OGC® Public Report Repository

OGC publishes many different types of public documents for use, review, and comment. These are not official positions and / or standards of the OGC, and they do not have the same level of OGC endorsement. 

SDIs to Data Spaces

The geospatial information domain is undergoing a profound transformation, driven by rapid technological innovation, exponential data growth, and increasing societal demands for timely, trustworthy, and actionable insights. This evolution is marked by a shift from traditional, static Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) to dynamic geospatial ecosystems. A geospatial ecosystem is a flexible, scalable, and inclusive system that integrates people, technologies, data, standards, and governance models to enable the dynamic aggregation, analysis, and application of geospatial information.

OGC Testbed-20 

OGC Testbed-20 is a collaborative R&D initiative by the Open Geospatial Consortium to advance geospatial standards focusing on data integrity and trust, imagery for intelligence, Geospatial data cubes and High-performance computing formats focusing on Data Integrity and trust, high performance computing, Geodata Cubes and Imagery for Intelligence. 

Explores the implementation of Integrity, Provenance, and Trust (IPT) in distributed geospatial data systems. It documents the outcomes of the Testbed-20 initiative, which aimed to develop resilient data services that ensure data reliability, traceability, and authenticity across organizational boundaries. 

The OGC Testbed 20 GeoDataCube (GDC) Provenance Demonstration Report outlines the development and evaluation of a standardized framework for tracking and exchanging metadata and provenance in geospatial workflows. The initiative focused on enhancing the GDC API Profiles to support transparency, reproducibility, and interoperability across open science and restricted environments. Key contributions include the integration of W3C PROV standards, the use of STAC metadata extensions, and demonstrations by Eurac Research, CRIM, and GeoLabs. These efforts aim to improve traceability, support FAIR data principles, and inform future OGC standards for geospatial data provenance.

The geospatial community, through initiatives like OGC Testbed-19 and the GeoDataCube Standards Working Group, has been working to develop interoperable Geospatial Data Cubes (GDCs) for efficient Earth Observation (EO) data management. The draft OGC API — GeoDataCube Standard aims to unify existing technologies such as openEO, OGC API-Processes, and STAC, offering a comprehensive framework for accessing, filtering, subsetting, aggregating, and processing multidimensional geospatial data. Testbed 20 focuses on profiling and integrating these capabilities to support advanced EO data applications.

Usability and integration testing across five implementations revealed key gaps in input/output alignment, hindering seamless data exchange. The report recommends focusing on harmonizing access mechanisms, defining best practices for STAC metadata, and developing bridging processes to enhance interoperability and support future standardization in Earth observation cloud platforms.

This report explores the integration of cloud-optimized geospatial data formats into High-Performance Computing (HPC) environments to enhance High-Performance Geospatial Computing (HPGC) workflows. 

bSI and OGC Strategic Roadmap

This strategic roadmap is a work product of a joint working group of buildingSMART International (bSi) and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). It is the latest apptemp in a decade-long effort by these organizations to bridge the gap between building information modeling (BIM) and geographic information systems (GIS) to leverage open data standards and foster continuity of information across any business domain (e.g., environment, transportation, infrastructure, buildings_ where both BIM and GIS data are needed for informed decision-making.

Releasable Basemap Tiles GeoPackage Sprint

This Engineering Report describes an extension for storing Releasable Basemap Tiles (RBT) in GeoPackage developed during an OGC Code Sprint initiative sponsored by the US Army Geospatial Center (AGC) which took place in March 2024.

OGC Climate and Disasters Resilience Pilot 

The OGC Climate and Disaster Resilience Pilot (CDRP) is a multi-phase initiative by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) aimed at enhancing global readiness for climate change and related disasters. See the Website for more details 

PHASE I 

Explored how open geospatial standards and technologies can transform raw climate data into actionable insights to support climate adaptation and resilience. The pilot demonstrated end-to-end workflows—from raw data to Analysis Ready Data (ARD), Decision Ready Indicators (DRI), and advanced visualizations—across use cases including drought, wildfire, heatwaves, and coastal impacts. 

2024

Climate and Disaster Resilience Pilot 2024 (CDRP24) was driven by the urgent need for new methods, tools, and systems to better understand, predict, and address phenomena such as the intensification and changing patterns of typhoons, landslides, flooding, and extreme heat events.

PHASE II 

CDRP.2 aims to improve global readiness for climate change and disasters by enhancing how raw data is transformed into actionable insights to  Use Generative AI to improve climate communication and decision-making, Advance wildfire risk modeling and insurance workflows, develop ontologies for emergency and disaster management and Improve FAIR data services (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). 

OGC Testbed-19 

The OGC Testbed-19 initiative was a major research and development under the OGC Collaborative Solutions and Innovation (COSI) Program. It focused on advancing geospatial interoperability across a wide range of domains—from Earth to space—through rapid prototyping and experimentation. 

Explores how to extend the GeoTIFF standard to support geospatial referencing for non-terrestrial (extraterrestrial) imagery—such as images of planets, moons, or asteroids. 

