Blogs

In late April 2021, OGC and GEO ran the 'Towards Data Cube Interoperability' workshop, which invited data cube experts from across the globe. Results from the workshop underscored the need for a ‘user centric’ API-based approach to accessing data cubes that exposes not only the data available to the user, but also the processing algorithms that can be run on it - and allow the user to add their own.

With the recent release of the Workshop Report, this blog post serves to provide an overview of some of the outcomes from the day, as well as provide a look towards OGC's path to data cube interoperability.

At the Eleventh Session of the United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) Committee of Experts, member nations endorsed a key revision of the UN-GGIM Guide to the Role of Standards in Geospatial Information Management. Happening in late August 2021, the goal of the Guide is to “provide detailed insights on the standards and good practices necessary to establish and maintain geospatial information management systems that are compatible and interoperable with other systems within and across organizations. The Guide also underscores the importance of standards in facilitating the application of the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data principles - promoting improved policymaking, decision making and government effectiveness in addressing key social, economic, and environmental topics, including attainment of Sustainable Development Goals”.

Powering solutions that address global problems is one of the drivers behind OGC’s efforts to simplify data integration, and New Space, as an emerging domain, is simultaneously offering exciting solutions while creating integration challenges. The topic remains a point of discussion across the location community, as well as at OGC Member Meetings, often revealing many questions.

A long-time user and supporter of OGC standards, the Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC), a division of Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), is Canada’s authoritative source for severe-weather alerts and weather, water, ice, and climate data.

One of the nation’s oldest government institutions, MSC is also one to keep up with the times, using the latest technologies in its quest to help Canadians make informed decisions about their health and safety and economic prosperity. One such example is the MSC GeoMet API platform, which, through the use of OGC API and other OGC standards, allows users to freely and quickly access thousands of real-time and archived weather, climate, and water datasets and products and integrate them in their domain-specific applications and decision support systems.

APIs have proven to be a popular and very effective enabler of rapid software development. This is more so in web mapping, where a combination of cartographic and software development skills is often needed to create maps for a global user base. As part of OGC’s on-going development of the OGC API suite of standards, OGC has been holding a series of Code Sprints. As part of this series, the May 2021 OGC API Virtual Code Sprint was conducted May 26–28, 2021.

With Ordnance Survey (OS) as Gold-level Sponsor and Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) as Silver-level Sponsor, the code sprint sought to progress the development of the draft OGC API standards for Maps, Tiles, and Styles. The sprint also sought to identify issues as well as options for addressing them.

When it comes to evolving a technology or standard over multiple decades, the struggle is real. As time changes, so do requirements, use cases, and the need for scalability. What was once a centerpiece to a core infrastructure or service can become dated months after the solution’s release. This problem affects all domains and industries, especially when it comes to geospatial, or location information. It often feels like there is no one group of organizations looking at the big picture.

Over the course of the last two decades technology has made incredible strides in both scalability, and accessibility creating a new landscape for innovation. Small businesses became more and more agile, being able to provide competitive services, and partner with big industry and government to deliver major benefits, oftentimes through innovation, and with the recent big boom in location technology, geospatial is not an exception.

There is a new wave of excitement in the location community since the Geospatial Data Act (GDA) of 2018 became law in 2018 in the United States. Beyond codifying the committees, processes, and tools used to develop, drive and manage the US National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), the GDA  effectively represents a formal recognition of the essential role of geospatial data and technology in understanding and managing our world. For those not familiar, the US Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) fact sheet serves as an excellent summary. 

OGC Member Intel recently launched Intel Geospatial, a cloud-based geospatial data management, visualization, and AI platform with applications in asset management across utilities smart cities, energy, and other industries. We sat down (virtually) with Intel Geospatial General Manager, Vijay Krishnan, to discuss AI, the Cloud, and what the future of data integration, visualization, and analysis may look like.

Defense and Intelligence has had a long history of both successes and struggles when it comes to leveraging new technologies and open standards.  Over the years, the domain has become a focal point in OGC’s own mission: making location information Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR), and thanks to collaboration across industries, this mission is being achieved through best practices across industries. OGC’s own June Member Meeting has a core focus on Defense and Intelligence because of the criticality of this mission.