OGC Disaster Pilot 2021 will prototype and demonstrate end-to-end capabilities that integrate OGC standards, data, services, and state-of-the-art technologies to support decision makers and responders in times of crisis

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is seeking participants in the OGC Disaster Pilot 2021, building on 2019’s very successful Disaster Resilience Pilot. Responses are due by May 21, 2021.

The 2021 Pilot is sponsored by OGC Strategic Members USGS, NRCan, NASA, and others, supported by OGC Principal Members AWS, and Maxar, as well as Government member CONIDA, and in collaboration with AmeriGEO, ESIP, and CEOS. The Pilot will improve the ability of key decision makers and responders to discover, manage, access, qualify, share, and exploit location-based information in support of disaster preparedness and response and multi-hazard risk analysis.

Government agencies worldwide are producing huge streams of observation data, industry is innovating with remarkable analytics and AI tools, and yet common disasters like disease, floods, and wildfires still cause almost unimaginable social and economic impacts. What is missing? A critical component is that these amazing systems still don’t talk to each other. The whole is less than, not greater than, the sum of the parts. 

With the OGC Disaster Pilot 2021, the response community has the opportunity to put the puzzle pieces together and connect required players in rapid decision loops – from the data providers all the way to the first responders and decision makers with everyone in between. The Pilot will form a pattern that can be adapted to any disaster, any region, and any combination of data sources and tools.

The technical scope of the Pilot will revolve around a small set of significant technology trends and related standards:

• Hybrid applications-to-the-data EO cloud exploitation platforms that seamlessly bring analysis-ready imagery and other data streams into scalable cloud environments where advanced processing and algorithms can be directly and flexibly applied to them.
• On-demand provisioning of decision-ready information to local analysts and field responders, integrating both space-based and local data sources, by way of modern convenience APIs and mobile-ready online/offline Geopackage tools.
• Web publication of “structured data” that connects well-known local geography with up-to-date conditions, observations, and predictions.

The Pilot will initially focus on implementing three specific scenarios that address hazard monitoring, vulnerability assessment, disaster detection, impact awareness, and disaster response:

• Landslide and flooding hazards within the Rímac and Piura river basins in Peru.
• Flooding hazards within the Red River basin in Manitoba, Canada.
• Pandemic impact and response in an additional region of the United States, focusing on Health SDI and EO datasets to be provided by Pilot sponsors.

Both scenarios will also incorporate reporting and assessment of COVID-19 pandemic impacts on affected populations. This information will then influence the scope and nature of disaster response activities.

The Disaster Pilot will be conducted under OGC’s Innovation Program, a collaborative, agile, and hands-on prototyping and engineering environment where sponsors and OGC members come together to address location interoperability challenges while validating international open standards. Watch this short video on how OGC’s Innovation Program can benefit your organization. 

OGC is grateful for the OGC Strategic Members’ industry leadership as displayed by their sponsorship of this OGC Innovation Initiative.

If you are interested in participating in this critical opportunity to shape collaborative disaster management capabilities, visit the Disaster Pilot 2021 page on ogc.org to download the Call For Participation. Responses are due by May 21, 2021.

 

About OGC
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is an international consortium of more than 500 businesses, government agencies, research organizations, and universities driven to make geospatial (location) information and services FAIR – Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.
OGC’s member-driven consensus process creates royalty free, publicly available geospatial standards. Existing at the cutting edge, OGC actively analyzes and anticipates emerging tech trends, and runs an agile, collaborative Research and Development (R&D) lab that builds and tests innovative prototype solutions to members’ use cases.
OGC members together form a global forum of experts and communities that use location to connect people with technology and improve decision-making at all levels. OGC is committed to creating a sustainable future for us, our children, and future generations.
Visit ogc.org for more info on our work.

NB: this press release was edited on 2021-05-07 to include the new scenario of “Pandemic Impact and Response.”