Gobe Hobona's blog

From February 17-19, 2021, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), and the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) hosted a joint virtual code sprint. Part of the motivation for holding the code sprint was the growing uptake and use of location information across the global developer community. The code sprint brought together developers of Open Standards, Open Source Software, and Proprietary Software, providing a rare opportunity for developers across these communities to focus on common challenges within a short space of time in a shared collaborative environment.

Only July 28 and 29, 2020, OGC hosted a virtual sprint to advance the OGC API - Maps candidate standard, one of many APIs being rolled out by the organization to revolutionize how location information is accessed and shared across the industry. Sponsored by Ordnance Survey, participants prototyped  implementations of the draft OGC API - Maps - Part 1: Core standard, identifying missing requirements, and documenting these requirements so that the candidate standard could be improved.  

Outlining some important changes relevant to any software implementors that access EPSG Coordinate Reference System (CRS) definitions through the OGC Definitions Server coming next month.

Further testing and refinement to the OGC API - Tiles candidate standard - the spiritual successor to one of OGC’s most popular standards, the Web Map Tile Service (WMTS) - has occurred during another successful OGC Sprint. The candidate standard is just one of several efforts forming OGC’s move towards modular, resource-oriented, OpenAPI-based standards.

Last month, OGC, Ordnance Survey, the European Space Agency, and NGA held a hackathon in London aiming to advance OGC APIs. 

It is envisaged that the output of the hackathon will be instrumental to the evolution of OGC web service standards to a modern API-based approach, setting the course for open geospatial standards for the next decade. The output should lead to a solid, common core and advancement of a whole new generation of OGC standards that are flexible in modern IT environments. This does not mean that existing OGC web service standards will fade away. Instead, it means that a new suite of OGC standards will give developers and users the option of leveraging capabilities offered by Web APIs.

With geospatial technologies becoming increasingly mainstream, there has been a growing need for OGC to provide a way for individuals to prove their expertise in the application of OGC standards. As such, OGC staff have been developing the infrastructure required to deliver an OGC e-Learning program that includes certification of successful completion of examinations that focus on OGC standards. Enrolment will begin on December 17, 2018.

It is an exciting time to be joining OGC as Director of Knowledge Management (DKM). One of the reasons why I am very excited about this is that geospatial interoperability standards are increasingly seen as the key ingredient for allowing much in society to be better understood.