OGC Requests

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) seeks public comment on the OGC SensorThings API, Part 2 - Tasking Core Candidate Standard. The OGC SensorThings API is a free and non-proprietary lightweight interface specification that simplifies and accelerates the development of Web-based Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

The OGC SensorThings API provides an open, geospatial-enabled, and unified way to interconnect the IoT devices, data, and applications over the Web. Part 1 was released in 2016 and allowed management and reception of observations or measurements made by IoT sensors. Part 2 provides a mechanism to tell the sensor/actuator what to do

Application developers can use this open standard to connect to various IoT devices and create innovative applications without needing to individually integrate the heterogeneous protocols of the different IoT devices, gateways, and services. System manufacturers can embed the OGC SensorThings API in their IoT hardware and software platforms so that the different platforms’ IoT devices can effortlessly connect with other servers that implement the standard. Because device location communication is useful in almost every IoT application, an open, lightweight, widely used standards-based location encoding is part of the SensorThings API.

This new standard is designed specifically for resource-constrained IoT devices and the Web developer community. The candidate standard follows REST principles and uses an efficient MQTT transport and the flexible OASIS OData URL conventions.

The candidate OGC SensorThings API Standard was designed to be compatible with a rich set of proven and widely-adopted open standards, such as the Web protocols and the OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards, including the ISO/OGC Observation and Measurement Encoding Standard. Thus, the OGC SensorThings API is extensible and can be applied in both simple and complex use cases.

At a high level, the OGC SensorThings API provides two main functionalities: Sensing, and Tasking. Each function is handled by a part. The Sensing part, an official OGC standard since 2016, provides a standard way to manage and retrieve observations and metadata from heterogeneous IoT sensor systems.

This, the Tasking part, provides a standard way for parameterizing - also called tasking of - task-able IoT devices, such as sensors, actuators, drones, or even satellites.

Bidders' Q&A Webinar

A Bidders Q&A Webinar was held on Friday, 12 January 2018 at noon US Eastern Standard Time. 

The Webinar recording is available at:  https://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/77559

The Slide deck used for the Webinar is available at:  https://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/77558

Clarification questions and answers will continue to be made available in the CFP Clarifications document at https://proposal.opengeospatial.org/clarification.php.

General Information

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) has issued a Call for Participation (CFP) in the OGC Testbed 14 Interoperability Testbed.

Testbed 14 sponsors have completed and documented interoperability requirements and objectives for this testbed initiative. Organizations selected to participate in Testbed 14 will develop prototype solutions based on the sponsors’ use cases, requirements and scenarios. These are described in detail in the CFP. Participants’ prototype solutions will implement existing OGC standards as well as new prototype interface and encoding specifications introduced or developed in Testbed 14. Prototype specifications may ultimately become official, member approved OGC standards, revisions to existing OGC standards, or best practices for using OGC standards.

Bidders responding to this CFP must be OGC members and must be familiar with the OGC mission, organization, and process. Proposals from non-members will be considered provided that a completed application for OGC membership (or a letter of intent to become a member) is submitted prior to (or with) the proposal.

The list of Testbed 14 Sponsors can be found on the main Testbed 14 web page: www.opengeospatial.org/projects/initiatives/testbed14. 

Sponsor requirements have been organized into the following technical threads:

• CITE: Compliance
• EOC: Earth Observation & Clouds
• MoPoQ: Modeling, Portrayal, and Quality of Service
• NextGen: Next Generation Services

Two-Part Solicitation

The Testbed 14 solicitation is being issued in two parts due to specialized sponsor procurement requirements:

• Part 1 - the CFP document being issued directly by OGC on December 8  and referred to as the "Part 1 CFP" or just "CFP"
• Part 2 - an Invitation To Tender pack ("Part 2 ITT" or just "ITT"). Please visit the European Space Agency EMITS site for this Invitation to Tender pack. Each solicitation stands on its own, and there is no need to refer to the Part 1 CFP part in order to formulate a response to the Part 2 ITT.

