The OGC requests comment on the OGC® OpenSearch Extension for Earth Observation Standard

7 October 2015 – The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) is seeking comments on the OGC OpenSearch Extension for Earth Observation, a candidate OGC standard. This OpenSearch extension provides a simple way to make queries to a repository that contains Earth Observation information and enables syndication of repositories for this purpose. Once approved as a standard and implemented in software products and services, this Standard will make it much easier for users to navigate diverse and expanding collections of Earth observation data.

OpenSearch (www.opensearch.org) provides a set of easily and widely implemented technologies that developers can use to enhance search engines, web servers, and browsers to give users access to more types of content. OpenSearch clients also enable users to customize search requests and aggregate and syndicate search results.

Earth Observation (EO) products have specific characteristics such as: the platform or satellite from which the data originates (e.g. SPOT, ENVISAT), the sensor used to acquire the data (e.g. type, spectral range, wavelengths), the processing centre (including processing date, software used), and specific satellite orbit information (e.g. number, track, frame and direction). The OpenSearch Description document format allows the use of extensions that allow search engines to inform clients about specific and contextual query parameters. This OGC candidate standard specifies an Earth Observation extension to OpenSearch that defines query parameters that allow the filtering of search results with those fields.

This candidate standard is complementary to the OGC OpenSearch Geo and Time Extensions Standard (OGC 10-032).

Download the candidate OGC OpenSearch Extension for Earth Observation Standard here: portal.opengeospatial.org/files/65168. Comments are due by 2015-11-06.

The OGC® is an international geospatial standards consortium of more than 515 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web, wireless and location-based services and mainstream IT. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org/.

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Glenn is a geographer and a GIS professional with over 20 years experience in the industry. He's the co-founder of GISuser and several other technology web publications.