of the United Nations Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which together aim at increasing the resilience of people and systems to the changing environmental and socioeconomic conditions. Within this framework, Climate Action (SDG 13) and particularly Health (SDG 3) are defined goals to be tackled by the international community through collaborative solutions.

Extreme weather-induced hazards and disasters certainly provide a very visible example of the impact of climate change. However, most of the mortality caused by climate change comes in less cataclysmic forms. One obvious example is the increased mortality rate during heatwaves. A less obvious example is the changing risk of exposure to disease for humans, other animals, and plants.

Changes in temperature and precipitation, combined with changes in land use and cover, are creating spatial shifts in the life-cycle dynamics of disease-transmitting vectors, such as bats, small mammals, or mosquitoes, which has resulted in changing risks of exposure to disease.

The EU project CLIMOS, which OGC is a partner, is examining one such change by focussing on diseases transmitted by sandflies. CLIMOS works towards enhancing the scientific knowledge of the parameters that affect the spread of sandflies – and thus their ability to transmit disease – in the context of a changing climate. The project calls for technical systems that can combine and process: raw data output by climate models; earth observations of ongoing meteorological events and changes to land cover; and ecological data describing the life cycles of the sandflies.

Technical systems that are able to find, access, integrate, and process data for use in building climate resilience are coming to be known as Climate Resilience Information Systems (CRIS). CRIS are already being used to develop and provide interoperable Analysis Ready Data (ARD), usually in the form of data cubes, to scientists for further processing using scientific algorithms, and/or for developing Decision Ready Indicators (DRI) that allow for clear interpretation of current events by decision makers.

The “raw data to information” value chain underpinning CRIS is made possible when the FAIR data principle is respected, that is that data and systems are developed in a manner that ensures they are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. CLIMOS is therefore focussing on the use of FAIR-aligned Climate Services for data assessment, scientific knowledge generation, early warning, and to better understand how meteorological conditions are increasing the risk of sand fly-borne diseases in particular areas.

As part of the CLIMOS project, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is supporting the move toward FAIR systems for use in the emergency alert systems and data pipelines. Specifically, OGC is addressing the interoperability challenges faced when combining health, environmental, Earth observation, and climate model data. These challenges are being examined and addressed through various technical testbeds and data pilot studies that emphasise the FAIR principles, as well as within OGC Domain Working Groups. For the objectives of CLIMOS, OGC’s Climate Change Resilience, Emergency Management, and Health Domain Working Groups are each providing excellent sources of experience and knowledge related to these three aspects of the CLIMOS project.

The work of CLIMOS is an essential contribution to realise the SDG 3 goal to “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.”

This post originally appeared on the CLIMOS Project blog.

The post CLIMOS and a FAIR data-to-information value chain appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
23 October 2023
15:00
OGC Calls for Participation in its Open Science Persistent Demonstrator Pilot
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) invites organizations and individuals to join the OGC Open Science Persistent Demonstrator (OSPD) Pilot. The multi-year project will support collaborative open science for the scientific community, decision-makers, and the general public. Responses are due by December 1, 2023. Funding is available for Participants.

Collaborative Open Science is essential to addressing complex challenges whose solutions lie in cross-sector integrations that leverage expertise and data from diverse domains while prioritizing integrity. By making it simple to connect data and platforms together in transparent, reusable and reproducible workflows, the OGC OSPD Pilot aims to enable innovation through collaborative open science.

OGC’s OSPD Pilot focuses on connecting geospatial and Earth Observation (EO) data and platforms to enable and demonstrate solutions that create capacity for novel research and accelerate its practical implementation.

The Pilot will produce a web portal to demonstrate how platforms operated by different organizations can be used for collaborative research and data representation, facilitate testing the compatibility of in-development data or platforms with other elements in a multi-platform workflow, and promote training in methods for collaborative, open innovation by providing learning and outreach materials.

The OSPD Pilot will produce three main elements:
1. The development of a web portal that demonstrates how platforms operated by different organizations can be used for collaborative research and data representation;
2. A test environment for web platforms to explore mutual use and which provides a collaboration space for existing and in-development platforms to use each other and test aspects such as reproducibility of workflows; and
3. The provision of learning and outreach materials that make the Open Science platforms known and accessible to a wide range of users and enable efficient use.
The OSDP is sponsored by OGC Strategic Members the European Space Agency (ESA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA), who will provide vision and leadership throughout the initiative.

The OGC Open Science Persistent Demonstrator Pilot will be conducted under OGC’s Collaborative Solutions and Innovation (COSI) Program, a collaborative, agile, and hands-on prototyping and engineering environment where sponsors and OGC members come together to address location interoperability challenges while validating international open standards. To learn about the benefits of sponsoring an OGC COSI Program Initiative such as this, visit the OGC COSI Program webpage.

More information on OGC’s OPSD Pilot, including the CFP document and how to respond, is available on the OGC Open Science Persistent Demonstrator Pilot webpage. Responses to the CFP are due by December 1, 2023.

The post OGC Calls for Participation in its Open Science Persistent Demonstrator Pilot appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
20 October 2023
15:34
Webinar: Location Innovation Academy for NMCA
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The online Location Innovation Academy recently launched to provide online training material for geospatial data management. It currently offers 12 e-learning modules in three clusters. These materials are designed to help government agencies, particularly national mapping organizations, make the most of their data and digital infrastructure.

On Thursday, 26th October, 2023 at 11:00 – 12:30 CET, OGC and GEOE3 will host a webinar that aims to serve as an introduction to the Academy for National Mapping and Cadastral Agencies (NMCA), and will focus on the integration of climate and meteorological data into data portals used and provided by NMCA.

Additionally, anyone who wishes to use materials from the online academy in their own training courses will learn the information needed to navigate the academy platform and its core content. Teachers, professors, coaches, consultants, and other professionals providing training in geoinformatics, spatial planning processes, and related fields are therefore also encouraged to attend.

During these demonstrations, training materials for the use of OGC climate resilience application packages and for integration of meteorological data into portals managed by NMCA will be presented as examples out of the GEOE3 project.

For more information about the Academy, or to enroll in a free course, visit the Location Innovation Academy website.

Topics: Integration of Meteorological Data; Climate Application Packages
Time: Thursday, 26th October. 11:00 – 12:30 CET
Registration: Click here for registration
Virtual Room: Dial-in info will be provided after registration.
Language: English

The post Webinar: Location Innovation Academy for NMCA appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
18 October 2023
15:00
Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF (COG) published as official OGC Standard
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is excited to announce that the Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF (COG) Standard v1.0 has been approved by the OGC Membership for adoption as an official OGC Standard. COG, as an OGC Standard, formalizes existing practices already implemented by the community, such as the GDAL library or the COG explorer and other implementations.

COG allows for the efficient streaming and partial downloading of imagery and grid coverage data on the web, and enables fast data visualization and geospatial processing workflows. COG-aware applications can efficiently stream/download only the parts of the information they need to visualize or process web-based data. With so much remote sensing imagery available in cloud storage facilities, the benefits of optimizing their visualization and processing will be widespread. COG is one of the preferred formats used in catalogs conforming to the SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) specification, and sits alongside other emerging cloud-optimized formats of relevance to OGC, such as Zarr, COPC, and GeoParquet.

The COG Standard specifies how TIFF files can be organized in a way that favors the extraction of convenient parts of the data at the needed resolution while remaining compatible with traditional TIFF readers. It also specifies how to use HTTP (or [HTTPS)] to transmit only the part of information needed without downloading the complete file.

The OGC COG Standard depends on the TIFF specification and the OGC GeoTIFF Standard. For large files, it depends on the BigTIFF specification. The standard takes advantage of some existing characteristics of the TIFF specification and the existing HTTP Range Request specification (IETF RFC 7233) and does not modify them in any way.

The early work for crafting this OGC Standard was undertaken in the Open-Earth-Monitor Cyberinfrastructure (OEMC) project, which received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation program under grant agreement number 101059548 and in the All Data 4 Green Deal – An Integrated, FAIR Approach for the Common European Data Space (AD4GD) project, which received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation program under grant agreement number 101061001.

This work was followed by an activity within OGC’s Testbed-17 that formally specified COG requirements in the OGC Testbed-17: Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF specification Engineering Report. The lessons from the initiatives were then used to inform the standardization of COG by the OGC Membership.

OGC Members interested in staying up to date on the progress of this standard, or contributing to its development, are encouraged to join the GeoTIFF Standards Working Group (SWG) via the OGC Portal. Non-OGC members who would like to know more about participating in this SWG are encouraged to contact the OGC Standards Program.

As with any OGC standard, the open Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF (COG) Standard v1.0 is free to download and implement.

The post Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF (COG) published as official OGC Standard appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
09 October 2023
14:52
A recap of the 127th OGC Member Meeting, Singapore
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
From September 25-29, 2023, more than 100 geospatial experts from around the world converged in Singapore to attend OGC’s 127th Member Meeting, with another 100+ attending online. As always, big thanks go out to our dedicated members that either attended in-person, or juggled lives across multiple timezones to attend virtually.

Sponsored by OGC Principal Member, the Singapore Land Authority (SLA), the meeting was themed “Building future standards for the next generation of geospatial experts.” Once again, the Member Meeting was held in conjunction with the Singapore Geospatial Festival 2023 operated by SLA’s GeoWorks.

Alongside the usual assortment of Standards Working Group (SWG) and Domain Working Group (DWG) meetings, the Member Meeting also saw several special sessions, including: a two-part Data Quality Workshop; a session on Modeling of Humanities’ Spatio-Temporal Data; a Digital Twins special session; a session on the OGC Academy; a Connecting Land and Sea special session; an Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) ad hoc; and a meeting of the OGC Asia Forum.

Monday evening’s welcome reception celebrated Simple Features’ 25th birthday with a suitably delicious cake and an enthusiastic rendition of “Happy Birthday.” Simple Features, which is jointly published with ISO, is OGC’s earliest standard and describes how to model the location of “features” (a geometric representation of anything of interest) on a 2-dimensional space representing the surface of a planet. And of course there was the usual Wednesday night “VIP Dinner” (held at the delicious Red House Seafood), where Wuhan University received an OGC Community Impact Award, and a Diversity Luncheon held on Thursday.
OGC Chief Standards Officer, Scott Simmons, leads the celebrations for Simple Features’ 25th birthday. Themes from the week
As is befitting of the location in Singapore, with its advanced modeling of the whole nation, across the entirety of the Member Meeting were presentations related to Digital Twins – twins not only of the built environment, but for vegetation, the ocean, and the subsurface. Several Working Groups regularly include discussion on Digital Twins related to their scope, especially the Urban Digital Twins DWG. Related topics regarding the Metaverse and Interoperable Simulation and Gaming also continue regular appearances at OGC meetings.

Marine and coastlines play an important role in economies and climate resilience strategies alike. OGC has a long-running pilot project on marine geospatial infrastructure, and we continue to refine models for describing and managing the coastal land-sea interface. We expect this work to be extended to the topics of ITS and logistics in the coming years, too.
A Kick-off and a Joint Opening
The OGC Member Meeting started on Monday, but as it was held jointly with the Singapore Geospatial Festival, the joint opening wasn’t until Tuesday. Monday, then, kicked off with a brief welcome session before the ever-popular Today’s Innovations, Tomorrow’s Technologies and Future Directions session.

