Indian Plugfest

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OGC India Plugfest 2017

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the Department of Science & Technology (DST) under the Government of India conducted the OGC India Plugfest 2017 (OIP-2017). The OIP-2017 was targeted at enhancing the interoperability among geospatial products and web services based on OGC standards within the Indian Geospatial Information (GI) community. The successful conclusion of OIP-2017 will assist National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) under DST to provide guidance on best practices using OGC standards for development of applications in several important & flagship schemes/programmes of the Government such as Smart Cities, Atal Mission for Rejuvenation through Urban Trasnformation (AMRUT); National Land Records Moderinisation Programme (NLRMP); Clean India (Swatchh Bharat – Urban & Rural); National Mission on Clean Ganga; Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management & Planning Authority (CAMPA); State SDIs; Digital India, and others.

1.1    Objectives of the Plugfest

This Plugfest was developed to prove the value of the standardization efforts of NSDI at DST and demonstrate application of standards in the utilization of geospatial data in various schemes and programmes in general, and for the Smart Cities Mission, in particular. Specifically, this interoperability initiative included the following objectives.

• To create an environment for Public Private Partnership (PPP) for applying the benefits of OGC standards in improving the ability and efficiency of accessing, sharing, and processing various types of government geospatial data/information via OGC Web Services.
• To actively test the ability and governance for seamless exchange of information among various stakeholders using different technology platforms in support of the Smart Cities Mission.
• To learn from local industry participants’ experiences and knowledge in collaboration – an effort that has been well proven for geospatial information interoperability in other locations and applied successfully to software development, application challenges, and programs.
• To identify areas of improvement in the content and use of specific OGC standards.

These objectives were highlighted through four use cases for demonstration.

1.     Water supply / waste water management – highlight geospatial aspects of routine maintenance and planning for water/waste infrastructure.

2.     Watershed management – for cities that rely upon surface water for their water supply, watershed management is a critical aspect of operating a Smart City that generally occurs outside of the city area.

3.     Air Quality –  integrate air quality measurements in the context of the urban environment.

4.     Health – monitoring of health and communicable diseases and identifying potential ties to water and air quality.

1.2    Plugfest Participation

The core element of OIP-2017, like with any other OGC Plugfest, was to bring engineers from stakeholders involved in programs of national importance to a common table and connect them to enable cross-agency and cross-system workflows to be tested and solutions to existing issues be resolved quickly and pragmatically.

Central to the success of this Plugfest was the support and active participation of the organizations listed in Table 1. The OIP-2017 consisted of two separate sprints. Sprint 1 tested geospatial data and web services in commercial and open source client software (see Table 2) and set the baseline for the Plugfest. The experience gained in Sprint 1 could then be used to refine the use of the client and/or server software to resolve any issues (related to consumption and publishing of services using 2D/3D data). In Sprint 2, the software was tested again against the same Use Cases.

Table 1 Participating Organizations

Table 2 Client Applications

The OGC India Plugfest 2017 results are documented in an Engineering Report.