The Part 2 ITT is described separately from this document and has distinct response requirements. So any Bidder wishing to respond to both Part 2 ITT and the Part 1 CFP should deliver two separate proposals, one for each set of response requirements. A Bidder wishing to respond to one or the other (but not both) would submit only one proposal.

The Part 2 ITT was released on 14 December, 2017. To provide a complete description of Testbed-14 scope, this CFP documentation was extended through Corrigenda to combine all deliverables from both parts (Part 1 CFP and Part 2 ITT). All work items marked as belonging to Part 2 ITT have distinct response requirements that are provided as part of the ITT. Bidding on these ITT requirements and work items requires an independent proposal! ITT requirements and work items are only copied into the Part 1 CFP solicitation documents for completeness.

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) announce a Call for Participation in a simulated disaster response exercise that will take place in Buenos Aires, Argentina on September 7th, 2017, during the Disaster Risk Reduction (DDR) Across the Americas Summit.

The Call for participation is available below.

Many disasters in Latin America and the Caribbean affect multiple countries which means that sharing of best practices and other information across national boundaries can improve disaster response capabilities in the region. Bringing together the disaster response community, inclusive of data providers and end users, through the simulated exercise, will help identify the best practices, gaps and information needs among all stakeholders and ensure that future work plans are tied to real gaps and needs.

The DDR Across the Americas Summit will provide an important opportunity for enhanced dialogue and planning between representatives of the scientific earth observation (EO) and the DRR community, including stakeholders in preparedness and planning, disaster mitigation, emergency response, and recovery.

The summit will take place in Buenos Aires, Argentina from September 3rd to 8th, 2017. More information on the summit is available at this link: https://disasters.nasa.gov/argentina-summit-2017

15 February 2017: As part of the Open Geospatial Consortium’s (OGC®) Testbed 13, the OGC is requesting information to identify, assess, and gather the current state and available geospatial data and services about the Europe and Middle East regions that may be used to support the development, testing, and demonstration of OGC standards and technologies advanced during Testbed 13.

OGC Testbed 13 participants will implement services, access data, and demonstrate capabilities using the services and data identified during this RFI. The overarching theme for Testbed 13 is mass population migration. The Testbed aims to understand and document how information sharing & safeguarding tools and practices - including open geospatial standards - can enable cross-domain interoperability on an international level for structured communication exchange and border surveillance to assist law enforcement and humanitarian aid operations.

The demonstration scenario for Testbed 13 will focus on addressing challenges related to the coordination of multi-regional/national operations arising from the current exodus of people from the Middle East to Europe. This includes any messaging related to the displacement and mass movement of populations in response to conflict.

As an OGC Innovation Program initiative, Testbed 13 will investigate and develop new or enhanced OGC web service or encoding specifications over a wide variety of technology work areas. These technologies will be tested and demonstrated in an architecture and a deployed environment in support of the mass migration theme, as shown in the following diagram:

A wide variety of source data or data provider services available for public use are needed to support the scenarios and use cases associated with this Testbed. As such, OGC is looking for your help in providing us with information on the availability of these data and services. The following is a partial list of types of source data or services, required over the area of interest, that could support the development of, and testing in, Testbed 13:

• Map data and/or services
• Feature data and/or services, such as road networks, rivers, water bodies or water sources, jurisdictional boundaries, etc.
• Satellite imagery and/or services
• Predictive model related data, such as base and ancillary data as well as outputs of predictive models
• Medical and Health facilities and locations (or could be part of other feature data sources or services)
• Recommendations for additional source data or services that provide data of various types across the region of interest, are available for public use, and could support the scenario, development, and testing in Testbed 13, are welcome and encouraged.

For more information on Testbed 13, view the Call for Participation at http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/154. The RFI is available and instructions on how to submit responses to, or questions concerning, the RFI are available in the download below. Responses to the RFI are due by 15 March 2017.