The topic of this meeting’s Future Directions session was Geospatial Artificial Intelligence. Dr. Gobe Hobona, OGC’s Director of Product Management, opened with an overview of where this topic fits in the context of previous sessions. He was then followed by three presentations:
- Kyoung-Sook Kim from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science & Technology (AIST) presented a Design Standardization Roadmap for GeoAI.
- Peter Baumann, Dimitar Misev, and Otoniel Campos of Constructor University (formerly Jacobs University) presented on Scalable Datacube-Enabled AI Infrastructure Based on Open Standards.
- Amey Godse and Sunil Shah of Duality Robotics presented on Building Digital Site Twins Using Geospatial Data and Artificial Intelligence.
The speakers then participated in a panel fielding audience questions, including their views on the fundamental scope of the AI domain in a geospatial context, and what types of machine learning need OGC’s attention and which may be less relevant. OGC Members can access the presentations and a recording on this page in the OGC Portal.

The joint Opening session on Tuesday featured keynote remarks from Colin Low, Chief Executive, SLA, and myself. The Guest of Honor was Dr. Mohamad Maliki Bin Osman, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, Second Minister for Education & Foreign Affairs. The session also featured presentations from local students who had performed impressive geospatial projects in their primary schools. It finished with a panel on “Geospatial: Enriching Minds, Empowering Lives,” which was also the key theme for the Singapore Geospatial Festival.
The theme of the Member Meeting was “Building future standards for the next generation of geospatial experts.” Meeting Special Sessions
The week continued with its usual array of SWG and DWG meetings, interspersed with several special sessions, outlined below.

The OGC Data Quality DWG held two sessions to comprise a workshop covering a breadth of data quality topics. The first session focused on the work of ISO/TC 211 on data quality measures and a registry to be hosted by OGC. The second session included presentations on the data quality requirements and considerations for a variety of types of geospatial data, including 3D and imagery. OGC Members can access the presentations and a recording on this page in the OGC Portal.

The session on Modeling of Humanities’ Spatio-Temporal Data was organized by participants in the HumSpatial Consortium, in which OGC participates, to address the complexities of representing “named places” in geospatial technologies. Presentations were given by scholars and practitioners from the humanities research and government sectors heavily involved with place-names and other types of geospatial data. OGC Members can access the presentations and a recording on this page in the OGC Portal.

Several sessions over the course of the week included presentations related to Digital Twins, often in the context of other domains, such as Artificial Intelligence or Data Quality. A dedicated special session for Digital Twins was organized to demonstrate different information types and practices and facilitate discussion on the relative meaning/relationship between digital twins, the metaverse, and the industrial metaverse. OGC Members can access the presentations and a recording on this page in the OGC Portal.

The OGC Academy is an information portal for distributing OGC knowledge related to the work of the Consortium and general geospatial interoperability. The web-based resources are under development with an estimated completion in 2026. Content is continuously refreshed. This session discussed capacity building and the academy more broadly. OGC Members can access the presentations and a recording on this page in the OGC Portal.

The OGC Marine DWG organized a follow-up session to the one hosted last year in Singapore on “Connecting Land and Sea” to highlight activities in the OGC Federated Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure Pilot as well as work from OGC members around the world. OGC Members can access the presentations and a recording on this page in the OGC Portal.

The Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) ad hoc session highlighted work in ISO/TC 204, with whom OGC maintains a liaison, and explored the next steps for related work in OGC. Attendees generally accepted that ITS work intersected several OGC Working Groups and that a new effort to refine the road network model developed in TC 204 would be suitable for OGC activities. OGC Members can access the presentations and a recording on this page in the OGC Portal.

At each OGC Member Meeting, one or more local forums meet to present and discuss topics of regional interest. On Friday of the Member Meeting, the OGC Asia forum offered a short history on the forum and five presentations from across the region. OGC Members can access the presentations and a recording on this page in the OGC Portal.
Winston Yap from the National University of Singapore’s Urban Analytics Lab presents during the Digital Twins Special Session. Closing and Important Things
The Member Meeting’s Closing session began with the Important Things session and my rapid, 15-minute summary of the entire meeting week that included slides and content from a large number of Working Group sessions. OGC Members can access the presentation and a recording on this page in the OGC Portal.

The Important Things session then proceeded with two discussion topics:
- “Is the ‘fundamental model’ of geospatial 2D, 3D, 4D, or more D?” with consideration to whether the minimum number of dimensions is necessary, or whether all dimensions should just be assumed.
- “The need to establish a policy for the governance of building blocks” where the TC concluded that more discrete definitions are needed for “building blocks” and other registered items that act as useful components in geospatial architecture.
Notes from the session were recorded in the Etherpad “Important-Things-2023-09”, which is available to OGC Members via the Portal.

The formal Closing Plenary then followed, which focuses on Working Group presentations and voting. The session advanced a number of Standards, SWGs, and documents toward vote or publication, so keep your eye on our news page, or subscribe to the “Standards updates” topic on the OGC Mailing List to get notifications sent straight to your inbox.
Thank you
Our 127th Member Meeting was yet another memorable meeting. It’s so great to see OGC Members discuss, collaborate, and drive technology and standards development forward in support of some of the biggest issues facing humanity. Once again, a sincere thank you to our members for investing their time and energy, as well as their dedication to making OGC the world’s leading and most comprehensive community of location experts.

Be sure to join us at TU Delft, Netherlands, on March 25-29, 2024, for our 128th Member Meeting. Registration and further info will be available soon on ogcmeet.org. Sponsorship opportunities are also available – contact us for more info. You can subscribe to the “Events” and other topics on the OGC Mailing List to stay up to date on all aspects of OGC, including when registration goes live for our Member Meetings.

In the meantime, don’t miss our 2023 Innovation Days event, December 5-7 in Washington, DC, USA. The multi-day event brings together policy makers, program decision-makers, and other experts in geospatial to showcase climate, emergency, and disaster management & resilience solutions that scale from local to global impacts.
Attendees of the 127th OGC Member Meeting in Singapore, 2023.
The post A recap of the 127th OGC Member Meeting, Singapore appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
05 October 2023
9:00
OGC and the International Data Spaces Association sign Memorandum of Understanding
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the International Data Spaces Association (IDSA) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that outlines how they will together contribute to a flourishing data economy through the creation and development of standards for data spaces that ensure sovereign, interoperable, and trusted data sharing.

“As the number of available data sources continues to grow, the challenge of integrating them into high-value products becomes ever greater,” commented OGC Chief Technology Innovation Officer, Ingo Simonis, Ph.D. “In order to develop effective solutions for cross-border data integration, international collaboration is critical. As such, OGC is eager to work with IDSA to tackle this task together.”

“Committed to driving digital transformation, IDSA champions economic growth, innovation, and a cohesive data-sharing approach,” said Silvia Castellvi, Director of Research & Standardization at IDSA. “Partnering with OGC ensures our standards align and resonate. Enhancing features, like the geolocation of IDS Connectors, not only advances our standard but boosts its appeal for future developers and users.”

OGC is an international non-profit consortium aiming to make geospatial (location) information and data services FAIR – Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. IDSA is an international non-profit association that follows a user-driven approach to create a global standard for international data spaces and interfaces based on sovereign data sharing.

The MoU seeks to align activities between the two organizations so that OGC and IDSA Standards can work in tandem. This will be achieved in part through joint participation in potential future projects and initiatives, particularly in the areas of global supply chains, intelligent transport, and smart city data spaces.

Projects in global supply chains and intelligent transport may include developing solutions that support the monitoring of shipping routes, tracking freight, sharing ocean currents and weather data, and more. Projects in smart city data spaces could focus on improving data sharing from business and technical perspectives, and could include data ranging from traffic to population migration.

The two organizations have already identified several ongoing or completed projects relevant to their work together, including: Divine, Flexigrobots, DEMETER, ATLAS & AgriDataValue, Iliad, AD4GD, OGC Rainbow, and others.

About IDSA
The International Data Spaces Association (IDSA) is on a mission to create the future of the global, digital economy. Its 140+ member companies and institutions have created the International Data Spaces (IDS) standard: a secure system of sovereign and trusted data sharing in which all participants can realize the full value of their data. IDS enables new smart services and innovative business processes to work across companies and industries, while ensuring that the control of data remains in the hands of data providers. We call this data sovereignty.
Visit internationaldataspaces.org for more information

Press contact:
Nora Grass
+49 162 2104263
nora.gras@internationaldataspaces.org

The post OGC and the International Data Spaces Association sign Memorandum of Understanding appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
04 October 2023
15:00
CoverageJSON v1.0 Adopted as OGC Community Standard
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is excited to announce that version 1.0 of CoverageJSON has been approved by the OGC Membership for adoption as an official OGC Community Standard. CoverageJSON enables the development of interactive visualizations that display and manipulate spatio-temporal data within a web browser.

The key design goals for CoverageJSON are simplicity, machine and human readability, and efficiency in the storage and use of complex data.

Coverages and collections of coverages can be encoded using CoverageJSON. Coverage data may be gridded or non-gridded, and data values may represent continuous values (such as temperature) or discrete categories (such as classes of land cover).

This OGC Community Standard was an outcome of the European Union project “Maximizing the Exploitation of Linked Open Data in Enterprise and Science” (MELODIES), which ran from 2013 to 2016, and was released under a Creative Commons 4.0 License by the University of Reading. There are several widely-used open source implementations and libraries available. Furthermore, CoverageJSON is one of the encodings supported by the OGC API – Environmental Data Retrieval Standard.

CoverageJSON is based on the popular JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), and provides an effective, efficient format that’s friendly to web and application developers and consistent with the OGC API family of Standards.

CoverageJSON supports the efficient transfer of usable quantities of data from big data stores to lightweight clients, such as browsers and mobile applications. This enables straightforward local manipulation of the data by scientists and other users.

The simplest and most common use-case is to embed all the data values of all variables in a Coverage object within the CoverageJSON document to create a self-contained, standalone, document that supports the use of very simple clients.

Another simple use case is to put data values for each variable (parameter) in separate array objects in separate CoverageJSON documents that are linked from a parent CoverageJSON object. This is useful for a multi-variable dataset, such as one with temperature, humidity, wind speed, etc., to be recorded in separate files. This allows the client to load only the variables of interest.

A sophisticated use case is to use tiling objects, where the data values are partitioned spatially and temporally, so that a single variable’s data values would be split among several documents. A simple example of this use case is encoding each time step of a dataset into a separate file, but the tiles could also be divided spatially, like a tiled map server implementation.

As with any OGC Standard, the OGC CoverageJSON Community Standard is free to download and implement. Interested parties can learn more about, view, and download the Standard from OGC’s CoverageJSON Community Standard Page.

The post CoverageJSON v1.0 Adopted as OGC Community Standard appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
27 September 2023
15:00
Wuhan University receives OGC Community Impact Award
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has announced Wuhan University, represented by Professor Peng Yue, as the latest recipient of the OGC Community Impact Award. The award was presented at the VIP Dinner of the 127th OGC Member Meeting in Singapore.

The Community Impact Award is given by OGC to highlight and recognize those members of the OGC Community who, through their exceptional leadership, volunteerism, collaboration, and investment, have had a positive impact on the wider geospatial community.

“Wuhan University and Professor Peng Yue exemplify the mission of OGC through their combined efforts in technical leadership and international consensus building,” commented OGC Chief Standards Officer, Scott Simmons. “Their recent contributions toward standardization in AI were inclusive of the breadth of OGC membership and will prove truly useful for the geospatial community.”

