Initiative

OGC Testbed-19

Testbed-19 provides an outstanding opportunity to engage with and lead the latest research on geospatial system design, concept development, and rapid prototyping. The Initiative provides a business opportunity for stakeholders to mutually define, refine, and evolve service interfaces and protocols in the context of hands-on experience and feedback. By participating in Testbed-19, you will shape the future of geospatial software development and data publication.

Testbed-19: Interoperability and Collaboration from Oceans to Space

Overview and Benefits

Testbed-19 was a collaborative effort to rapidly prototype, design, develop and test solutions to location-related problems. The Testbed-19 initiative explored 6 tasks, including Geospatial in Space, Machine Learning: Transfer Learning, Geodatacubes, Analysis Ready Data, Agile Reference Architecture, and High-Performance Computing.

The project produced results that will pave the way towards new levels of location interoperability across the following topics:

  • Geospatial in Space: aims to free OGC standards and technologies from Terrestrial constraints and allow geospatial analytic tools and techniques to be used on other astronomical bodies as well as in deep space. Testbed-19 will also fully integrate the terrestrial and extraterrestrial analytic toolset and processes.
  • Machine Learning (ML): aims to document current approaches and possible alternatives to lay out a path for future standardization of interoperable/transferable ML Models for Earth Observation applications.
  • Geodatacubes (GDC): aims to define the GDC API and metadata model, test the new API against a set of use cases, develop implementations that allow further experimentation, and develop a number of client applications for both data access and advanced visualization.
  • Analysis Ready Data (ARD): aims to create, develop, identify, and implement ARD capabilities to advance informational data at the right place and at the right time. The ease-of-use of ARD will be increased through improving the backend standardization and disparate use-case scenario implementations.
  • Agile Reference Architecture: aims to create, develop and identify the architecture elements for agile reference architectures and understand how these can be used for defining different use-cases that allow different implementations for API Building Blocks. This work is seeking to inform how Resilient Data Services in the generation after next will operate.
  • High Performance Computing (HPC): aims to evaluate previous work in using HPC for geospatial analytics and help develop High-Performance Geospatial Computing standards.

As the largest Research & Development (R&D) Initiatives conducted under OGC’s COSI Program, OGC Testbeds exist at the cutting edge of technology, actively exploring and evaluating future geospatial technologies to solve today’s problems. The solutions developed in Testbeds eventually move into the OGC Standards Program, where they are reviewed, revised, and potentially approved as new international open standards that can reach millions of individuals.

Testbed-19 provided an outstanding opportunity to engage with and lead the latest research on geospatial system design, concept development, and rapid prototyping. OGC Testbeds provide a business opportunity for stakeholders to mutually define, refine, and evolve service interfaces and protocols in the context of hands-on experience and feedback. By participating in Testbed-19, organizations shaped the future of geospatial software development and data publication.

Testbed Sponsors, including several OGC Strategic Members, supported this vision with cost-sharing funds to partially offset the costs associated with development, engineering, and demonstration of these outcomes. In 2021 and 2022, OGC’s COSI Program (formerly the Innovation Program) gave over US$2 Million per year back to the geospatial community via COSI Initiatives.

Demonstration Days event:

Testbed-19 Demonstration Days were held January 16 & 17, 2024.

The Testbed-19 demonstration days event focused on demonstrations and related deliverables from core areas in Testbed 19, including their future needs and potential challenges.

Day 1 covered: Geospatial in Space; Machine Learning – Transfer Learning For Geospatial Applications, and; Geodatacubes.
Day 2 covered: Analysis Ready Data; Agile Reference Architecture, and; High Performance Computing.

You can find the recordings on the OGC YouTube channel, which can be accessed through this link.

Call for Participation information: This Call for Participation is now closed! The PDF version can be found here. Testbed-19 activities took place throughout 2023, and the Engineering Reports will be published soon.

Outcomes:

The following Engineering Reports have been made publicly available:

These Engineering Reports provided feedback to the relevant Standards Working Groups (SWGs). This feedback raises issues for the working group to address and sometimes includes change orders which instigates an update to the standard. This feedback can also motivate the formation of new Domain Working Groups (DWGs), specifications or a SWG.

As the result of Testbed-19 some tasks also provided building blocks to the OGC Building Block Register.