OGC Testbed-21

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is delighted to invite potential sponsors to contribute funding to the OGC Testbed-21 initiative. The Call For Sponsors for OGC Testbed-21 (or as a PDF version) outlines in detail the possible areas of research, benefits of sponsorship, the project timeline, and how to apply to sponsor. Responses are due March 14, 2025.

OGC Testbeds are OGC’s largest research and development initiatives, and run annually. The Testbed series brings together sponsors and participants to address real-world interoperability challenges being faced by organizations, explore what’s possible with geospatial technologies, and advance OGC practices and standards. OGC Testbed-21, the latest in the series, builds on the success and outcomes of previous Testbeds and other OGC initiatives.

A key part of the Testbed-21 initiative is the integration of real-world challenges, requirements, and ideas from potential sponsors to identify synergistic effects. OGC is inviting organizations to sponsor the Testbed and discuss their requirements. Sponsors and OGC staff will collaborate to refine use cases and requirements, transforming them into work items that maximize synergies between the different organizations’ requirements. OGC member organizations competitively apply to be selected as Testbed participants. OGC Staff, together with the Testbed sponsors, select the most qualified organizations to participate and work to best address these requirements.

OGC Testbeds provide a unique opportunity to explore how interoperability can be optimized within a given context. Combining technologies in a single initiative, and bringing several sponsors together, creates an environment that closely resembles the interoperability challenges faced in real-world situations. Consequently, Testbeds bring about synergetic effects by facilitating collaboration among several sponsors and experts from member organizations. As multi-sponsor initiatives, Testbeds benefit from synergistic effects caused by overlapping interests. Sponsorship for individual tasks can be shared across sponsors, which enables the Testbed to explore new technology more deeply and ensures more realistic use cases and scenarios. OGC Staff collect the sponsors’ areas of interest early in the process and share the full picture among all sponsors. This enables the sponsors to identify common interests and leads to more efficient use of the available resources.

Potential Topics

For the focus of Testbed-21, OGC has prepared several suggested topics that reflect recent discussions and requirements gathered from various sources, including the recent Testbed-21 Request For Information, discussions with Members, and other OGC activities and market analysis.

Advancement of GeoDataCubes

GeoDataCubes, which are multi-dimensional arrays of data with one or more spatial dimensions, offer potential benefits such as improved integration of information from multidimensional datasets and growth of the scientific user community for Earth Observation data. Testbed-21could advance the GeoDataCube concept towards standardization by collecting feedback from vendors and data providers, conducting workshops for users of Earth Observation data, and focusing on data access and the use of various data platforms.

Analysis Ready Data (ARD)

ARD—geospatial data processed to a minimum set of requirements for immediate analysis with minimal user effort and interoperability—offers benefits such as increased speed of analysis, reduced risk of missing key information, and improved collaboration in analysis across disciplines. Testbed-21 could experiment with existing standards to facilitate the description and publication of ARD, as well as clearly defining its scope and levels of readiness.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Geoinformatics

The adoption of AI in geoinformatics has progressed rapidly, with applications ranging from feature extraction and classification to productivity enhancement and increased creativity. Testbed-21 could explore the potential of AI in geospatial applications, including the development of a register for unique naming of ML models, the storage of ML models, and the extension of OGC API Standards to facilitate the querying and interrogation of datasets using AI.

Building Blocks for Geospatial Ecosystems

Building Blocks are packages of functionality defined to meet specific business needs, offering benefits such as greater availability of provenance, easier integration of components, and greater reliability of systems. Testbed-21 could explore how the concepts of Building Blocks can be applied to Spatial Data Infrastructure/Data Space/Data Ecosystem initiatives across the globe.