Wuhan University has, and continues to, make an impact within the OGC Community through their active leadership, international collaboration, and engagement across numerous OGC Collaborative Solutions and Innovation Program (COSI) Initiatives, Working Groups, Member Meetings, and the OGC China Forum. Professor Peng Yue was also the primary lead on the newly published Training Data Markup Language for Artificial Intelligence (Part 1) Standard.

The OGC Community Impact award highlights the importance of collaboration, volunteering time and energy, advancing technologies and standards, raising awareness, and helping solve critical issues across the geospatial community. Wuhan University exemplifies all of these qualities in their work to drive innovation and standards for AI/ML and associated training data, and their efforts in leading the OGC Community in China.

The post Wuhan University receives OGC Community Impact Award appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
26 September 2023
15:00
OGC Adopts Training Data Markup Language for Artificial Intelligence Conceptual Model as Official Standard
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is excited to announce that the OGC Membership has approved the OGC Training Data Markup Language for Artificial Intelligence (TrainingDML-AI) Part 1: Conceptual Model for adoption as an official OGC Standard. The Standard defines the conceptual model for standardized geospatial training data for Machine Learning.

Training data plays a fundamental role in Earth Observation (EO) Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning (AI/ML) applications, especially Deep Learning (DL). It is used to train, validate, and test AI/ML models. Understanding the source and applicability of training data allows for better understanding of the results of AI/ML operations.

To maximize the interoperability and re-usability of geospatial training data, the TrainingDML-AI Standard defines a model and encodings consistent with the OGC Standards baseline to exchange and retrieve the training data via the Web. Part 1 of the Standard contains the Conceptual Model, as well as example JSON encodings. Future Parts of the Standard will cover other encodings.

Additionally, the Standard provides detailed metadata for formalizing the information model of training data. This includes but is not limited to the following aspects:
- How the training data is prepared, such as provenance and quality;
- How to specify different metadata used for different ML tasks;
- How to differentiate the high-level training data information model and extended information models specific to various ML applications;
- How to describe the version, license, and training data size;
- How to introduce external classification schemes and flexible means for representing ground-truth labeling.
OGC Members interested in staying up to date on future progress of this standard, or contributing to its development, are encouraged to join the Training Data Markup Language for AI Standards Working Group via the OGC Portal. Non-OGC members who would like to know more about participating in this SWG are encouraged to contact the OGC Standards Program.

As with any OGC standard, the open OGC Training Data Markup Language for Artificial Intelligence (TrainingDML-AI) Part 1: Conceptual Model Standard is free to download and implement.

The post OGC Adopts Training Data Markup Language for Artificial Intelligence Conceptual Model as Official Standard appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
14 September 2023
16:05
Making The Data Count, Not Just Counting The Data
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

After three years of collaborative development, the release of the first iteration of the IGIF-(M)SDI Maturity Roadmap is a milestone moment in exploiting geospatial data for the inclusive socio-economic development of nations. This Maturity Roadmap – involving the UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO) as lead sponsor, as well as the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), the World Bank Group, and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – complements existing resources by providing a quantitative toolkit for nations, ministries, departments, agencies, regions, municipalities, and even individual cities or ports, to benchmark their geospatial development against the United Nations’ Integrated Geospatial Information Framework (IGIF) principles. This independent initiative aligns with, and supports, the mission, vision, and goals of the UN-GGIM initiative (Global Geospatial Information Management), who developed the IGIF core principles for all geospatial data considerations.
(Marine) Spatial Data Infrastructure
IGIF provides a vision for developing and strengthening geospatial information management, to assist countries in bridging the geospatial digital divide, secure socio-economic prosperity, and leave no community behind. Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure ((M)SDI) is the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO)’s concept for a future ecosystem of marine data services that can enable the IGIF vision to become a reality. Empowered by OGC standards, the interoperable (M)SDI data services can “make it real through technology.” Bringing these elements together in a straightforward and accessible document, the intent of the Maturity Roadmap is to provide a quantitative “quick start” or “stepping stone” for nations beginning an IGIF-aligned (M)SDI implementation.

With its terrestrial heritage, the World Bank SDI Diagnostic Toolkit is augmented with IHO and OGC contributions to maximise its benefits to the marine community, while remaining aligned with the IGIF principles and, therefore, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As a guiding simplification, the involvement of the World Bank is crucial in providing answers for questions around financing (including business cases), alongside the ‘why’ (UN), ‘what’ (IHO), and ‘how’ (OGC). This aspect of measuring socio-economic return is commonly a key hurdle that prevents real-world progress beyond concepts and ideas. The modular IHO and OGC additions ensure interoperability with the World Bank IGIF methodology, which can lead to the financing of approved (M)SDI development projects. Even as an independent tool, undertaking an (M)SDI assessment provides a clear reference point aligned with international best practice. Without such a starting point, progress towards any (M)SDI end-state will be difficult to govern and manage.
Fully interoperable across all geospatial domains
As part of the OGC’s Federated Marine SDI (FMSDI) initiative, the Maturity Roadmap seeks to promote the inclusive development of an IGIF-Aligned (M)SDI as the marine and maritime community’s contribution to an all-domain National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) across air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace. Although initially adapted for marine considerations, the Maturity Roadmap is fully interoperable across all geospatial domains and scalable from the national level to regions, municipalities, cities, ports, and government departments or agencies.

Within the Maturity Roadmap, the concept of an IGIF-(M)SDI Balanced Pathway of Development seeks to promote inclusive geospatial development via two key messages: ‘driving technology, not being driven by technology’ and ‘making the data count, not just counting the data.’

These twin ideas promote the effective governance of technology & standards to meet sovereign national requirements, however expansive or constrained, over the acquisition and possession of the latest technological solutions independent of cost-benefit considerations. OGC contributes to this by providing best practice around the implementation of standards, alongside an active cross-sector global forum to share applied knowledge, cooperate on emerging technologies, and collaborate on standards development. The engagement of the OGC membership at all levels of socio-economic development is vital for realising the cost benefits stemming from the common implementation of technologies across different countries, regions, sectors, and communities, regardless of economic spend.
The benefits of benchmarking IGIF-MSDI maturity
When objectively and independently applied, the benchmarking provided by the IGIF-(M)SDI Maturity Roadmap offers a useful planning and comparison baseline for countries undertaking a public geospatial development programme. The example here is a radar chart output across nine assessment categories corresponding to the IGIF Nine Pathways, for an initial baseline – and a subsequent baseline two years later. The underlying data is from real-world assessments taken under World Bank and partner oversight, which was openly published by the Agency for Land Relations and Cadastre of the Republic of Moldova. Such benchmarking exercises can be executed across different scales (from whole nations to cities or ports) and across different domains (from space to cyberspace), sometimes yielding deep insights into potential opportunities around discovered disparities.

Also included with the Maturity Roadmap is a practically orientated appendix that covers best practice for multi-agency governance, where, during a national geospatial development programme, multiple agencies or departments may have to work closely to operationally deliver joint geospatial outcomes. This may be useful in situations where long-standing traditions and conventions could have created a culture that is not conducive to the tight-knit cooperation needed to develop complex IGIF-(M)SDI solutions. Such solutions require the pooling of expertise, resources, and capabilities that one or even two agencies can not provide alone.
Positive approach to improve ineffective practices is essential to joint IGIF-(M)SDI success
One crucial characteristic for joint IGIF-(M)SDI success is a healthy scepticism and a drive to improve ineffective practices, especially when they have become entrenched as tradition, convention, or “how things have always been done.” I like to counter such perceptions, particularly amongst those that genuinely want to evolve, with the view that “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.” Long-term existing practices may have been fine because they met some requirement in a particular environment and once satisfied a need effectively. However, maintaining those same practices now, when society’s expectations and technology have moved forward, can lead to stagnation.

Departments and agencies should foster a keen interest in human behaviour around the use (and misuse) of data or information. Traditional or conventional “hard governance” centres around the assumption that people only make the wrong decisions because they have the wrong information or not enough of it. This traditional view of data governance then coalesces into hard compliance measures and management surveillance, which includes formal audits, regular in-depth reporting, restrictive checklists, and a focus on top-down, non-negotiable command & control. This approach was suited to traditional mass manufacturing of standardised products, but is insufficient by itself for modern data services that are digital-first by design and characterised by near real-time changes.

Soft governance works with the grain of human behaviour to achieve better results by enablement and empowerment, rather than by command and control alone. Principles take precedent over prescription, thus allowing an organisation to leverage the deep insights and frontline experiences of their entire workforce. Shortcut thinking, lack of active engagement and wrong assumptions are some of the key targets for a soft governance approach, which still requires the ultimate backstop of hard governance – but meaningfully targeted and monitored using a risk-based approach. Combining the two approaches can yield outsized and transformative results, which is essential for joint IGIF-(M)SDI success that leaves no community behind.

The IGIF-(M)SDI Maturity Roadmap and related resources are available for free on OGC’s IGIF-(M)SDI Maturity Roadmap webpage.

To best inform future revisions, iterations, and the optimization of the Roadmap, feedback and applied experiences from the geospatial community are sought via OGC Member Meetings, Forums, or directly.

The IGIF-(M)SDI Maturity Roadmap is an independent initiative not endorsed by or officially connected to, but in alignment and support of, the mission, vision, and goals of the United Nations Initiative on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM).

Dr. Gerald J Wong is the Data Governance Lead at the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO), which is a world-leading centre for hydrography and an executive agency of the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Dr Wong is the Lead Author of the IGIF-(M)SDI Maturity Roadmap, being a specialist in synergising traditional rules-based hard governance with modern and empowering soft governance, which works with the grain of human behaviour to achieve better outcomes.

As an OGC Strategic Member and a sponsor of OGC’s FMSDI initiative, the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO) is the UK’s agency for providing hydrographic and marine geospatial data to mariners and maritime organisations across the world. The UKHO is responsible for operational support to the Royal Navy and other defence customers. Supplying defence and the commercial shipping industry, the organisation helps ensure Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), protect the marine environment, and support the efficiency of global trade.

Together with other national hydrographic offices and the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO), the UKHO works to develop and raise global standards of hydrography, cartography, and navigation. The UKHO also produces a commercial portfolio of ADMIRALTY Maritime Data Solutions, providing SOLAS-compliant charts, publications, and digital services for ships trading internationally.

The post Making The Data Count, Not Just Counting The Data appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
12 September 2023
15:00
Registrations Open for OGC’s October 2023 Open Standards Code Sprint
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) invites software developers to the October 2023 Open Standards Code Sprint. The hybrid event will be held on Oct. 30 to Nov. 1, with the face-to-face element held at the Geovation Hub in London. A pre-event webinar will be held on October 12th. Participation is free and open to the public. Registration is available on the OGC Open Standards Code Sprint website. Travel support funding is available.

The Code Sprint is sponsored at the Gold Level by OGC Strategic Member Ordnance Survey (OS), and at the Silver Level by OGC Member the European Union Satellite Centre (SatCen). Additional support comes from OGC Strategic Member the US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) and OGC Principal Member the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). Additional sponsorship opportunities remain available for organizations to support the geospatial development community while promoting their products or services. Visit the Event Sponsorship page for more information.

The code sprint will be a collaborative and inclusive event to support the development of Open Standards and supporting applications. All OGC Standards are in scope for this code sprint.

