The OGC seeks comment on GML Coverages GeoTIFF extension and WCS 2.0 GeoTIFF extension standard

30 October 2012 – The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) seekscomment on a GeoTIFF extension to the OGC GML Coverages (GMLCOV) 1.0 Standard andon a GeoTIFF extension to the OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS) 2.0 Standard,based on the former.

The OGC Geography Markup Language (GML) Encoding Standard isa widely used XML encoding for geospatial data of all types. OGC”coverages”, which can be encoded in GML, associate positions withina bounded space to feature attribute values. Examples of these geospatialcoverages include Earth images, referenced and non-referenced rasters,curvilinear grids, and point clouds.

The OGC GML 3.2.1 Application Schema – Coverages (GMLCOV), basedon OGC Abstract Topic 6 (which is identical to ISO 19123), provides a unifiedmethod for encoding OGC coverages in GML, the OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE)Common Standard, and the OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS) Interface Standard. AsGMLCOV is independent of a particular service definition, it allows coveragedata to be exchanged through different types of services that implement theseOGC standards.

To provide maximum flexibilityin sharing coverage data, the GML Coverages GeoTIFF extension provides a way toencode coverages that are represented in encoding formats other than GML, suchas GeoTIFF. The WCS 2.0GeoTIFF extension binds the former extension to WCS 2.0 to allow usage ofGeoTIFF encoded coverages with WCS. The OGC seeks public comment on the OGC documentsdescribing the candidate GMLCOV and WCS extension standards for encodingGeoTIFF data in GMLCOV and using them with WCS. These documents are free andcan be downloaded from http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/92 .Thedeadline for comments is 29  November2012.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 465companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universitiesparticipating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatialstandards. OGC Standards support interoperable solutions that”geo-enable” the Web, wireless and location-based services, andmainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial informationand services accessible and useful with any application that needs to begeospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.

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