Citizen-centric data

Citizen-centric data has potential benefits such as increased public engagement and greater trust in data. Testbed-21 could explore the use of the GeoPackage standard for storing and moving citizen-centric data on personal devices, building upon security approaches developed in previous Testbeds.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI) usage for geospatial resources

The DOI system, used to uniquely identify documents, datasets, and other types of objects, offers benefits such as persistent identification, enhanced discoverability, and greater integration with journal systems. Testbed-21 could explore possible solutions for associating DOI records with geospatial data, including prototyping an extension of the DataCite and Crossref metadata schemas.

GEOINT Imagery Media for ISR (GIMI)

GIMI, a candidate standard that provides a modular container format for both still and time-based multimedia data, offers benefits such as support for long-term sustainment of Enterprise software capabilities and integration of current and future imagery domain metadata models. Testbed-21 could further develop GIMI by exploring the inclusion of a tiling mechanism for Cloud Optimized format, benchmarking compression algorithms and geo-enabled HEIF drivers, and developing an ontology for describing metadata.

Integrity, Provenance, and Trust (IPT)

There is a growing need for data Integrity, Provenance, and Trust (IPT) across various domains that use geospatial data. Testbed-21 could experiment with approaches for validating resource integrity, building trust, and ensuring provenance verification through the implementation of metadata and OGC API Standards.

Metadata and data infrastructures

Testbed-21 could advance data integration on multiple fronts, including the development of a JSON encoding for Coordinate Reference System (CRS) definitions, the exploration of interoperability challenges of data lakehouse solutions, and the integration of the OGC 3D Tiles Community Standard and other OGC standards into the draft Hyperspace Modelling Language (HSML) standard.

Policy and Standards

Testbed-21 could support the development of standards that support transparency in international reporting indicators that rely on geospatial data, referred to as Geospatial Reporting Indicators (GRI).

Representation of triaxial bodies

Testbed-21 could establish a standards-based framework for managing triaxial bodies within the context of the solar system, exploring the potential use of Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS) to support 3D and 4D indexing of celestial bodies.

Semantics and data integration challenges

Testbed-21 could advance data integration by exploring the use of the Arazzo specification for chaining implementations of OGC API standards, prototyping a JSON encoding for CRS definitions, and leveraging or enhancing OGC RAINBOW, the OGC definitions server.

Space Situational Awareness

Testbed-21 could demonstrate the potential role of OGC standards in the location, modeling, and representation of space objects, space debris, and space weather phenomena at a time when when the space economy is set to skyrocket.

Undersea Infrastructure Security and Resilience

Subsea cables are vital to global communications and energy networks but remain highly vulnerable, especially in cross-border regions with fragmented mapping and monitoring systems. OGC Testbed-21 could advance geospatial standards to enhance security and resilience by enabling real-time vessel tracking, improving data interoperability, integrating remote sensing for proactive monitoring, and supporting automated threat modeling. By collaborating with industry, government, and research institutions, this initiative seeks to develop standards-based solutions that strengthen the protection and management of undersea infrastructure.

Other possible topics

Potential sponsors of Testbed-21 are welcome to forward any data-integration challenges they face, across any topic of their choice. Some other possible topics could include:

• 3D data access and seamless 2D/3D/4D transitions
• Big Data Analytics
• Cloud-native geospatial
• Data-Centric Security
• Digital Twins
• Distributed data processing and data processing pipelines
• Event driven approaches and Publish/Subscribe workflows
• Feature extraction and modeling from Full Motion Video
• Federated Security
• Geospatial for the Metaverse
• High-Performance Geospatial Computing
• New Space; the combination of technology and market advances from rocket launches, small satellites, orbital planes, evolving sensor modalities and new ground infrastructures, and the uptake of agile thinking and new business models
• OGC API Standards coordination effort and building of resource models

How to Apply

Interested in using OGC’s Testbed-21 to address your organization’s spatial data challenges? Potential sponsors are urged to read the full Call For Sponsors for OGC Testbed-21 (in HTML, or as a PDF version), which outlines in detail the possible areas of research, benefits of sponsorship, and how to apply to sponsor. Responses are due March 14, 2025.

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