OGC code sprints experiment with emerging ideas in the context of geospatial standards, help improve interoperability of existing standards by experimenting with new extensions or profiles, and are used for building proofs-of-concept to support standards development activities and enhancement of software products.

Non-coding activities such as testing, working on documentation, or reporting issues are also welcome during the code sprint. The Code Sprint also provides the opportunity, via its mentor stream, to onboard developers new to OGC Standards.

A one-hour pre-event webinar will take place on October 12 at 14:00 BST (UTC+1). The webinar will outline the scope of work for the code sprint and provide other useful information for participants. Any participants interested in Imagery formats will be invited to stay on after the webinar for a technical overview of the formats in focus for the code sprint. As with the virtual portion of the sprint, the pre-event webinar will take place on OGC’s Discord server.

The Code Sprint will prototype and advance implementations of multiple approved and candidate OGC Standards, for example:
- OGC API Standards including SensorThings
- GeoPose
- OGC CDB
- JSON-FG
- OGC Styles & Symbology
- OGC MUDDI
…and more.

In the context of OGC Standards, the Code Sprint will also experiment with the ability to access or provide imagery conforming to NGA’s emerging GEOINT Imagery Media for ISR (GIMI) Profile through implementations of OGC API Standards. The GIMI Profile is based on the ISO/IEC 23008-12 High Efficiently Image File Format (HEIF) and the ISO/IEC 14496-12 ISO Base Media File Format (ISOBMFF) standards. This part of the Code Sprint will also prototype creation of GIMI files from still imagery encoded in JPEG 2000 (with GMLJP2), and motion imagery encoded in H.264 and H.265 formats.

Some Travel Support Funding is available for selected participants. Anyone interested in receiving travel support funding should indicate their interest on the registration form. Requests for funding will need to be received before October 2. They will be notified within 2 weeks of their application whether their application for travel support is approved or not.

The code sprint begins at 09:00 UTC on October 30 with an onboarding session, and ends at 17:00 UTC on November 1. To learn more about future and previous OGC code sprints, visit the OGC Developer Events Wiki or join OGC’s Discord server.

Registration for in-person participation closes at 17:00 UTC on October 25. Registration for remote participation will remain open throughout the code sprint. Registration and further information is available on The Code Sprint website.

The post Registrations Open for OGC’s October 2023 Open Standards Code Sprint appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
24 August 2023
15:00
OGC forms new GeoParquet Standards Working Group
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is excited to announce the formation of the OGC GeoParquet Standards Working Group (SWG). The new SWG will work to advance the GeoParquet encoding format for adoption as an OGC Encoding Standard for cloud-native vector data.

GeoParquet adds geospatial types to Apache Parquet, described by Apache as “an open source, column-oriented data file format designed for efficient data storage and retrieval. It provides efficient data compression and encoding schemes with enhanced performance to handle complex data in bulk.” For an introduction to the GeoParquet format, see this blog post.

GeoParquet started over 3 years ago as a community effort by different Open Source Projects and organizations that have committed to its implementation and support.

OGC is advancing a number of Standards to enable cloud-native geospatial ecosystems. GeoParquet fits in the group of data encoding Standards that are highly performant for large, cloud-based data stores, such as Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF for tiled rasters and Zarr for datacubes. GeoParquet will, in time, enable vector datasets to be as readily accessible from the cloud as the other formats already well-used in the community.

The GeoParquet SWG will take the initial efforts incubated in OGC’s GeoParquet GitHub repository as a draft specification from which a candidate Standard will be developed. As with many other recent OGC Standards, the repository will remain open to contributions from outside OGC and documentation will evolve in concert with prototype implementations.

GeoParquet will be another encoding of the OGC Simple Features Standard, and as such will handle all Simple Feature geometries. While other OGC Standards also encode Simple Features, GeoParquet is intended to be optimized for native use in cloud environments. It is expected that GeoParquet will be tested as an encoding to be accessed by the OGC API family of Standards. The new SWG expects to have a candidate Standard ready for review and approval within one year.

The OGC GeoParquet Standards Working Group Charter is publicly available via the OGC Portal.

OGC Members can join the GeoParquet Standards Working Group via the OGC Portal. Non-OGC members are welcomed to contribute via OGC’s GeoParquet GitHub repository or by joining the OGC GeoParquet SWG Mailing List. Non-OGC members who would like to know more about full participation in the SWG are encouraged to contact the OGC Standards Program.

The post OGC forms new GeoParquet Standards Working Group appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
21 August 2023
15:00
OGC, UKHO, and partners release the IGIF-(M)SDI Maturity Roadmap
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is pleased to host and release the first iteration of the IGIF-(M)SDI Maturity Roadmap and supporting materials for community consideration and engagement across not only the marine domain, but any geospatial domain connected to the oceans.

Developed as part of OGC’s ongoing Federated Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure (FMSDI) Initiative, the Integrated Geospatial Information Framework – (Marine) Spatial Data Infrastructure (IGIF-(M)SDI) Maturity Roadmap is a quick-start guide for nations and marine organizations that seeks to advance and simplify efforts in Marine SDI and ensure their alignment with the UN-IGIF principles.

“The IGIF-MSDI maturity roadmap is an important step that supports a holistic understanding of data-exchange and -processing environments,” commented OGC Chief Technology Innovation Officer, Ingo Simonis, Ph.D. “The Roadmap enhances and complements the usual technological focus of SDIs with the equally important criteria outlined in the IGIF Principles. With the Roadmap, OGC continues its engagement and research in support of powerful, sustainable, interoperable geospatial ecosystems at all levels, including technology & standards, policies, communities, education, and capacity building efforts.”

One of the key messages of the document is that an (M)SDI is a continual journey and not an “end state” of expensive technological solutions. The document asserts that nations are sovereign in what manner of (M)SDI they genuinely need for their national requirements, and not governed by an externally imposed or presumed level of technological sophistication.

“Working collaboratively with partners at the World Bank, NOAA, OGC, IHO, and private industry, The UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO) believes that the IGIF-(M)SDI Maturity Roadmap will help many Governments begin their IGIF-aligned digital transformation journeys – whether that be within the Marine or Terrestrial domains,” commented Dr. Gerald J Wong, Data Governance Lead, UKHO.

“As an accessible “Quick Start” or “Stepping Stone” toolkit, the core of the IGIF-(M)SDI Maturity Roadmap is formed by the World Bank SDI Diagnostic Toolkit where, with contributions from IHO and OGC, its Terrestrial heritage was augmented to maximize its benefits to the Marine community. The IGIF-(M)SDI Maturity Roadmap is aligned with the UN-IGIF principles and is fully interoperable with Terrestrial interests.”

When properly executed, the resulting MSDI Diagnostic Toolkit provides a quantitative assessment for nations or marine agencies to baseline their MSDI maturity, as aligned to the UN-IGIF principles. The modular IHO and OGC additions ensure interoperability with the World Bank IGIF methodology, which can lead to the financing of approved MSDI development projects. Even as an independent tool, undertaking an MSDI assessment provides a clear reference point that’s aligned with international Best Practice. Without such a starting point, progress towards any MSDI end state will be difficult to govern and manage.

“As the provider of ADMIRALTY navigation products and services worldwide, the UKHO supports nations in unlocking the many and varied benefits of their marine space,” commented James Carey, Deputy Chief Data Officer at the UKHO “We are a strategic member of the Open Geospatial Consortium and proudly lend our expertise to the development of Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure (MSDI), as an enabler of security, prosperity, and environmental stewardship. By fusing marine data with spatial insights it is possible to forge a path to a more interconnected world where oceans inspire growth and communities prosper.”

The IGIF-(M)SDI Maturity Roadmap and related resources are available for free on OGC’s IGIF-(M)SDI Maturity Roadmap webpage.

To best inform future revisions, iterations, and the optimization of the Roadmap, feedback and applied experiences from the geospatial community are sought via OGC Member Meetings, Forums, or directly.

The IGIF-(M)SDI Maturity Roadmap is an independent initiative not endorsed by or officially connected to, but in alignment and support of, the mission, vision, and goals of the United Nations Initiative on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM).

The post OGC, UKHO, and partners release the IGIF-(M)SDI Maturity Roadmap appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
17 August 2023
10:49
European Innovation, Global Impact
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

From Europe to the World, OGC’s Collaborative Solutions and Innovation (COSI) Program is proud of its ongoing contributions to European research topics related to geospatial data. The research topics are driven by projects co-funded by the European Commission (EC) and cover many different domains and fields of application, including data spaces, climate, digital building permits, agriculture, digital twins for the oceans, knowledge generation, and beyond. While these topics are high on the European research agenda, the challenges – as well as their solutions – have global application.

These EC-funded projects are organised as small or large consortiums where different organisations cover different aspects of the projects’ objectives. As one such organisation, OGC is proud to play its part in the European Digital Strategy that is helping to ensure a secure and sustainable life for citizens of Europe and beyond.

OGC’s COSI Program conducts and organises its research around a central theme of “Full Spectrum Interoperability and Agile Reference Architecture.” Full Spectrum Interoperability refers to capturing the many different facets of interoperability that exist between systems. Agile Reference Architecture explores how software architectures can be developed and operated in a cost-efficient, agile, and sustainable manner that also maximises interoperability between systems. This research theme is therefore complementary to the European Digital Strategy.

Much of OGC’s current European work was showcased at the OGC European Innovation Days at Data Week Leipzig 2023. This blog post serves to provide an overview of that work and more for those who couldn’t attend – and who don’t want to have to wait for the next OGC European Innovation Days showcase, to be held July 2024 at FOSS4G Europe in Tartu, Estonia.
Data Spaces
Strong progress is being made towards Common European Data Spaces with the projects All Data for Green Deal (AD4GD) and Urban Data Space for Green Deal (USAGE). In both of these projects, OGC is contributing to the development of interoperable, federated systems that support information dissemination and knowledge generation. Such systems will use OGC Standards to enable interoperability at several technical and administrative levels and optimise the value chain that transforms raw data into decision-ready information.

AD4GD’s mission is to co-create and shape the European Green Deal Data Space as an open hub for FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data and standards-based services that support the key priorities of pollution, biodiversity, and climate change. The focus is on interoperability concepts that will bridge the semantic and technology gaps that are currently preventing stakeholders and application domains from accessing multi-disciplinary and multi-scale data. These gaps are also impeding the full exploitation of processing services and processing platforms at different levels, including Cloud, HPC and edge computing. AD4GD recently published this blog post summarising its second plenary meeting, which was co-located with Data Week Leipzig 2023.

The Horizon Europe USAGE project aims to provide solutions and mechanisms for making city-level environmental and climate data FAIR – and thus available to everyone. Leveraging standards for data and service interoperability, such solutions combine innovative governance mechanisms, consolidated arrangements, AI-based tools, and data analytics to streamline the sharing, access, and use of authoritative and crowdsourced city-level Earth Observation (EO) and Internet of Things (IoT) data.

In both of these projects, OGC Standards will play a fundamental part in enabling the resulting FAIR solutions. The main research challenge is developing Building Blocks for common data problems. These Building Blocks bring together data models, examples, code snippets, and schemas, and undergo continuous testing to make them easily accessible and usable by developers, modellers, and users. The goal is to identify and describe common patterns that exist across communities. This will lead to enhanced interoperability within and between data spaces.

Interested in learning more about Data Spaces? OGC will host a session on European common data spaces at the 2023 INSPIRE Conference this November.
Climate
OGC’s current crop of climate-related projects seek to support FAIR climate services and streamline the value chain that transforms raw data into decision-ready information.

