OGC Requests

The OGC API - Environmental Data Retrieval (OGC API - EDR) standard uses current web technologies and best practices to enable end-users – or anyone with web development experience – to easily identify and retrieve a subset of data from ‘big data’ stores. The idea is to save those users interested in environmental (or other) data from having to transfer and deal with datasets that inevitably contain data concerning areas or time periods that are irrelevant to their interests. In addition, as a web API, it uses a well-understood and -established mode of interaction that comes with a shallow learning curve.

The new OGC API family of standards uses the OpenAPI specification to define modular API building blocks to spatially enable Web APIs in a consistent way. The OGC API - EDR standard specifies the fundamental API building blocks required to access environmental data resources by requesting data at a Position, within an Area, or along a Trajectory, including optional time and/or vertical coordinates.

The OGC API - EDR standard is not just for accessing ‘environmental’ data but can also support more general geospatial data. The versatility of the OGC API - EDR standard makes it useful across many domains and applications. Example use cases could include: 

1. A tower crane operator wants to know the wind speed and direction at a series of levels between the surface and 75m above from now and for the next 48 hours. The OGC API - EDR standard could be used to access the gridded weather forecast dataset and return those values to their browser in JSON.
2. An aviator wants access to all the current aerodrome observations of visibility in a specified area. The OGC API - EDR standard could be used to access a certified METAR (METeorological Aerodrome Report) database and to return those values without the user having to decipher all the METAR content.
3. A hydrologist would like to retrieve both observed and forecast water levels from a network of gauging stations. The OGC API - EDR standard could be used to retrieve those values by station name rather than geographical coordinates.
4. A Public Safety Official would like to know the predicted wind speeds along several forecast typhoon tracks or in a corridor around such tracks. The OGC API - EDR standard could be used to interrogate in turn several such predictions.
5. The OGC API - EDR standard can also be used to access data in non-real-world coordinate systems, such as for retrieving bone density from a 3D MRI scan, at a single position or along a track, or to retrieve the color or gray-scale value from a location on a digitised microscope slide.

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) membership has proposed updates to the OGC Abstract Spec Topic 21 - Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS) document and is seeking public comment before approval. This version was jointly developed with ISO TC211 and has the same normative content as ISO/DIS 19170-1:2020.

The goal of a DGGS is to enable rapid assembly of spatio-temporal data without the difficulties of working with projected coordinate reference systems and complex geometries. DGGSs represent the Earth (or other planetary bodies) as hierarchical sequences of tessellations, each with global coverage and with progressively finer resolution. Each cell (or zone) in the tessellations has a unique identifier, so that individual observations can be assigned an identifier corresponding to both the position and size of the phenomenon being observed. This means that the resolution and precision of the data capture is inherently part of the stored data; not something that needs to be explained in metadata and therefore potentially overlooked.

Further, DGGS come with a standard set of topological queries that enable rapid data analysis of very large numbers of zones and, by their very nature, are well suited to parallel processing applications at multiple spatial resolutions - a boon for big data processing.

The changes in this revised edition compared to the previous OGC edition include:

• Separation of the DGGS standard into common modules and an extension for Equal Area Earth DGGS;
• Remodelling to incorporate new versions of ISO 19107, ISO 19111 & ISO 19112, and tighter integration with ISO 19115-1; 
• Extending the common module to support up to three spatial dimensions and up to one temporal dimension;
• Additional modelling of temporal geometry and temporal reference systems sufficient for spatio-temporal DGGS, introducing the concept of a zone as a region of space-time equivalent to a location or an era; 
• Remodelling algebraic functions as spatio-temporal extension of ISO 19107 Query;
• Explicit handling of Dynamic vs Static datums for Equal Area Earth DGGS.

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) seeks public comment on updates to two Best Practice documents concerning Defence Profiles: DGIWG 122 Defence Profile of OGC’s Web Feature Service 2.0; and DGIWG 112 Defence Profile of OGC’s Web Map Service 1.3 - Revision.

This request is for DGIWG 122 Defence Profile of OGC’s Web Feature Service 2.0.
For DGIWG 112 Defence Profile of OGC’s Web Map Service 1.3 - Revision please see: https://www.ogc.org/standards/requests/212

OGC Web Feature Service (WFS) and Web Map Service (WMS) are two of OGC’s most popular standards and are broadly used in the defence community. OGC WFS provides location-based/geospatial data over the web for visualization or analysis, while OGC WMS provides pre-rendered maps over the web.

The Defence profiles for the standards were created by the Defence Geospatial Information Working Group (DGIWG) in order to address specific requirements, recommendations and guidelines for implementations of the OGC Web Map Service and OGC Web Feature Service standards. Together with the DGIWG profiles for Catalogue Service for the web (CSW), Web Map Tile Service (WMTS) and Web Coverage Service (WCS) they built the basis for NATO STANAG 6523 - Defence Geospatial Web Service Edition 1(2020).

The revisions to the documents:

• address comments and change requests from OGC testbeds and partners
• clarify and simplify requirements
• add informative information to support implementation

Using geospatial information to plan routes for travel and logistics is among the most common uses of geospatial and location-based technologies, with countless routes being generated daily by smartphone users, logistics companies, and others. In support of this, road network data, routing & navigation algorithms, and route calculation services are now available from many different providers and sources. While this diversity in the marketplace is generally beneficial to consumers of route information, it makes accessing, integrating, overlaying, or comparing routes from different routing services overly complex.

The OGC API - Routes will enable a simple method for an application to query any number of routing and/or data providers, even across multiple modes of transport, and present the resulting routes to the user in a single place. The capability for a client to request and retrieve routes from a routing API provider and share routes between applications will improve interoperability for many users, communities, and enterprises.

• For providers of routes, the API and route exchange model will provide a simple model to publish and offer those routes as resources for use by other systems.
• For developers building infrastructures, the API will provide common methods to describe and leverage existing routing engines and algorithms using modern APIs - saving the time and costs associated with developing and deploying custom interfaces.
• For users, applications, and enterprises, the capability to get routes via a common API, regardless of the underlying routing data, engines, or algorithms will provide a significant step forward in geospatial interoperability and modularity.

The proposed OGC API - Routes will provide the methods and apparatus for the execution of basic commands to retrieve, update, share, and delete routes, and will interface with other geospatial resources that use OGC APIs. The proposed route exchange model will provide a method to share routes, regardless of the underlying proprietary data, routing engine software, or algorithms.

Draft specifications for a routing API and route exchange model were successfully demonstrated in the OGC Open Routing API Pilot, the OGC Smart City Interoperability Reference Architecture (SCIRA) Pilot, and other efforts. Coordination with W3C on OGC API - Routes has begun with discussions in the joint W3C/OGC Spatial Data on the Web Interest Group.