OGC COSI Program

OGC’s Collaborative Solutions and Innovation (COSI) Program pools collective expertise to solve thorny issues that OGC members have identified. It brings together selected members to engage in research. The work of the OGC’s COSI Program is guided by COSI’s Policy and Procedures.

COSI seeks to incrementally increase the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of geospatial IT solutions. NASA developed the TRL scale to help assess a technology’s maturity and consistently compare maturity between different types of technologies:

Initiatives are categorized and managed according to their TRL level. They differ in complexity, duration, and sponsoring concepts: 

Some of the main innovation initiatives organized under COSI: 

• Design Experiments develop ideas into new specifications, e.g., a new API type, data model, or data container. 
• Sprints experiment with emerging ideas in the context of geospatial standards, help improve interoperability of existing standards by experimenting with new extensions or profiles, are used as proof of concept for other OGC Collaborative Solutions and Innovation initiatives, or support OGC Standards Program activities. 
• Pilots apply and test OGC Standards in real world environments. Pilot projects are an opportunity for users to understand how to best address their requirements using standards-based architectures. 
• Testbeds provide a unique platform where sponsors can outsource the rapid development of prototypes and test environments with a number of leading organizations in their field. Run annually, testbeds provide a rapid and efficient way for delivering proof-of-concept implementations. They also deliver recommendations for new or updated standards, developer guides, architecture blueprints and community best practices for addressing emerging interoperability challenges. of making geospatial information more Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR). 

COSI’s collaborative approach to problem solving means each initiative participant retains copyright ownership of its original work. Only collaboratively developed results, documented in official deliverables, belong to and are owned by OGC (as detailed in OGC’s Intellectual Property Rights policy). 

COSI Initiatives do not develop operational products. They result in prototypes that demonstrate possible solutions to a problem. It is up to the Initiative Sponsor to commission the development of operational products.