Specifically, as part of the Climate Intelligence (CLINT) project, OGC is developing blueprints for transforming scientific algorithms into climate application packages that can be deployed, regardless of their backend, in the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) Climate Data Store (CDS). More widely, the CLINT project seeks to develop Machine Learning (ML) techniques and algorithms that climate scientists can use to process the large climate datasets required for predicting and identifying the causes of extreme events such as heatwaves, warm nights, droughts, and tropical cyclones.

Focusing on the health impacts of climate change, the CLIMOS (Climate Monitoring and Decision Support Framework for Sand Fly-borne Diseases Detection and Mitigation with COst-benefit and Climate-policy MeasureS) project aims to mitigate the emergence, transmission, and spread of pathogens by sand flies. The project is establishing an Early Warning System and decision support tools for more accurate climate and health models. It will also provide predictions of infection risk and spread, as well as adaptation options. OGC is addressing the interoperability challenges faced when combining health, environmental, Earth observation, and climate model data.
Digital Building Permits
OGC is bringing its geospatial expertise to the digitalisation of building permits across two projects: ACCORD and CHEK. Albeit with a different focus, both projects aim to transform what is currently a largely manual process into a semi-automated one that allows building applications to be submitted in digital form.

In support of sustainability and resource conservation, the ACCORD (Automated Compliance Checks for Construction, Renovation, or Demolition works) has a strong focus on regulations analysis and the use of ontologies and linked data to automate the compliance checks. ACCORD will develop a semantic framework for European digital building permit processes, regulations, data, and tools. This framework will drive the formalisation of rules and the integration of existing compliance tools as Standards-based microservices, for example using OGC APIs. The solutions and tools being developed by ACCORD will provide consistency, interoperability, and reliability with national regulatory frameworks, processes, and standards.

The CHEK (Change toolkit for digital building permit) project is looking at the entire workflow for the digitalisation of building permits and is facilitating the introduction of digital building permit procedures for municipalities by developing flexible, adaptable solutions that take into account all the rules and conditions of the procedure. As with ACCORD, CHEK is using a Standards-based microservices approach to its architecture. CHEK will also develop training for municipalities, which will be made available through the Location Innovation Academy (see below).

As part of CHEK, OGC is investigating how needs-based data models can be derived dynamically as profiles of common conceptual models. The goal is to leave behind the basic problems of standardised data models. Due to their ambition to comprehensively represent a domain, they tend to be over-specified. On the other hand, to adapt to the needs of different use cases, they allow too much flexibility in implementation and modelling details. OGC is currently focused mostly on the transformation of administrative data using ontologies generated from CityGML and CityJSON.
Agriculture
The DEMETER project, which is now coming to an end, has helped to digitally transform Europe’s agri-food sector. DEMTER adopted advanced IoT technologies, data science, and smart farming to ensure the long-term viability and sustainability of the agriculture sector. One of the key results is the production of an Agriculture Information Model (AIM). The AIM is a data model and ontology for agriculture applications that ensures semantic interoperability between data and components involved in agri-food applications. To further enhance the AIM, OGC has now formed the Agriculture Information Model Standards Working Group (AIM SWG). The OGC AIM will provide a common language for agriculture applications to harmonise and improve data and metadata exchange by defining the required data elements, including concepts, properties, and relationships relevant to agriculture applications, as well as their associated semantics/meaning for information exchange.
Oceans and the Blue Economy
The Iliad Digital Twins of the Ocean project is developing a federated, multidimensional representation of the maritime and oceanic ecosystem. As with many of these projects, OGC Standards will be used to enhance the value chain as data sourced from smart IoT, satellite Earth Observations, and Citizen Science is transformed into decision-ready information and knowledge. As such, it fits perfectly into the OGC focus theme of “marine spaces.”

Iliad is developing several Digital Twin pilots in a number of key areas, including: wind energy; renewable energy from the ocean (currents, waves & floating solar); fisheries & aquaculture; marine traffic & harbour safety; pollution; met ocean data (hind, now & forecasts); biodiversity assessments & monitoring; and insurance for marine & maritime activities.

OGC is involved in defining the standards-based Data Transfer Object (DTO) data management APIs built on the OGC APIs framework, as well as ensuring semantic interoperability between the APIs, Citizen Science, and thematic domains. Finally, we are leading standardisation and best practice tasks to enable the solution to fit within the ecosystem of the Digital Twin of the Earth.
Location Innovation Academy
The recently launched Location Innovation Academy is a free online training program based on the knowledge and ideas generated by the GeoE3 project. The free online academy empowers users to improve the accessibility, interoperability, and integration of their geospatial data and services. The academy is currently targeted towards national mapping agencies, meteorological institutions, and other organisations producing or using geospatial data from different countries. The Academy aims to help overcome the interoperability gaps that still exist between European countries.

The growing online training package currently includes three different courses for developing skills in: Data Management; Service Management; and Data and Service Integration.

The Location Innovation Academy also serves as the experimentation platform for a future OGC Academy that will help learners access and exploit the enormous amounts of knowledge generated by OGC. The Location Innovation Academy is hosted by OGC at academy.ogc.org. In support of the academy, OGC is also a Pact For Skills Member.

The Academy continues to be the main component of the DIS4SME project. DIS4SME aims to provide SMEs with high quality specialised training courses on data interoperability across different areas, including location data.
By Europe, for the World
As a participant in projects funded by the European Commission, OGC’s COSI Program – with its complementary research theme of “Full Spectrum Interoperability and Agile Reference Architecture” – is proud to develop valuable solutions that support the European Digital Strategy and help ensure a secure and sustainable life for not only the citizens of Europe, but the entire world.

The next OGC European Innovation Days showcase will be held July 2024 at FOSS4G Europe in Tartu, Estonia.

OGC is also hosting a session on European common data spaces at the 2023 INSPIRE Conference this November.

To stay up to date on all things OGC, including European projects, funding opportunities, Standards development, events, and more, subscribe to the OGC Newsletter.

The post European Innovation, Global Impact appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
08 August 2023
15:00
OGC API – Environmental Data Retrieval v1.1 Adopted as Official Standard
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is excited to announce that version 1.1 of the OGC API – Environmental Data Retrieval (EDR) Standard has been approved by the OGC Membership for adoption as an official Standard.

The Standard is part of the OGC API family of Standards that each help advance OGC’s Mission to make the world’s location information FAIR: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.

The OGC API – EDR Standard makes it easy to access a wide range of data through a uniform, well-defined, simple Web interface that provides users with purely the data they require while shielding them from the complexities of the underlying data storage technologies.

A major use case for an EDR API is to retrieve small subsets from large collections of environmental data, such as weather forecasts, though many other types of data can be accessed. The important aspect is that the data can be unambiguously specified by spatio-temporal coordinates.

The Standard describes a series of requirements for developing an EDR API, including lightweight query interfaces that allow users to request spatio-temporal data at a specific Position, within a Radius, within a Cube, within an Area, along a Trajectory, or through a Corridor.

Version 1.1 of the Standard offers a number of backwards-compatible enhancements. One major enhancement is support for the HTTP POST method. This enhancement will make it possible to handle requests with large payloads, such as complex filter constraints. Another enhancement is greater flexibility in selecting a default Coordinate Reference System (CRS) to be used when a client application has not indicated a preferred CRS. This enhancement will make it easier to serve data that is referenced to national or regional coordinate reference systems.

The other major enhancement is support for additional custom or categorical dimensions to use in queries in addition to the usual (x,y,z,t) continuous spatio-temporal dimensions. An example use case would be to request data for a specific wavelength or select from a specific waveband. A common meteorological use case would be to query data from a specific forecast from an ensemble of simultaneous forecasts.

The OGC API – EDR Standard supports a full range of use cases: from retrieving time-series observations to sub-setting multi-dimensional data cubes along user-supplied sampling geometries. Such sampling geometries are provided by a client through query patterns that use a set of common parameters. These query patterns provide useful building blocks to allow the composition of APIs that satisfy a wide range of geospatial data use cases. By defining a small set of query patterns, the OGC API – EDR Standard helps to simplify the design of systems, as they can be performance tuned for the supported queries – thus making it easier to build robust and scalable infrastructure.

To help users implement the OGC API – EDR Standard, an OpenAPI definition document and schema definition files have been published, alongside the Standard, on the OGC API – EDR page.

To learn more about how the family of OGC API Standards work together to provide modular “building blocks for location” that address both simple and the most complex use-cases, visit ogcapi.org.

OGC Members interested in staying up to date on further progress of this standard, or contributing to its future development, are encouraged to join the OGC API – EDR Standards Working Group via the OGC Portal. Non-OGC members who would like to know more about participating in this SWG are encouraged to contact the OGC Standards Program.

As with any OGC Standard, the OGC API – Environmental Data Retrieval 1.1 Standard is free to download and implement. Interested parties can view and download the Standard from the OGC API – EDR page.

The post OGC API – Environmental Data Retrieval v1.1 Adopted as Official Standard appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
07 August 2023
15:00
OGC Welcomes Dr. Simon Cox as next Visiting Fellow
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is excited to Welcome Dr. Simon Cox as our next Visiting Fellow. Simon will use his expertise and experience to help the organization take the new “OGC Rainbow” interoperability environment to the next level.

With its OGC Rainbow, OGC is building the most advanced interoperability framework in the geospatial domain. OGC Rainbow connects taxonomies, profiles, Standards, schemas, metadata, and other elements and enables reliable knowledge generation and decision making, all in a machine- and human-friendly environment.

Dr. Simon Cox will help OGC to further develop the conceptual model behind OGC Rainbow and review all of the underlying assumptions and use cases. Simon will also play a critical role in communicating and coordinating OGC Rainbow with other standards organizations.

“I am excited that Simon will join our work to enhance the level of interoperability seen in the geospatial domain,” said OGC Chief Technology Innovation Officer, Dr. Ingo Simonis. “Simon has excellent expertise in data modeling and extracting modeling patterns and mechanisms. I am confident that Simon will help us take the work around our ‘OGC Rainbow’ interoperability environment to the next level.”

Dr. Simon Cox worked for many years for the leading Australian science and technology organization, CSIRO. Simon has been involved in OGC activities since the year 2000, and received an OGC Gardel’s Award in 2006. Recently, Simon made substantial contributions to the joint OGC/W3C efforts on spatial data on the web.

Simon was the primary driving force behind the creation of the initial resources upon which OGC Rainbow has been built and led the establishment of the OGC Naming Authority – the group that governs OGC’s registries and Standards schemas. After retiring from CSIRO earlier this year, he has maintained an involvement in vocabulary management and publication, and in cross-domain metadata through CODATA and DDI.

“I’m looking forward to renewing my engagement with OGC,” said Simon. “I’ll bring perspectives from recent engagements in environmental and social sciences where adaptation of OGC and W3C standards to specific applications, and presentation of that to a variety of audiences, remains a challenge.”

OGC’s Visiting Fellow program was established to support OGC’s integrated standards and innovation strategy, which falls under the leadership of OGC’s Chief Standards Officer, Scott Simmons, and Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, Dr. Ingo Simonis. The program welcomes highly accomplished, seasoned experts from around the world to augment OGC’s leadership team with external targeted expertise and support the strategic objectives of the Consortium for durations of 3-9 months.

