The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), an international voluntary consensus

standards organization A standards organization, standards body, standards developing organization (SDO), or standards setting organization (SSO) is an organization whose primary function is developing, coordinating, promulgating, revising, amending, reissuing, interpr ...

for

geospatial Geographic data and information is defined in the ISO/TC 211 series of standards as data and information having an implicit or explicit association with a location relative to Earth (a geographic location or geographic position). It is also ca ...

content and location-based services,

sensor web Sensor web is a type of sensor network that heavily utilizes the World Wide Web and is especially suited for environmental monitoring. OGC's '' Sensor Web Enablement'' (SWE) framework defines a suite of web service interfaces and communication pr ...

and

Internet of Things The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other com ...

, GIS

data processing Data processing is the collection and manipulation of digital data to produce meaningful information. Data processing is a form of '' information processing'', which is the modification (processing) of information in any manner detectable by ...

and

data sharing Data sharing is the practice of making data used for scholarly research available to other investigators. Many funding agencies, institutions, and publication venues have policies regarding data sharing because transparency and openness are consid ...

. It originated in 1994 and involves more than 500 commercial, governmental, nonprofit and research organizations in a consensus process encouraging development and implementation of open standards.

History

A predecessor organization, OGF, the Open

GRASS Poaceae () or Gramineae () is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos and the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivated in lawns a ...

Foundation, started in 1992. From 1994 to 2004 the organization also used the name Open GIS Consortium. The OGC website gives a detailed history of the OGC.

Standards

Most of the OGC standards depend on a generalized architecture captured in a set of documents collectively called the ''Abstract Specification'', which describes a basic data model for representing

geographic feature A feature (also called an object or entity), in the context of geography and geographic information science, is a discrete phenomenon that exists at a location in the space and scale of relevance to geography; that is, at or near the surface ...

s. Atop the Abstract Specification members have developed and continue to develop a growing number of specifications, or ''standards'' to serve specific needs for

interoperable Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system to work with other products or systems. While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange, a broader def ...

location and geospatial technology, including GIS. GeoServer GeoNetwork with web app

The OGC standards baseline comprises more than 30 standards, including: * 3D Tiles – Designed for streaming and rendering massive 3D geospatial content such as Photogrammetry, 3D Buildings, BIM/CAD, Instanced Features, and Point Clouds. * CSW – Catalog Service for the Web: access to catalog information * GML – Geography Markup Language:

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

-format for geographical information *

GeoPackage A GeoPackage (GPKG) is an open, non-proprietary, platform-independent and standards-based data format for geographic information system implemented as a SQLite database container. Defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) with the backing ...

– An open, standards-based, platform-independent, portable, self-describing, compact format for transferring geospatial information *

GeoSPARQL GeoSPARQL is a standard for representation and querying of geospatial linked data for the Semantic Web from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). The definition of a small ontology based on well-understood OGC standards is intended to provide a ...

– Geographic SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language: representation and querying of geospatial data for the Semantic Web * GeoXACML – Geospatial eXtensible Access Control Markup Language * KML – Keyhole Markup Language:

-based language schema for expressing geographic annotation and visualization on existing (or future) Web-based, two-dimensional maps and three-dimensional Earth browsers * Observations and Measurements * OGC Reference Model – a complete set of reference models * OLS – Open Location Service (OpenLS) * OGC Web Services Context Document defines the application state of an OGC Integrated Client * OWS – OGC Web Service Common *

SOS is a Morse code distress signal (), used internationally, that was originally established for maritime use. In formal notation is written with an overscore line, to indicate that the Morse code equivalents for the individual letters of "SOS" ...

– Sensor Observation Service *SPS – Sensor Planning Service *

SensorML SensorML is an approved Open Geospatial Consortium standar and an XML encoding for describing sensors and measurement processes. SensorML can be used to describe a wide range of sensors, including both dynamic and stationary platforms and both in ...

– Sensor Model Language *

SensorThings API SensorThings API is an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard providing an open and unified framework to interconnect IoT sensing devices, data, and applications over the Web. It is an open standard addressing the syntactic interoperability ...

- an open and unified framework to interconnect IoT devices, data, and applications over the Web. Currently a candidate standard waiting for votes. * SFS – Simple Features – SQL * SLD - Styled Layer Descriptor * SRID, an identification for spatial coordinate systems * WaterML – Information model for the representation of hydrological observation data * WCS – Web Coverage Service: provides access, subsetting, and processing on coverage objects * WCPS – Web Coverage Processing Service: provides a raster query language for ad-hoc processing and filtering on raster coverages * WFS – Web Feature Service: for retrieving or altering feature descriptions * WMS – Web Map Service: provides map images *

WMTS WMTS may refer to: * WMTS-FM, a radio station (88.3 FM) licensed to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, United States * Wireless Medical Telemetry Service, certain frequencies set aside by the FCC for wireless medical telemetry *Web Map Tile Service A Web M ...

– Web Map Tile Service: provides map image tiles * WPS – Web Processing Service: remote processing service * WTS – Web Terrain Service (WTS) The design of standards were originally built on the

HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide We ...

web services

paradigm In science and philosophy, a paradigm () is a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitute legitimate contributions to a field. Etymology ''Paradigm'' comes f ...

for message-based interactions in web-based systems, but meanwhile has been extended with a common approach for

SOAP Soap is a salt of a fatty acid used in a variety of cleansing and lubricating products. In a domestic setting, soaps are surfactants usually used for washing, bathing, and other types of housekeeping. In industrial settings, soaps are us ...

protocol and WSDL bindings. Considerable progress has been made in defining Representational State Transfer (REST) web services, e.g., OGC

Organization structure

The OGC has several operational units:

Standards program (SP)

In the OGC Standards Program the Technical Committee and Planning Committee work in a formal consensus process to arrive at approved (or "adopted") OGC standards. Learn about the standards that have been approved so far, and see the lists of products that implement these standards.

Compliance Program (CP)

The OGC Compliance Program provides the resources, procedures, and policies for improving software implementations' compliance with OGC standards. The Compliance Program provides an online free testing facility, a process for certification and branding of compliant products, and community coordination. The Compliance Program also runs plugfests, which are short term events for increasing interoperability among vendors' products.

Community and Outreach Program (COP)

The OGC and its members offer resources to help technology developers and users take advantage of the OGC's open standards. Technical documents, training materials, test suites, reference implementations and other interoperability resources developed in OGC Interoperability Initiatives are available on our resources page. In addition, the OGC and its members support publications, workshops, seminars and conferences to help technology developers, integrators and procurement managers introduce OGC capabilities into their architectures.

Membership

The OGC offers membership options for industry, government, academic, research and not-for-profit organizations.

Collaboration

The OGC has a close relationship with

ISO/TC 211 ISO/TC 211 is a standard technical committee formed within ISO, tasked with covering the areas of digital geographic information (such as used by geographic information systems) and geomatics. It is responsible for preparation of a series of Inte ...

(Geographic Information/Geomatics). Volumes from the ISO 19100 series under development by this committee progressively replace the OGC abstract specification. Further, the OGC standards Web Map Service, GML, Web Feature Service, Observations and Measurements, and Simple Features Access have become ISO standards. The OGC works with more than 20 international standards-bodies including W3C,

OASIS In ecology, an oasis (; ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment'ksar''with its surrounding feeding source, the palm grove, within a relational and circulatory nomadic system.” The location of oases has been of critical imp ...

, WfMC, and the

IETF The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements an ...

References

External links

* {{Authority control