This report explores transfer learning in geospatial and Earth Observation applications. It highlights experiments on reusing machine learning models across domains, locations, and data types, and recommends standards for improving model sharing, interoperability, and reuse using FAIR principles. 

The OGC Non-Terrestrial Geospatial Engineering Report explores how OGC standards can be extended to support geospatial applications beyond Earth—including planetary surfaces and interplanetary space. 

Explores improving Analysis Ready Data (ARD) for geospatial use. It evaluates ARD through real-world scenarios—urban change, synthetic data, datacube standards, and Arctic monitoring. Key recommendations include expanding ARD to non-satellite data, improving metadata, and supporting machine learning and FAIR data principles. 

Explores improving Analysis Ready Data (ARD) for geospatial use. It evaluates ARD through real-world scenarios—urban change, synthetic data, datacube standards, and Arctic monitoring. Key recommendations include expanding ARD to non-satellite data, improving metadata, and supporting machine learning and FAIR data principles 

This report presents the outcomes of OGC Testbed-19’s efforts to define and prototype a standardized, interoperable API for accessing and processing GeoDataCubes (GDCs) 

This report presents a draft specification for the OGC API — GeoDataCube (GDC), developed during OGC Testbed-19. It aims to standardize access and processing of geospatial data cubes in an interoperable way. 

This report explores the concept of Agile Reference Architecture (ARA) for geospatial systems, aiming to evolve current static architectures into dynamic, secure, and interoperable systems. It introduces the concept of Federated Agile Collaborating Trusted Systems (FACTS) to support trusted, autonomous, and adaptive geospatial data and service ecosystems.  

OGC GeoTech Interoperability Experiment 

The OGC GeoTech Interoperability Experiment (Geotech IE) aims to standardize and improve the sharing of geotechnical data using open geospatial and ISO standards.  The report explores how geotechnical data (like boreholes, soil tests, and geological models) can be standardized and shared using OGC and ISO standards. 

The OGC Federated Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure Pilots 

The OGC Federated Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure (FMSDI) initiative is a multi-phase project led by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to enhance how marine spatial data is shared, accessed, and used across borders and domains, to improve the maturity and interoperability of Marine Spatial Data Infrastructures (MSDIs) by applying open OGC, IHO and ISO standards and FAIR data principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable).  

PHASE I – Concept Development Study 

The Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure Concept Development Study (MSDI-CDS) assessed the current state of data management and exchange technologies used in the marine domain. The marine domain describes all phenomena and activities that occur within, around, or are related to the space of earth s inland waters, seas and oceans.    

PHASE II – Towards a Federated Marine SDI

FMSDI Phase 2 aimed to demonstrate how federated Marine Spatial Data Infrastructures (MSDIs) can improve access to and interoperability of marine data across borders and domains, especially at the land/sea interface. 

PHASE III – Arctic Environment 

To demonstrate how open geospatial standards (from OGC, IHO, and others) can support interoperable, real-time decision-making in the Arctic, especially at the land/sea interface, where data integration is complex but critical 

PHASE IV – Global Awareness 

Focused on advancing the integration of land and marine geospatial data to support climate resilience, emergency response, and sustainable development in coastal and Arctic regions and demonstrate how open geospatial standards can support interoperable, real-time decision-making across the land-sea interface, especially in regions vulnerable to climate change and rising sea levels. 

OGC Urban Digital Twins Interoperability Pilot 

The OGC Urban Digital Twins Interoperability Pilot (UDTIP) is a collaborative initiative led by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to enhance the interoperability of geospatial data and services within Urban Digital Twins (UDTs)—virtual representations of urban environments used for planning, analysis, and decision-making. 

OGC Climate Resilience Pilot 

The objective of this pilot is to accelerate our collective readiness for accessing, fusing and analyzing data from the climate change modeling community with earth observation and social science data to contribute to the global push for achieving climate resilience. Our goal is to develop a reliable foundation for decision ready data services for climate change adaptation actions. For this purpose, OGC members engaged in this pilot will develop a series of demonstrators that show the integration and combined exploitation of climate data, EO data, and data from the social sciences.

Urban Digital Twins

This position paper is aimed at city officials and domain professionals working in an urban data context. Its goal is to clarify the concept of Urban Digital Twins (UDT) and to position it in regards of Digital Twins in general as well as the emerging Metaverse.

OGC Open Science Persistent Demonstrator 

The Open Science Persistent Demonstrator (OSPD) is a long-term, collaborative initiative led by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), in partnership with organizations like ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA. Its primary goal is to advance reproducible and interoperable Earth Science research by integrating and demonstrating open science principles across global communities 

 2024 Results

This report presents results from the joint initiative by OGC, ESA, and NASA to support open, reproducible Earth science research. It connects Earth Observation (EO) platforms using open standards to enable transparent, portable, and reusable scientific workflows 

Model-Driven Standards

This OGC Discussion Paper provides guidelines on how to create a specification of a conceptual model through use of a Unified Modeling Language (UML) editor and an AsciiDoc compiler. This document references Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect and the Metanorma AsciiDoc toolchain in examples that implement the OGC model-driven standards process, described in OGC 21-035r1.

For a full list of Publicly available reports please see this link.