If you are interested in the OGC Visiting Fellow program and wish to be considered, please contact OGC using the form at ogc.org/contact.

The post OGC Welcomes Dr. Simon Cox as next Visiting Fellow appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
31 July 2023
16:46
A Message from Prashant Shukle on Behalf of the OGC Board of Directors
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The OGC Board of Directors of the Open Geospatial Consortium congratulate Dr. Nadine Alameh on her selection as the inaugural Executive Director of the Taylor Geospatial Institute.

As her final week with the Open Geospatial Consortium draws to a close, we know that we have greatly benefitted from her transformational leadership over the last 5 years and are committed to the ongoing process of modernization within the OGC.

OGC Members and Staff work on very comprehensive and high-impact activities in the areas of Defense and Intelligence, Climate and Disasters, Health, Smart Cities and Digital Twins, the Metaverse, and advanced technology domains including Space and Earth Observation or Cloud Native Geospatial.

As the board searches for a new Chief Executive Officer, the Board and Staff are committed to ensuring that our focus will be sharp, and our momentum will not slow. We will continue to develop geospatial standards and solve interoperability issues; and serve as the leading geospatial consortium by bringing individuals and organizations together from around the world to collaborate, innovate, and develop solutions to some of the world’s toughest data and technology issues.

The Board of the OGC has started to develop a transparent, objective, merit-based process for the next Chief Executive Officer of the Open Geospatial Consortium. Please check ogc.org for any updates.

I look forward to seeing you at our in-person meetings, webinars, standard working groups, domain working groups, and at various high-level fora and research & innovation initiatives.

Should you have any questions, please send your enquiries here.

Prashant Shukle, Board Chair

On behalf of the

Open Geospatial Consortium

The post A Message from Prashant Shukle on Behalf of the OGC Board of Directors appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
15:00
Developers invited to the 2023 OGC API – Processes Virtual Code Sprint
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) invites developers to the 2023 OGC API – Processes Virtual Code Sprint to be held September 18-20, 2023, on Gitter. Registration for the code sprint is free and open to the public.

The Sprint will focus on refining the next version of the OGC API – Processes Standard and associated extensions.

The OGC API – Processes Standard supports the wrapping of computational tasks into executable processes that can be offered by a server through a Web API and be invoked by a client application. Typically, these processes combine raster, vector, coverage, and/or point cloud data with well-defined algorithms to produce new information.

Examples of computational processes that can be supported by implementations of OGC API – Processes include vector data analysis, imagery analysis, and various types of Artificial Intelligence (AI) enhanced analysis.

An OGC Sprint is a collaborative and inclusive event driven by innovative and rapid programming with minimal process and organization constraints to support the development of new applications and candidate standards.

During the virtual code sprint, there will be an opportunity for joint discussion with all participants on the goals and objectives of the event, as well as the final briefing of findings and opinions of the participants. However, the majority of the time will be spent in collaboration between participants in active coding. The virtual code sprint will run from 9:00am to 5:30pm US Eastern Time each day.

To learn more about how the family of OGC API Standards work together to provide modular “building blocks for location” that address both simple and the most complex use-cases, visit ogcapi.org.

Registration for the 2023 OGC API – Processes Virtual Code Sprint is here. The Sprint will take place in the ogc-developer/Sprints Gitter room from 9:00am to 5:30pm (US Eastern) each day from September 18-20, 2023.

To learn more about future and previous OGC code sprints, visit the OGC Code Sprints webpage or join the OGC-Events Discord Server.

The post Developers invited to the 2023 OGC API – Processes Virtual Code Sprint appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
28 July 2023
15:00
OGC adopts CityGML 3.0 Part 2: GML Encoding as an official OGC Standard
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is excited to announce that the OGC Membership have approved the OGC City Geography Markup Language (CityGML) Part 2: GML Encoding Standard for adoption as an official OGC Standard.

The CityGML 3.0 GML Encoding Standard presents the GML encoding of the concepts defined by the CityGML 3.0 Part 1: Conceptual Model (CM) Standard, which was approved as an OGC Standard in 2021. The GML encoding is compliant to OGC GML versions 3.2 and 3.3 (thus also ISO 19136). This encoding can be used to store and exchange 3D city models in the GML format as data sets or via web services.

Since its first publication by OGC in 2008, CityGML has been an open standard used for the storage and exchange of virtual 3D city models. CityGML allows the integration of urban geodata for use across a variety of applications, including urban and landscape planning; Urban Digital Twins for Smart Cities; the Metaverse; Building Information Modeling (BIM); mobile telecommunication; disaster management; 3D cadastre; tourism; vehicle & pedestrian navigation; autonomous driving and driving assistance; facility management; and energy, traffic, and environmental simulations.

CityGML defines a “City” in a broad fashion to comprise not just built structures, but also the land surface, vegetation, water bodies, city furniture, and more. Despite its name, CityGML is useful for large areas and small regions, not just cities, and can represent real-world terrain and 3D objects at different Levels Of Detail (LOD) simultaneously. CityGML enables the consistent representation of 3D urban objects across different Geographic Information Systems and users.

CityGML 3.0 is an evolution of the previous versions 1.0 and 2.0 of CityGML that further enables the cost-effective sustainable maintenance of 3D city models. While previous versions standardized a GML exchange format, CityGML 3.0 standardizes the underlying information model and can thus be implemented in a variety of technologies beyond GML. As a result, governments and companies can increase the Return On Investment (ROI) of their 3D city models by being able to put the same models into play across different technology platforms and application fields.

This Part 2 of the Standard defines how the concepts developed in Part 1 are realized using XML and GML technologies. The CityGML 3.0 GML encoding represents a full mapping of the Conceptual Model. The encoding is derived fully automatically from the UML model following the UML-to-GML encoding rules as defined by ISO 19136.

A collection of example data sets for the CityGML 3.0 GML Encoding is available from the OGC CityGML-3.0 Encodings Public GitHub Repository.

OGC Members interested in staying up to date on the progress of this standard, or contributing to its future development, are encouraged to join the CityGML Standards Working Group (SWG) via the OGC Portal. Non-OGC members who would like to know more about participating in this SWG are encouraged to contact the OGC Standards Program.

As with any OGC Standard, the open CityGML Part 2: GML Encoding Standard is free to download and implement. Interested parties can learn more about, view, and download the Standard from OGC’s CityGML Standard Page.

The post OGC adopts CityGML 3.0 Part 2: GML Encoding as an official OGC Standard appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
06 July 2023
15:00
OGC Compliance Certification Available for v1.0 of the OGC API – Processes Standard
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is excited to announce that the Executable Test Suite (ETS) for version 1.0 of the OGC API – Processes – Part 1: Core Standard has been approved by the OGC Membership. Products that implement the Standard and pass the tests in the ETS can now be certified as OGC Compliant.

The OGC API – Processes Standard supports the wrapping of computational tasks into executable processes that can be offered by a server through a Web API and be invoked by a client application. Typically, these processes combine raster, vector, coverage, and/or point cloud data with well-defined algorithms to produce new information. Examples of computational processes that can be supported by implementations of this Standard include vector data analysis, imagery analysis, and various types of Artificial Intelligence (AI) enhanced analysis. To learn more about how the family of OGC API Standards work together to provide modular “building blocks for location” that address both simple and the most complex use-cases, visit ogcapi.org.

Implementers are invited to validate their products using the new test suite, which is available on the OGC validator tool. Testing involves submitting the endpoint of an OGC API – Processes implementation to be assessed. The validator tool sends the appropriate requests to the endpoint of the implementation and then evaluates the responses. These tests typically take only 5-10 minutes to complete. Once a product has passed the tests, the implementer can submit an application to OGC for use of the OGC Compliant trademark on their product.

To support developers with implementation of the standard, GeoLabs ZOO-Project 2.0 and Ecere GNOSIS Map Server 1.0 have been designated as reference implementations of the standard after the software products successfully passed the compliance tests.

The OGC Compliance Program offers a certification process that ensures organizations’ solutions are compliant with OGC Standards. It is a universal credential that allows agencies, industry, and academia to better integrate their solutions. OGC compliance provides confidence that a product will seamlessly integrate with other compliant solutions regardless of the vendor that created them.

More information about the OGC compliance process is available at ogc.org/compliance. Implementers of version 1.0 of the OGC API – Processes – Part 1: Core Standard – or other OGC Standards – are welcomed to validate their products using the OGC validator tool.

The post OGC Compliance Certification Available for v1.0 of the OGC API – Processes Standard appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
05 July 2023
16:39
A recap of the 126th OGC Member Meeting, Huntsville, AL, USA
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

From June 5-9, almost 200 geospatial innovators, influencers, and leaders from across the globe attended OGC’s 126th Member Meeting – with 100 more attending virtually. Hosted by GEOHuntsville at the beautiful Huntsville Botanical Garden in Alabama, USA, meeting attendees spent the week discussing the latest geospatial innovations and hearing how geospatial is transforming organizations and industries across the globe.

The meeting was additionally sponsored by Hexagon, OpenSensorHub (Botts Innovative Research and GeoRobotix), Ethar, Womble Bond Dickinson, and Compass-HSV.

The week saw the usual abundance of Standards Working Group (SWG) and Domain Working Group (DWG) meetings, networking & social events (including a fantastic Sunday pre-meeting gathering at the Signals Museum, hosted by Ethar), two award presentations – a Lifetime Achievement Award as well as the new Community Impact Award – and several special sessions, including a Space Standards ad hoc, an Open Science Summit, a Portrayal Workshop, a Connected Systems track, a Defense and Intelligence Track, and a Climate Workshop.

The full agenda for the 126th OGC Member Meeting is available here. Read on for an overview of the best bits, below.
OGC CEO, Dr. Nadine Alameh (L), OGC CSO, Scott Simmons (M), and Stan Tillman from meeting sponsor, Hexagon. Opening Session
Opening the meetings on Monday morning was David Lucas, the Executive Director of host GEOHuntsville, who welcomed attendees and provided event context. This was followed by a welcome from the City of Huntsville Mayor, Tommy Battle.

Next, we heard from Stan Tillman, of meeting sponsor Hexagon, who provided information on the company with specific information regarding Hexagon Digital Reality capabilities. Dr. Chris Tucker, representing additional meeting sponsors OpenSensorHub participants Botts Innovative Research and GeoRobotix, then highlighted the upcoming session on Tuesday for Connected Systems.

OGC CEO Dr. Nadine Alameh then provided a CEO Welcome and described the value of recent organizational changes in OGC. Prashant Shukle, Chair of the OGC Board of Directors then gave a greeting from the Board and highlighted a commitment by the Board to more actively participate in OGC activities.
OGC CEO, Dr. Nadine Alameh (L), with Patty Mims, Director of Global National Government, Esri
Nadine’s regular fireside chat followed, this time with Patty Mims, Director of Global National Government, Esri. As has become the trend for these chats, they discussed the motivation for joining the geospatial industry as well as provided advice for others to join and succeed in the community.

Trevor Taylor, Senior Director, Member Success and Development of OGC, welcomed new members and refreshed attendees on the new OGC membership model that’s now in place for new members.

