The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is pleased to announce the publication of the OGC API – Connected Systems Standard v1.0. This new Standard connects all systems on or around the Earth – such as sensors, things, robots, drones, satellites, control systems, devices, and platforms across domains including land, air, sea, space, cyber, and the electromagnetic spectrum – into a common 4D framework for discovery, access, processing, reasoning, visualization, tasking, and action. The Standard provides a bridge between their dynamic data (e.g., observations and commands) and more static representations of these systems as geospatial features.
The development of the OGC API – Connected Systems Standard v1.0 was a response to OGC’s strategic guidance to all Standards Working Groups (SWGs) to migrate their legacy/heritage specification baselines to OpenAPI/RESTful patterns. Specifically, the OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) architecture, which has been in global use since 2007, needed to be updated according to this architectural guidance. The evolution of the OGC API- Features, as part of this architectural renaissance, offered new opportunities for synergy between the historically divided OGC “Web Mapping” and “SensorWeb” standards. OGC API – Connected Systems Standard v1.0 is an extension of the OGC API – Features and builds upon modern consensus around related OGC standards such as GeoPose, OMS, Pub/Sub, and more. In the end, this new Standard represents a modernization and realignment of OGC’s powerful SensorWeb heritage within its new OGC Building Blocks framework.
OGC API – Connected Systems is an OpenAPI/RESTful interface that follows the OGC API strategic guidance and is built upon accepted web formats such as GeoJSON, as well as existing OGC information models, including SensorML, Observations and Measurements (now called Observations, Measurements and Samples – OMS), SWE Common Data Model, and the Semantic Sensor Network Ontology (SOSA/SSN).
The Standard not only provides its own mechanism for retrieving both static and dynamic data from connected systems, but also supports seamless linking to other OGC API Standards, such as OGC API – Maps, OGC API – Coverages, OGC API – Environmental Data Retrieval (EDR), OGC API – 3D GeoVolumes/3D Tiles, SensorThings API (STA), OGC API – Moving Features, OGC API- Processes, and others. (See the full overview here).
To support the implementation of the OGC API – Connected Systems Standard, updates were made to the OGC Sensor Markup Language (SensorML) and Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) Common Data Model Standards to include JSON encodings.
The editors of the Standards have also created a Reviewers Guide to help users and implementers adopt and use the API more easily in their own work.
Developer resources such as OpenAPI definition files and JSON Schema files for OGC API – Connected Systems and related Sensor standards can be found at https://ogcapi.ogc.org/connectedsystems
About OGC
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is a membership organization dedicated to using the power of geography and technology to solve problems faced by people and the planet. OGC unlocks value and opportunity for its members through Standards, Innovation, and Collaboration. Our membership represents a diverse and active global community drawn from government, industry, academia, international development agencies, research & scientific organizations, civil society, and advocates.
Visit ogc.org for more information about our work.