Blogs

Far from being a “sci-fi” tech, Artificial Intelligence (AI) already plays a crucial role in many domains and is revolutionizing existing technologies. International standards will play a pivotal role in ensuring widespread interoperability and security benefits among the various disciplines dealing with AI.

A chat with Kyoung-Sook Kim, co-chair of the OGC Artificial Intelligence in Geoinformatics Domain Working Group (aka the GeoAI DWG), on why standards will benefit AI applications in Geospatial, how a GeoAI DWG will help, and what OGC and its members are doing to help enable the next generation of service innovation.

The OGC Data Access and Processing API (DAPA) - backed by example code for both server & client side software, scripts for cloud deployment & installation, and best practice guides - is a so-called “convenience API” that allows scientists and other geospatial analysts to run several operations on Earth Observation or other data using a single API call, in turn providing the data in a form directly ready for further analysis. 

As such, it takes most of the processing burden away from the user, greatly simplifying Earth Observation data processing and analysis workflows, while also enhancing the reproducibility of scientific analyses.

The first of a two part series, Steve Liang, founder and CTO of SensorUp shares highlights from the OGC Member Meeting Climate Special Session in December, 2021, and the many challenges and opportunities it presents from a data sharing perspective.

From November 15-17, 2021, OGC and ISO/TC 211 jointly hosted the November 2021 Geospatial API Virtual Code Sprint. The code sprint focused on the refinement of the OGC API - Features Standard, and its ISO version ISO 19168, which offers the capability to serve, create, modify, and query spatial data on the Web. As a first for OGC, the Sprint used Discord to handle video, voice, and chat facilities, and additionally offered 'Mentor Streams' to support developers new to OGC API Standards.

This blog post outlines what happened at the Sprint, any lessons learnt, and how it will further refine the OGC API - Features/ISO 19168 Standards.

In his previous post, Chris Holmes laid out the vision for Cloud-Native Geospatial. With this next post, he gets into the details of what is needed, laying out the key areas where foundational standards are needed, and then surveying the current status of each area. 
The existing technologies and Standards range from quite well-established to quite speculative, but all are eminently achievable. Chris then takes a 'deep dive' into the area that he ended up focusing on the most during his time as OGC Visiting Fellow these last few months.

Hexagon’s long-time support of OGC and our Standards, including our family of OGC APIs, has enabled the Company to learn from, collaborate with, and support the broader geospatial community, while also improving their product offering and being one of the first to market with support for the latest generation of geospatial standards.

Simon Chester talked with Stan Tillman, Executive Manager, Hexagon’s Safety, Infrastructure & Geospatial Division, about the value that participating in the OGC Community has brought them, including being one of the first to market with support for the new OGC API Standards.

Chris Holmes reflects on his time as OGC's first Visiting Fellow, and outlines his vision of 'Cloud-Native Geospatial' by addressing the question  ‘What would geospatial standards look like if they were built for the cloud?’

Chris has taken the time to look at the entire geospatial landscape and the potential for OGC to play the key leadership role in making the Cloud-Native Geospatial vision a reality. 

14 years after its creation - and at a time when the need for sustainable development is greater than ever - INSPIRE has evolved to continue to provide accessible and interoperable geospatial data to the European community and beyond.

And, thanks to INSPIRE’s growing support of the OGC API Family of standards, stakeholders can access and publish it in a manner that has grown simpler and more useful over time.

Open standards aren’t just about efficiency. They allow organizations across the globe to share information effectively and securely, and can provide much needed security for data. Standards provide governments and industry alike the ability to use tons of data for a range of use cases from citizen science to Defense and Intelligence and disaster relief. 

The Building Energy Mapping and Analytics Concept Development Study (BEMA-CDS) sought to characterize the state of development of energy mapping and analytics for building stock broadly and to inform IT architectural practices and standards to enable mapping and analytics, specifically of residential energy use and efficiency.  

To complement the recent publication of the detailed report documenting the study, Eddie Oldfield, Jessica Webster, and Ryan Ahola provide here a quick overview of the study and its major findings.