The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is seeking public comment on the proposed GeoHEIF Standards Working Group (SWG).

The High Efficiency Image Format (HEIF), defined by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), is a multipart container format designed to efficiently store and manage imagery and is based on the ISO Base Media File Format (ISOBMFF), the same underlying container format used my MP4. While HEIF is widely used for camera imagery (e.g., in the iPhones), it can also support geospatial imagery when georeferencing information is included, similar to established formats such as GeoTIFF and JPEG2000 (GMLJP2). The modular format also enables the inclusion of additional metadata.

The proposed GeoHEIF (Geographic High Efficiency Image Format) specification aims to define and add HEIF properties that support embedding georeferencing information within one or more image items. If HEIF contains spatial distributions of variables rather than imagery (for example, temperature or species occurrence data), the SWG may also define mechanisms to describe the semantics of those variables and enable HEIF to function as a container for geospatial datacubes. This would support representation of variables across multidimensional spaces (e.g., temperature along space, elevation, and time).

The GeoHEIF concept was demonstrated and evaluated within the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) GEOINT Imagery Media for ISR (GIMI) extension and during OGC Testbed 20, with further demonstrations and experimentation occurring in OGC Testbed 21.

HEIF supports storage and containment of both compressed and uncompressed encodings of imagery, with supporting metadata. The GIMI is an extension to HEIF, adding ContentID, TAI Timestamps, and application metadata. This proposed SWG aims to standardize GeoHEIF based on HEIF, ISOBMFF, and GIMI specifications to support representation of orthorectified, georectified, rectifiable imagery, and datacubes.

The SWG will focus on defining standards for encoding geospatial metadata within the HEIF format and potentially informing future work related to similar formats such as TIFF or JPEG2000. Images can be geospatially enabled through Coordinate Reference System (CRS) metadata defined in Compact URIs (CURIEs), Well-Known Text version 2 (WKT2), or other OGC-approved encodings. The group will explore alternatives such as binary-encoded boxes or text formats such as RDF Turtle.

The scope of the proposed SWG also includes containment of imagery across a broad range of array sizes, frame rates, one-to-many components (bands), color formats, bit depths, and both two-dimensional imagery and multidimensional datacubes.

To Comment:

The proposed GeoHEIF Standards Working Group is available for review and comment for a period of 21 days. Comments are due by March 13, 2026.

Comments can be submitted in the OGC GitHub repository for a period ending on the “Close request date” listed above. Comments received will be consolidated and reviewed by OGC members for potential incorporation into the document.

About OGC

At OGC, we bring together a global network of organizations and experts across government, industry, research institutions, and the wider geospatial community. For more than 30 years, we have served as a trusted hub for collaboration—working to advance open standards and improve interoperability across the geospatial ecosystem.

Our work supports a wide range of real‑world applications, from climate resilience and urban planning to defense and emergency response, by helping stakeholders access, share, and apply geospatial information with confidence.

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