I, Scott Simmons, Chief Standards Officer of OGC, then wrapped up the session by providing some logistics information for the week and describing the process to be followed in the coming weeks-to-months to roll out of the new Technical Committee Policies and Procedures. I also described the new tools in place for submitting presentation requests and special sessions for meetings.
Special Sessions
The Space Standards ad hoc continued the discussion from the 125th Member Meeting concerning where OGC should work in Space Standards, which identified a number of topical areas for Standardization as well as existing Standards covering some portions of those areas. Participants at this session identified areas of focus and proposed a new Domain Working Group (DWG) that will begin the chartering process in the coming weeks. OGC Members can access the presentations and a recording on this page in the OGC Portal.

The Open Science Summit focused on a proposal for a new OGC Pilot project for an Open Science Persistent Demonstrator. NASA, Google, and the European Space Agency (ESA) each presented information on their own platforms. The Summit then followed with an open discussion on which other platforms might exist and what should be included. OGC Members can access the presentations and a recording on this page in the OGC Portal.
Marge Cole, Director, Collaborative Solutions and Innovation Programs, OGC, speaking at the Open Science Summit
The Portrayal Workshop: OGC has been modernizing its Standards for the portrayal of geospatial data. Numerous other communities have dependencies on the OGC Standards portfolio and need to understand the applicability of these newer Standards and how they replace the functionality of legacy Standards. The Portrayal Workshop was organized jointly with the International Cartographic Association (ICA) and was run to develop an OGC Technical Paper for “Standards supporting cartographic best practices.” OGC Members can access the presentations and a recording on this page in the OGC Portal.

The Connected Systems track: OGC has chartered new working groups to update and create a RESTful implementation of sensor-related Standards. The Autonomy, Sensors, Things, Robots, and Observations (ASTRO) Domain Working Group (DWG) investigates requirements and standardization targets and the Connected Systems Standards Working Group (SWG) is building the new Standards. These groups held a full-afternoon track to describe the intent of the Connected Systems API, the relationship of the work to other OGC APIs and the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) Standards, and to demonstrate how the new Standards work in practice. OGC Members can access the presentations and a recording on this page in the OGC Portal, as well as the Demonstration here.

The Defense and Intelligence Track: The Defense and Intelligence DWG takes a broad look at the use of Standards in defense/intelligence operations as well as the requirements for interoperability that can be solved, in part, by Standards. The DWG held a full-afternoon track to explore the fundamental concepts and thus bring participants to a baseline of understanding. The session also explored where OGC members could contribute to new Standards in imagery & motion imagery as well as Space. OGC Members can access the presentations and a recording on this page in the OGC Portal.

The Climate Workshop: OGC’s Climate Resilience DWG organized a Climate Workshop for Friday where the DWG defined the nature of its mission for resilience as the “ability of a system to compensate for impacts.” The session highlighted numerous initiatives underway in OGC and other organizations, framing them in terms of opportunities for impact. The workshop also expressed a proposed timeline for the next OGC Climate Resilience Pilot. OGC Members can access the presentations and a recording on this page in the OGC Portal.
Today’s Innovation/Tomorrow’s Technology and Future Directions
The popular Today’s Innovation/Tomorrow’s Technology and Future Directions session focused on ongoing OGC research and deployment of the nascent OGC Rainbow (borne from the OGC Definitions Server), which represents the state-of-the-art in enabling semantic interoperability.

OGC Rainbow is a web-accessible source of information about things (“Concepts”) that the OGC defines or that communities ask the OGC to host on their behalf. OGC Rainbow comprises several registries linked to common access for both human- and machine-readable representation of the data.

The OGC Definitions Server has long provided Coordinate Reference System (CRS) definitions, terminology definitions used in OGC Standards, and code lists for various domains of interest. As the capability of the OGC Rainbow increases, OGC will be registering requirements from Standards, representation of the OGC Building Blocks, and linkages to other authoritative registries. OGC Rainbow will improve consistency in the geospatial standards community and allow for expedited development of new capabilities.

Dr. Ingo Simonis and Dr. Rob Atkinson of the OGC COSI Program explained the capabilities and use cases of the OGC Rainbow and moderated open discussion amongst participants regarding the use of OGC Rainbow. OGC Members can access the presentations and a recording on this page in the OGC Portal. Stay tuned to the OGC Blog for more on the OGC Rainbow soon.
Dinner & Awards
The always wonderful Executive Dinner was held on Wednesday night at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center – Davidson Center for Space Exploration, where attendees had the unforgettable experience of dining under an actual Saturn V rocket – one of only three in the world!
Attendees of the Executive Dinner had the unforgettable experience of dining under an actual Saturn V Rocket
At the dinner, two awards were presented: Dr. Jeff de La Beaujardiere received the OGC Lifetime Achievement Award; and Natural Resources Canada received the inaugural OGC Community Impact Award.

Dr. Jeff de La Beaujardiere was selected for the Lifetime Achievement award due to his long standing leadership, commitment, and support for the advancement and uptake of standards used for the dissemination of Earth Science information. In the OGC community, Jeff is best known as the Editor of the OGC Web Map Service (WMS) Specification: a joint OGC/ISO Standard that now supports access to millions of datasets worldwide. OGC WMS was the first in the OGC Web Services suite of Standards and is the most downloaded Standard from OGC. But most importantly, the OGC WMS Standard truly revolutionized how geospatial data is shared and accessed over the web. Jeff was also a major contributor to other OGC Standards, including the OGC Web Services Architecture, the OGC Web Map Context, OGC Web Terrain Service, and OGC Web Services Common.

The new OGC Community Impact award highlights the importance of collaboration, volunteering time and energy, advancing technologies and standards, raising awareness, and helping solve critical issues across the geospatial community. Natural Resources Canada exemplifies all of these qualities through their championing of innovation and standards. They consistently go above and beyond as both an OGC Member, and as a member of the wider geospatial community.

My well-deserved congratulations go out to both recipients!
Ryan Ahola (R) accepts the inaugural OGC Community Impact Award, on behalf of Natural Resources Canada, from OGC CEO Dr. Nadine Alameh (L) Important Things and the Closing Plenary
Wrapping up the week, I opened the Important Things session with a rapid, 15-minute summary of the entire meeting week that included slides and content from a large number of Working Group sessions. OGC Members can access the presentations and a recording on this page in the OGC Portal.

The Important Things session then featured a discussion on how much OGC SWGs should accommodate developer interests and existing applications vs. optimizing their Standards work to meet the Standard requirements. OGC Members then discussed the issue and provided numerous examples of the conflict in current work. OGC Members can read the notes from the session in the Etherpad “Important-Things-2023-06”.

The Closing Plenary, though mostly focused on presentations and voting, also saw several presentations. Carsten Rönsdorf of Ordnance Survey provided a summary of the effectiveness of the model-driven standard authoring that was used for CityGML 3.0 and is now underway with MUDDI. Ali Al’Awaji highlighted the success of recent cooperation between his organization, the General Authority for Survey and Geospatial Information (GASGI) and OGC. The remainder of the session advanced a number of Standards, SWGs, and documents toward vote or publication.
Thank you to our community
The GEOHuntsville Member Meeting was not only one of our most attended, but also one of our most memorable – with the beautiful grounds and the unforgettable Saturn V Rocket. As always it was a pleasure seeing our Members interacting, collaborating, and driving technology and standards development forward. It’s the vibrancy and enthusiasm of our community that makes OGC truly special – and my job so enjoyable. So I thank you all, once again, for your time & energy and your dedication to making OGC the world’s leading and most comprehensive community of location experts.

Be sure to join us for the 127th Member Meeting, happening September 25-29, 2023, at the Lifelong Learning Institute, Singapore. Registration and further info can be found at ogcmeet.org.
Sponsorship opportunities are also available: download this brochure or contact OGC for more info.

Be sure to subscribe to the OGC Update Newsletter to stay up to date on all things OGC, including future OGC Member Meetings, funding opportunities, and how to contribute to our open Standards.

The post A recap of the 126th OGC Member Meeting, Huntsville, AL, USA appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
23 June 2023
15:08
The 2023 OGC Tiling Interfaces Code Sprint – How it went!
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
On June 12-14, 2023, OGC held its 2023 Tiling Interfaces Code Sprint at OGC Strategic Member NGA’s Moonshot Labs in St. Louis, Missouri. The code sprint focused on a select set of Application Programming Interface (API), database, and encoding standards related to map tiles. An API is a standard set of documented functions that expose the capabilities supported or data offered by an application, or service to other applications.

OGC code sprints are collaborative and inclusive events that support the development and refinement of open standards by providing software developers the time and space to focus on projects that implement the standards.

By experimenting with emerging ideas in the context of geospatial standards, OGC code sprints help improve interoperability of existing standards by experimenting with new extensions or profiles, and building or enhancing software products to implement the standards.

In addition, the sprints’ mentor streams provide developers with a helping hand when learning how to use the standards and projects so that they can build a working understanding of them that will last beyond the duration of the sprint.

The mentor stream at the Tiling Interfaces Code Sprint included three entry-level tutorials that used practical use-cases to introduce participants to the standards. One tutorial focused on how to serve vector tiles using the OGC API – Tiles standard, while another focused on compliance testing, and the third provided an overview of a web-based product that implements several OGC standards.

The 2023 OGC Tiling Interfaces Code Sprint focused on the following Standards and specifications:
- OGC API – Tiles: An approved Standard that specifies building blocks for creating Web APIs that support the retrieval of geospatial information as tiles.
- OGC API – Maps: A candidate Standard that specifies building blocks for serving spatially referenced and dynamically rendered electronic maps and charts.
- Changesets API: A prototype specification based on outcomes from OGC Testbed-15 that provides the foundation for a ‘Transactional Tiles API Extension’ for OGC API – Tiles.
- Vector Tiles Extension to GeoPackage: A prototype extension of the OGC GeoPackage Standard to support the use of vector tiles.
- Variable Width Tile Matrix: A grid suited for the whole globe that keeps the data in a geographic Coordinate Reference System.
- Web Map Tile Service (WMTS): The popular OGC Standard that specifies a web service that can serve map tiles of spatially referenced data using tiled images with predefined content, extent, and resolution. The OGC WMTS Standard is the base standard for the WMTS profiles of the US National System for GEOINT (NSG) and the Defense Geospatial Information Working Group (DGIWG).
Results
At its peak, the code sprint had 50 concurrent active users participating remotely across multiple channels on the code sprint’s online platform. In-person participation saw a dozen participants from NGA, OGC, US Army Geospatial Center, UK Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (Dstl), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (CREAF), Pixalytics Ltd., Compass, FlightSafety International, and University of Maryland.

Screenshots of a selection of applications deployed for the code sprint are shown below.
Figure 1 (click to enlarge)
Figure 1 is a screenshot of the MiraMon browser accessing multiple OGC-compliant services and APIs deployed by CREAF and other participants.
Figure 2 (click to enlarge)
Figure 2 is a screenshot of TEAM Engine, the open source software used by the OGC Validator, presenting test results for a specific implementation of OGC API – Tiles.
Figure 3 (click to enlarge)
Figure 3 is a screenshot of the open source QGIS Desktop GIS with GDAL embedded to enable import and display of map tiles and vector tiles.
Figure 4 (click to enlarge)
Figure 4 is a Map Tiles viewer by Tech Maven Geospatial.
Figure 5 (click to enlarge)
Figure 5 is a screenshot of the pygeoapi application enabled to support OGC API – Tiles.
Figure 6 (click to enlarge)
During the code sprint, personnel from the US Army Geospatial Center (AGC) presented the Releasable Basemap Tiles (RBT) product which has been in development at AGC (Figure 6). The presentation enabled participants to identify an approach for how QGIS and GDAL could support workflows that involve the downloading of vector tiles and map tiles from an OGC API and the storage of the tiles in a GeoPackage.
Figure 7 (click to enlarge)
Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2023.
Figure 7 shows a map created by KORTxyz from the vector tiles distribution of the Ordnance Survey Zoomstack product and accessed through an OGC API – Tiles interface.
What did we learn?
The following are some of the lessons learned during the code sprint, and recorded by participants on the final day of the code sprint.

There is a need for further developer guidance documents for implementing OGC API – Tiles, particularly with regard to the placement on tileset resources. Such guidance should include clarification on the handling of relation types such as ‘conformance’ that can be represented as simple string literals and also as URLs.

There is a need to make sure there exists a well-documented user journey for people that want to use OGC API – Tiles through QGIS. For example, documentation to take a beginner from their first line of code to a more advanced stage.

Although some work has been done on vector tiles within OGC, more work is needed to advance the specification towards becoming an OGC Standard. Some of the work that could be carried out includes, for example, development of a Best Practice document. RBT could provide a foundation for such a Best Practice.

For future code sprints, it may be necessary to introduce participants to the basics of the specifications that are in focus for the code sprint ahead of the event. Further, it would be helpful to participants such as students to have specific instructions to help participants prepare for the code sprint.
Conclusions and Recommendations
The code sprint met all of its objectives and achieved its goal of supporting the implementation of open geospatial standards within the developer community. Furthermore, the code sprint provided an environment for development and testing of prototype implementations of open standards and a starting point for developers to learn about the draft and approved standards, as well as their implementations.

The participants identified the following recommendations at the conclusion of the code sprint:
- A future code sprint that includes the OGC CDB Standard should examine how vector tiles could be embedded in such a data store.
- AGC is interested in how the World Mercator coordinate reference system (reference EPSG:3395) could support vector tiles in a GeoPackage. The question for future experimentation is whether this could be specified so that it can be implemented by any developer.
- The application of OGC API – Tiles in partitioning and indexing content from an implementation of the OGC SensorThings API standard and the OGC API – Connected Systems candidate standard could be explored in a future code sprint.
- An initiative to develop content for the OGC e-learning resource and the OGC Compliance Program could help improve interoperability between implementations of OGC Standards.
- Although OGC API – Tiles is an approved standard, there is some work to do around addressing interoperability issues in the different implementations (see for instance this Issue on the OSGeo gdal GitHub.
To learn more about – and participate in – future OGC Code Sprints, visit the OGC Code Sprints webpage or sign up to the OGC Events Newsletter.

The post The 2023 OGC Tiling Interfaces Code Sprint – How it went! appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
22 June 2023
15:00
OGC proud to create European Innovation Events and Open Knowledge
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is proud to co-organize and sponsor upcoming European Innovation Events such as Data Week Leipzig 2023. The Location Innovation Academy continues to grow and support Open Knowledge.

Data Week Leipzig 2023 will run next week, June 26-30, 2023, in Leipzig, Germany, and online. OGC will present its new OGC European Innovation Days event and more at the event. Data Week Leipzig is an innovative networking and exchange event that highlights scientific, economic, and social perspectives of data and its use, and where industry, citizens, science, and public authorities can enter into dialogue. Special topics of Data Week Leipzig 2023 are Semantic Interoperability, the European Green Deal, NetZero Cities, sustainable, resilient development, and the Location Innovation Academy (see below). Digital strategies will be presented and discussed from the European to the local Leipzig City level. The event will be streamed to viewers worldwide.

Findings of the AD4GD (All Data for Green Deal) and GeoE3 Projects will be included in the topics of Monday’s European Innovation Day at Data Week. Several sessions on Data Spaces, Digital Twins, and Urban Planning will be held across Monday and Tuesday, while Wednesday will offer several workshops on Semantic Interoperability and the new “OGC Rainbow” environment – which represents the state-of-the-art in enabling semantic interoperability.

The Growing Location Innovation Academy

Starting as a hub for the distribution of knowledge and skills related to the publication and use of location-based information, the Location Innovation Academy is expanding its horizons and finding a larger audience, with a view to provide the foundation for the future OGC Academy. The Academy was presented during last week’s Open Data & Open Knowledge Workshop, hosted by GEO. The workshop emphasized the importance of open knowledge and open academies that provide not just information but also grow students’ ability to correctly interpret the available information to support better and more informed decision-making.

Don’t miss the hybrid hands-on session providing detailed insights about the Location Innovation Academy during the European Innovation Days at Data Week Leipzig 23 on Tuesday June 27 @ 17:00 CEST.
Learn more at academy.ogc.org
GeoE3 recently published a blog post entitled “Interested in new technologies of data services?” that outlines the free Data Service Management course offered by the Location Innovation Academy. The course teaches students everything they need to know about OGC API standards and how they can be implemented to manage geospatial data services more efficiently. This course and others offered by the Academy address the need, identified during GeoE3, to lower the barrier of entry for new users of APIs.

More information on the academy and the courses offered is available on GeoE3’s Location Innovation Academy information page. The Location Innovation Academy is hosted by OGC at academy.ogc.org.

For information and registration for the European Innovation Days, including the Semantic Interoperability and Location Innovation Academy sessions, see the Data Week Leipzig 23 website. For other events see the GeoE3 events and OGC events webpages.

The post OGC proud to create European Innovation Events and Open Knowledge appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
14 June 2023
15:00
OGC CEO Dr. Nadine Alameh receives 24th Annual Women in Technology Leadership Award
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is pleased to announce that OGC CEO, Dr. Nadine Alameh, has received the 24th Annual Women in Technology Leadership Award in the Non-Profit and Academia category, which honors women who demonstrate exemplary leadership traits and have achieved success in a non-profit organization or educational institution.

The Women in Technology’s Annual Leadership Awards seek to “recognize and honor female leaders whose achievements, mentorship and contributions to the community align with the WIT mission of advancing women in technology from the classroom to the boardroom” by honoring and celebrating female professionals who have found success in entrepreneurial, STEM, government, and corporate industries while inspiring colleagues, partners, and their community.

“These awards are a cornerstone of the WIT mission to advance women in technology from the classroom to the boardroom,” said Amber Hart, President of WIT and the Co-Owner/Founder, The Pulse of GovCon, in a press release for the awards. “Recognizing the success of these women provides a vision for current and future leaders of what is possible with determination and focus and highlights the role of mentorship and sponsorship in building a successful and meaningful career.”

In the nomination letter for the award, Chair of the OGC Board, Jeff Harris, Vice Chair, Prashant Shukle, and Board member, Zaffar Sadiq Mohamed-Ghouse, said that the OGC board nominated Nadine for her “outstanding global leadership of the Open Geospatial Consortium and its 500 members through a period of profound change.

“When Nadine assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer, she articulated a new vision and role for the OGC – one where it had to be relevant at the speed of change. To that end, she has worked tirelessly in pursuit of this vision as she mobilized some of the world’s largest technology companies, developed and developing national governments, and small- and medium-sized businesses and startups. That she delivered in a not-for-profit entity and with a steely resolve to ensure the global public interest – not only speaks of the scale of her achievements but also its impact on the global public good.”

The 24th Annual Leadership Awards were presented at a Gala on Thursday, May 18, 2023, at the Hyatt Regency in Reston, VA, USA.

The post OGC CEO Dr. Nadine Alameh receives 24th Annual Women in Technology Leadership Award appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.
08 June 2023
15:00
Dr. Jeff de La Beaujardiere receives OGC Lifetime Achievement Award
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is excited to announce that Dr. Jeff de La Beaujardiere has been selected as the latest recipient of the OGC Lifetime Achievement Award. The announcement was made last night during the Executive Dinner in the U.S. Space & Rocket Center at the 126th OGC Member Meeting in GeoHuntsville, AL.

Jeff has been selected for the award due to his long standing leadership, commitment, and support for the advancement and uptake of standards used for the dissemination of Earth Science information.

“I’m so happy that Jeff has been selected to receive the OGC Lifetime Achievement Award,” said OGC CEO, Dr. Nadine Alameh. “Jeff is more than a champion for standards, more than an OGC Gardels award winner, and more than the WMS editor and promoter: Jeff is a role model for many of us in geospatial circles, and has directly and indirectly influenced generations of interoperability enthusiasts to collaborate, to innovate, and to solve critical problems related to our Earth. From OGC and myself, I offer our congratulations and thank Jeff for his technical work – and for being such an inspiration to so many!”

For more than 25 years, Jeff’s support of open standards and OGC’s FAIR mission has improved access to Earth science information for countless users and decision-makers around the globe. Since 1995, Jeff has focused on improving public access to scientific data by pushing for it to be discoverable, accessible, documented, interoperable, citable, curated for long-term preservation, and reusable by the broader scientific community, external users, and decision-makers.

In the OGC community, Jeff is best known as the Editor of the OGC Web Map Service (WMS) Specification: a joint OGC/ISO Standard that now supports access to millions of datasets worldwide. OGC WMS was the first in the OGC Web Services suite of Standards and is the most downloaded Standard from OGC. But most importantly, the OGC WMS Standard truly revolutionized how geospatial data is shared and accessed over the web.

Jeff was also a major contributor to other OGC Standards, including the OGC Web Services Architecture, the OGC Web Map Context, OGC Web Terrain Service, and OGC Web Services Common.

Jeff’s journey with Standards – and his engagement with OGC – started back in 1998 when NASA was leading the effort to implement the Digital Earth program. At that time, Jeff championed interoperability standards as fundamental to realizing the Digital Earth vision. As part of his journey, he has provided leadership to the Geospatial Applications and Interoperability (GAI) Working Group of the U.S. Federal Geographic Data Committee and to the OGC Technical Committee.

In 2002 and 2003, Jeff served as Portal Manager for Geospatial One-Stop, a federal electronic government initiative. He led a team of experts in defining the requirements, architecture, and competitive solicitation for a Portal based on open standards and led an OGC interoperability initiative in developing and demonstrating a working implementation. This was a fast-paced, high-stakes effort involving many companies and agencies building on what today is the OGC Collaborative Solution & Innovation Program.

Jeff has received several awards for his leadership and impact in the many communities that he has participated in throughout his career, including the 2013 OGC Kenneth D. Gardels Award, the 2023 ESIP President’s Award, and the 2003 Falkenberg Award at AGU which honors “a scientist under 45 years of age who has contributed to the quality of life, economic opportunities, and stewardship of the planet through the use of Earth science information and to the public awareness of the importance of understanding our planet.”

With this lifetime achievement award, OGC recognizes and celebrates Jeff’s lifetime of service, and his steadfast support of FAIR geospatial information for the benefit of open science, and society.

The post Dr. Jeff de La Beaujardiere receives OGC Lifetime Achievement Award appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.

← James Fee GIS Blog Planet OSGeo →

Communauté	Ressources	L'emploi	Le marché	L'association	Fils RSS
Forum Blogs Wiki Planet Sites amis	Agenda Biblio Fiches AMO-CNIG Paris PCGIS Téléchargements	Offres d'emploi Banque de CV Formations Démarche Métiers	Geo-Entreprises Geo-Communiqué Appels d'offres	L'association Qui sommes-nous ? Nous aider Bienfaiteurs Partenaires Historique Statuts	Tout le site Job Géomatique Services GeoBlogs ...	Faire un don Mentions légales

Le portail francophone de la géomatique

Feeds

Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)